Well! Where do I start?!!

Firstly let me just make it clear that a child getting “extra help” at school doesn’t just get it by the drop of a hat. I have had many people comment “Well now you have a diagnosis of Autism you’ll get extra help” This couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s an exhausting, emotional process where you have to write lengthy reports detailing everything about your child, requesting reports from all sorts of professionals, chasing, following up and ensuring all information is pulled together. For me this took several months and was an upsetting process. After all this time, emotion and stress you are then told (apparently as a matter of course regardless of your child’s needs) that your request to assess your child is refused.

To me this is to test your determination. At this stage a lot of parents give up, they’ve got no energy left to fight after months of focussing, writing and talking about all the struggles their child has. I was one of the few to not accept that refusal, I appealed and wrote again, in detail, about why I felt my son should get the help he deserved.

We finally after 9 months got a statement of special needs after numerous phonecalls, meetings, reports and pleading that they take note of his need for help.

After just one term at school and we are already back to requesting that his hours don’t drop in January. I am a determined, positive and driven parent, but there are days when I just want to SCREAM!! Why should my little baby have to go through all of these processes and procedures simply to have some extra help to allow him to access his schooling??

The time and energy wasted on meetings about meetings, management board decisions, and paper pushing exercises simply to say yes or no as to whether these kids need help, is absolutely ludicrous.

Do they ever stop and think for a second that any parent or teacher would go through all this endless campaigning and not have a genuine reason to?…………