Everything you need to introduce Ricky

Ricky Du Plessis is a SEND dad, advocate, author and speaker who helps people build the capacity to withstand chronic stress, through metabolic resilience.

Ricky Du Plessis is a SEND dad, advocate, author and speaker. Drawing on lived experience and the principles of metabolic psychiatry, he helps SEND families, care professionals and workplace teams build the capacity to withstand chronic stress that won't let up. He is the author of Conquering King Stomach, host of The Animal-Based Dad Podcast, and an Associate Member of the Professional Speaking Association.

Ricky Du Plessis is a SEND dad, advocate, author and speaker on burnout and chronic stress. His message is one few are making: much of the stress we live with has no off-switch, so what decides whether we burn out or keep going is our capacity to carry the load. And that capacity can be deliberately built.

He knows this from the sharpest end, and advocates for the people the system forgets: the parents and professionals who care for children with special needs. Every therapy and intervention a child receives reaches them through an adult, yet those adults are among the least-supported people in the system. The consequences are predictable and often preventable: burnout, poor metabolic health, and carers who can no longer show up for the children who depend on them.

Ricky avoided that fate only because he had spent years immersed in metabolic health before becoming a SEND dad, arriving at the hardest chapter of his life already holding tools most carers are never given. He now takes the principles of metabolic psychiatry upstream, applying them preventatively to help SEND families, care professionals and workplace teams build resilience to stress that won't let up.

He is the author of Conquering King Stomach, host of The Animal-Based Dad Podcast, and an Associate Member of the Professional Speaking Association and The Applied Neuroscience Association. His mission is simple: to hand others the head start he had.