How we're built

Four rules that cost us money, on purpose.

Most of what goes wrong in this sector is not bad practice by bad people. It is a business model that quietly pays more when a child needs more. These four rules take that incentive out, and each one has a bill attached that we have agreed to pay.

Rule 01

We don't diagnose our own clients.

Formal diagnosis stays with independent clinicians we neither own nor pay, and who receive nothing from us for sending a family our way. The people deciding what your child needs are not the people who profit from the answer.

Our assessment is functional: what your child can do, what gets in the way, what a school can deliver. It is a different question from "what is the diagnosis", and we are careful not to blur the two.

What this costs us The most profitable thing a provider can do is diagnose and then sell the treatment for what it diagnosed. We have given that up, and we lose families to the wait for an external appointment.

Rule 02

Nobody is paid on recommended hours.

Assessors are salaried. No commission, no bonus on programme value, no target tied to hours sold. Any recommendation above a set intensity needs a second signature from someone with no commercial role, and that person can send it back.

The same rule runs the other way. Nobody is rewarded for recommending too little either — the second signature checks for both.

What this costs us Salaried assessors cost more than commissioned ones, and the second signature slows some plans down by a few days. We accept both.

Rule 03

Every plan names other providers.

Where another organisation is a better fit for part of your child's support — or all of it — the plan names them. In writing. Including our competitors, and including the cases where the honest recommendation is that you do not need us at all.

We do this because a plan that only ever recommends its author is not a plan, it is a price list.

What this costs us Revenue, directly. Some assessments end with us writing down a competitor's name and handing the family the report we just charged them a fixed fee for.

Rule 04

We publish how often we say no.

Once a year we publish the share of assessed children who did not become clients, and where they went instead. Not a selected sample — everyone we assessed. No referral fee moves in either direction, to us or from us, in any case.

A conversion rate is the one number a provider in this sector never shows you. It is also the fastest way to tell whether anyone is being turned away.

What this costs us A number we cannot control, published where competitors can read it. If it ever looks bad, it will be published looking bad.

The Independence Report

We publish whether it worked.

Four numbers, once a year, covering everyone we assessed rather than a flattering slice of them. These are the measures we want to be judged on.

Support hours reduced within 12 months

Average change in weekly hours per child, first year to date.

Median days from first contact to plan

First message received to a signed Independence Plan.

Independence milestones met against projection

Milestones reached, compared with the date we projected at Plan.

Children assessed and referred elsewhere

Assessed children who did not become clients, and where they went.

These figures are blank on purpose. They fill in from our real first-year data and are published in full when that year closes. We would rather show you an empty box than a number we made up.

What we are not

We are not a staffing agency.

An agency's job finishes when a person is placed. Ours finishes when your child no longer needs the person. Those are different businesses, and they are paid for different things.

Practically, that means our LSAs are supervised by the clinician who wrote the goals, our recommendations are checked by someone who does not benefit from them, and our success measure is a reduction in the hours we bill you.

We will never claim to fix or cure anything

Your child is not a problem with a solution. What we can promise is that the support around them is planned, measured and answerable — and that it is designed to reduce.

One monthly fee, and it is meant to fall

You are not billed per practitioner, per report or per phone call. The fee covers the stage you are in, and Step Back costs less than the stages before it by design.

You can leave at the end of any month

No notice penalty. Your file is exported free to whoever you name. We would rather lose a client than hold one with paperwork.

Where this starts

Tell us what you've noticed.

Twenty minutes on the phone with someone who does this every day. No assessment, no cost, and no obligation to become a client at the end of it.

Message us on WhatsApp Book the 20-minute call

If we're not the right people, we'll tell you who is. That includes naming providers we don't own, and it costs you nothing either way.