Longest blog post I think I’ll ever write.. skip if irrelevant to you or grab a brew and have a nosy at what’s been happening for us this year.
I’m not really a sharer, I’m not of that generation that automatically reaches for the social media apps and share buttons, but there may be other families that are going through this or will potentially go through this and may find it useful. I’m always available for advice, us neurodivergent parents have to stick together 🖤
Even though it’s personal and not work related, this has impacted my small business MASSIVELY over the past 18 months, which I don’t begrudge as you don’t do that when it comes to your children.
Mike & I withdrew our ASD boys from their primary & high school setting several months ago after a year of upset, upheaval, EHCP conditions not being met and a general lack of care towards them. To be clear, R had an AMAZING teacher in year 5, his year 6 teacher however not so much. Year 6 is when we withdrew him.
If you’ve read the local paper recently you’ll have seen yet ANOTHER article about this particular school and how awful it is. The SMT are appalling and the head teacher is even worse. They talk a good talk but fail to deliver, likely riding on the school name and the coattails of the reputations of the 6th Form & University campuses.
Before anyone questions what qualifies me to make such statements, I worked in education for almost 12 years. I know how things should be done when prioritising pupils and not pound signs.
Since we withdrew the boys we’ve been working on undoing the damage caused to them by this school (therapy for the win!) and trying to home school them.
Alongside that we’ve been fighting to get the boys into new schools that better suit their needs. I use the word fighting as it’s been an absolute battle from start to finish.
If you know us you’ll also know that Mike is away touring a lot (that annoying mortgage demands to be paid) so I’ve been predominantly solo juggling this, attempting to work whenever I can and coping with a few health issues of my own. Did I mention that we have 5 rescue dogs including 2 elderly huskies too?
It’s been full on to say the least!
We made the decision that our eldest son, D, wouldn’t be able to cope in another mainstream provision so our first step in finding somewhere new was to rule those types of schools out. We were told about a particular independent school that sounded amazing so we went to visit and loved it.
When we stated that this would be where we’d be applying for D, we were immediately told by so-called “professionals” from the boys’ former schools and from agencies we’d linked in with for support that we wouldn’t obtain a place for D in this particular specialist school and that we needed to look elsewhere, including the repeated suggestion of mainstream provision. Obviously we ignored all of their “advice” as setting our son up to fail is not on our to do list.
So we began the lengthy process of trying to secure a place and the process of getting your kid into a specialist provision is NUTS.
Everything has to go through a caseworker and in a specific and rigid order. If you have a caseworker like we initially had then the process is horrific and this order wasn’t fully explained to us, despite us asking multiple times. The parts that were explained were given in the wrong order so we were constantly tackling each step blind.
I’m not naming the caseworker as that’s not appropriate but I’m glad I don’t have to ever deal with this vile person ever again.
Even though this is her job and one can only assume she’s supposed to know how to do it, she was almost impossible to contact, leaving emails hanging on unread for weeks and we weren’t allowed to have a contact number for her.
We aren’t exaggerating or being unnecessarily mean, we have received several apologies from higher management on her behalf (not directly from her, she’s likely far too busy screwing over other families to apologise) regarding her incompetence and how she absolutely did us dirty. Her actions added on months of extra waiting time and a huge amount of unnecessary stress to our family.
These people have the educational fates of disabled children in their hands. Not. Good. Enough.
We finally had a break in the form of someone very high up, I’m not naming them as that’s not appropriate either, but once they got involved, allocated us a new caseworker and explained how things should work things began to progress as they should have done in the first place.
We were soon allocated a place at our chosen school, which was such a relief that I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried in the meeting at the school when we were told. This was the result of months of back and forth with the local authority and over a year of D being mistreated in his former high school.
The next step was to secure funding from the local authority. We were preparing ourselves for a big fat no as was the usual response from our local authority in regard to this particular school. I spoke with parents who have had to face tribunals to get their children a place and was preparing for the worst and an even lengthier fight.
By some miracle (or guilt at having screwed us over, who knows) everything was a yes moving forward. We were stunned as we genuinely thought it would have to go to a tribunal so again the relief was palpable.
That was one kid sorted.
Simultaneously to this, our youngest, R, starts high school in September and the one he was allocated was not the one we chose. Even though we provided the local authority with an abundance of information regarding why he wouldn’t be attending the high school version of the primary that we pulled him out of, that’s where they allocated him a place.
Well, over our dead bodies would that be happening.
So we began the process of having another child’s educational fate lie in the hands of a bunch of decision makers that don’t know him or his situation. Thankfully the process was given upfront and therefore a lot clearer and as long as we completed the relevant documents (ours was a 4 page appeal letter), met the deadlines and attended the zoom consultations then we had a chance. A small chance but a chance nonetheless.
97 appeals were heard for this particular school and only 4 were allocated places and we got one of them for R. We were told this in the same week we heard we had secured a place for D. An unbelievable result for the family.
I think what shocked us the most about all of this was the absolute apathy from some of the “professionals” involved in the process. No shits given at all from the initial caseworker, and when we find ourselves with the bandwidth to relive it all we’ll be sending a very long and detailed complaint to the relevant people. We just can’t take that on right now, we’ve still got work to do with prepping the boys for a return to education and it would be great to have a bit of a life before they start school again. Mike’s touring schedule has ramped up for festival season so we’ll be lucky to get a decent few days all together.
I’ve also got some other big things coming up that I need to focus on. I have cryosurgery on July 5th, after 3.5 years of consultations and alternative treatments I’m finally getting my foot frozen. I went for the option with the least recovery time as I can’t be laid up for 4-6 weeks and trying to get around wearing a comedy boot. I’m excited to get it done even though the idea of a large needle going in to make room for the freezer probe thing makes me feel a bit sick. Yes, I watched it on YouTube. No, it probably wasn’t the best idea but I’m not a woman who likes to be surprised.
I also need to move studios. Yes it’s been a hot minute since that last happened but we don’t need to be in town for the boys anymore and I want to be closer to home. We’ve found somewhere that Mike & I can share again rather than be split across 2 premises and it’s a 5 minute walk from my house which is great as once I’ve sorted the boys after school I can just pop back and carry on working.
There’s also a bar that’s opened up below my current studio. It wasn’t as bad initially but now the speakers are on anytime from 12.30pm and my floor vibrates. Not the best atmosphere for teaching workshops and for my mental health in general. The boys refused to come here due to the noise so that stopped any ‘I’ll work while you home school’ attempts. I can’t blame them, ASD kids and crappy dance music don’t mix. My kids have MUCH better music taste than that.
Once I’m up and about after the cryosurgery (a week at the most is expected) I can carry on packing up the studio ready to move in the small gap Mike has in his schedule this month. We’ve got mates and hired movers helping so it will be relatively straightforward and my priority is to get my workbench set up so I can finish my preservation commissions immediately for my lovely and very patient clients. I can FINALLY see that light at the end of the tunnel!
I haven’t included every detail of the past few months, it would be an eBook not a blog post otherwise. But I can honestly say that this has consumed our family, I have had very little time or energy to focus on much else.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you what you should & shouldn’t do when it comes to the education and welfare of your children. Regardless of what their job title is or what inflated sense of self importance they’re dripping all over you. We know what’s best for our kids and we stuck to our principles and we DID IT! It’s been the hardest thing I’ve done and I birthed those kids drug free in a pool!
But we are a very tight knit bunch who have thoroughly supported each other throughout it. I wouldn’t say it’s made us stronger, we were already strong, but I’m hoping things calm down a bit now so we can focus on other things for a change.
Famous last words? I hope not!