Appeal no.3, submitted late last night, this one for my youngest girl-child.
The LA are insisting that “mainstream” schools can provide her with an education, with enough counter-measures to compensate for the dysregulation these environments cause that she won’t actually have time for any learning anyway. In other words, put her somewhere where she’ll break, add a few sticking plasters, patch her up a bit and send her home. Same time again tomorrow, yes?
No. All the mainstream schools they’ve ever consulted with have agreed they cannot meet her needs. Even a specialist setting has said no, and they were right to do so in seeing their reasoning. The LA’s response? To name one of the mainstream schools anyway that explained in detail why they could not accept her.
She’s due to start secondary school next year. Sending her to a mainstream secondary is utterly incomprehensible. It won’t be happening, but, according to the LA, it is what’s planned. I don’t think so.
They call us Warrior Mums, and we are. But what people don’t see behind the things that eventually happen is the years and years of daily struggle; the absolute bone-deep exhaustion; the other conditions that come out to play because we’ve been living in a stress response mode for far too long. These things reduce our capacity, gradually eroding us as anything other than those Warrior Mums.
Meanwhile, our children continue to go without an education, other than what we can provide in our frazzled states; they go without the therapy and counselling they need to recover from the damage that’s been done; they go without friends, without birthday parties and playdates and shared experiences of growing up. These are Warrior Children, too, as they have to keep trying to find their way in a world that keeps telling them they just don’t fit. And they shouldn’t have to be warriors just to receive an education.