Agenda item

(A period not exceeding 20 minutes for statements from up to 5 members of the public on matters within the Panel’s remit, proposing action(s) which may be considered or contribute towards the future development of the Panel’s work programme).

A statement was provided by Mrs Olivia North as follows.

“I understand SEND from a number of different angles, first and most important is the title I am normally recognised for, I am Kai North’s mum. Next, I am a neurodiverse adult who was home-schooled due to archaic attitudes and failures in the education system. I am also a professional who studies and works in early years development.

Discussing my neurodiversity is not something I do often because it can be met with sympathy, pity, and a lack of understanding, something I neither need nor want, occasionally it is even met with patronising undertones. I am a highly educated 40-year-old woman who sees and experiences the world differently.

At twelve years old I was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder to everyday life events, a behavioural disorder and school phobia linked with underdeveloped social skills, twenty-eight years ago no one connected the dots. My parents were advised home-schooling was the best option as education wasn’t really for me. I left school and could barely read or write.

Eleven years ago, Kai was born, within the first eighteen months, we became aware Kai was not developing typically. Kai was referred for GDA at two with joint support from our GP and community nursery nurse. We were extremely lucky that the waiting list was short at that time and Kai was diagnosed at three years old with ASD, Kai’s ASD report discusses Kai’s prevalence of demand avoidance. Whilst demand avoidance is a contentious term and is often debated, I live with Kai, the anxiety and need are very real. Kai currently attends a SEMH school in Wakefield and will move to a PDA hub in April as his current school has said they cannot meet his needs from September moving into Secondary.

It has not been an easy path and we have met various obstacles along the way including all Doncaster schools stating they cannot meet Kai’s needs, and Educational Psychologist asking if I had considered home-schooling and CAMHS stating that Kai’s needs were too complex to be met by CAMHs, and he was diagnosed and we were just left to do our best for Kai on our own. I want to tell you something about Kai, Kai is a wonderfully funny and intelligent child who cannot stand injustice, Kai will always stand for those facing injustice and those who are not as fortunate as he is. Kai wrote a report on why collective punishments don’t work in schools and subsequently changed his school’s behaviour policy and one of my lecturers marked the report as 63! Not bad for a child apparently 3 years behind at school. The schools that turned Kai away are missing out not Kai.

When Kai was discharged from CAMHS, after 18 months of school avoidance and a mainstream school who, despite their best efforts were not equipped to meet Kai’s needs and with no SEND school willing to give us a chance, I decided that Kai would not be another child with unmet needs and slip through the net and had no education so I returned to education.  I am extremely privileged, my mum was able and willing to sacrifice her career and take early retirement to support me and provide childcare. Returning to education was life-changing for me, it was here for the first time it was formally suggested that I was autistic, and I was diagnosed earlier this year.  I studied hard and gained my Maths foundation qualification and English GCSE, I have four A levels at distinction in social sciences and criminal justice, and I will finish my degree in child development, with a predicted first-class degree in May next year and will start my Masters in SEND in September of the same year.

My husband, Kai and I have battled to get where we are now, I restarted my education to make sure Kai would get all his needs met. Now my dream is bigger, I know not every child with SEND will have a hyper-focused parent who can get a degree to navigate a system stacked against them. I want to make sure that never again is a SEND child told education is not for them, and that school systems will understand those who just need to be focused differently. I would like professionals to acknowledge that an underfunded system is stacked against parents and to think about the use of terms like parental choice. I, my husband, and thousands of other parents did not choose any of this. We would not change Kai for the world, Kai changes every single person he meets for the better, but there must be an acceptance that often the only choice we have is between a rock and a hard place. If I was truly choosing Kai would attend a local school with his friends, with staff trained to understand and teach how he learns, not in a system that tries to force Kai, and thousands of SEND children, into a stereotyped box, to which they will never fit and nor should they have to. Kai would go to breakfast clubs and afterschool clubs he would be accepted and included. Changing schools mid-year or risk not having a school come September, giving up our careers to take our children to out-of-area schools or sending our child off every day with strangers with no SEND training are not parental choices, it is exactly the opposite, we have no choice.  The term is uses to create an illusion of choice so we shoulder the responsibility if something goes wrong. In my new, bigger, dream parents and let’s be honest that is primarily mothers, do not have to put careers on hold, leave education, or negotiate start and finish times with employers because there is no wrap-around care for children with SEND. They will not need to explain numerous phone calls and having to leave work because schools are experiencing distressed behaviours due to unmet needs. The current government says more stay-at-home mothers need to return to work and contribute to the economy, how do the mothers of SEND children realistically return to work when often we spend as much time at school as our children do? Who is picking up our children when our children are being sent home from school, who is providing our specialist after school and holiday childcare?  We are not even a consideration, never mind a priority, the enormity of what we do is ignored. The first step to change is when we acknowledge the current system and education plan is not working, not for SEND children and not for their families.

I am often told how my return to education is inspirational and how proud I should be, but for me, it will always be tainted with disappointment and sadness, no matter how much we are told things have changed, 28 years after an autistic child was told education was not for her, getting a degree, a Masters and a working memory of law and legislation seemed like the only option to ensure her child was never told the same when he was on the path to no education.  Governments, funding and legislation models will always change and somewhere along the line we’ve forgotten that every child matters. “