It’s amazing what you find when you open your eyes.

Another application for additional support. This one was a long shot. Additional funding to provide some specialist support in school for our son. Turned down.

Same line. He already has funding (the maximum available with an Education Health Care Plan) which allows him to take up his place in school. The funding goes into the general support budget which funds the school wide teaching assistant system. Plus he’s doing so well without support.

The fight goes on.

Then speaking with his Doctor. Son is now starting to become too old for many of the health programmes focusing on autism.

The fight goes on.

It feels like the agencies have signed up to support our son while he is in school or college up to the age of 25. The agencies provide virtually no support now. They will continue to provide virtually no support up to the age of 25. Then they can officially provide no support after that….

Ultimately the agencies are just following Government policy and funding decisions. The current government sees austerity and cutbacks as essential for health and education. Yet they are happy to provide funding for tax breaks for the better off and bungs to Northern Ireland Unionists to keep themselves in power.

Nothing is going to change any time soon.

So the fight goes on. But one day the government will change and hopefully we will get one which governs with eyes wide open.

46 thoughts on “Eyes wide open”

  5. Keep it up. There are many fronts on which to fight this administration. I am not too sure how much longer they can cling on, especially if B J wins. I am very worried though by the popularity of the far right Brexit party. Has the nation lost its mind?

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  9. What a magnificent photo! 🙂 Did you take that with a camera phone?? If so i am very impressed Sir – great work!

    Glad you are keeping your eyes wide open – at least on your walks it’s ‘safe’ to do so. 😉

    I suspect it will take a much more vigourous ‘opening of our collective eyes’ as to the lie most of us are constantly being fed by those in power, before we get the government of the people, for the people.

    Lets all do what we can to wake up/take the blue pill.

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  12. I don’t understand this. Your child has funding via an EHCP which goes to the school, but the school take his money and refuse to give the support! In the school I work in EVERY child with an EHCP will get support. I think anything else is just a form of theft. I feel really shocked that this is happening to you guys.

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    1. I our area the Education Psychologists tend only to see kids with behaviour issues. In 5 years son has been seen by one for 15 minutes in class. Seemed more interested in his scruffy hair. No one to one help in school just the Teaching Assistant who is allocated to the whole class. In his class one of the kids has behaviour issues so the TA usually keeps an eye on this boy. Son has to put his hand up to ask for help.

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      2. Oops, pressed send when I was going for backspace. This is what I meant to write…
        The Ed Psych issue doesn’t surprise me. The class teacher (in Primary) or the Form tutor /year head (in Secondary) and the Senco have to both be sweating tears of blood for an extended period to get a child on the list for the Ed Psych. It’s a shame because the Educational Psychology Service can be very helpful.

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      3. The two missing links are the Ed Psych doing detailed reports on each child and the budget. Schools have to pay for the ED Psych Service now but they haven’t got the money to pay for that. So when they do come out it’s a very brief visit and the generic report is useless for the school.

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  13. Interesting to hear you talk about how things are supposed to work – but don’t necessarily – in your country and compare it to how things are supposed to work – but don’t necessarily in the U.S. Wish all kids everywhere could just get the services they need.

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  14. How old is your son? I’m asking because my teenager has recently been evaluated for autism and we get the results on Tuesday. We were told it’s important to figure out if he’s on the spectrum but from my perspective, he’s going to need the same interventions whether he is or isn’t. I really don’t know how thirteen years passed before a doctor pointed us in this direction. Is your son aging out as my son is trying to opt in?

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    1. Need a coffee fix so still suffering from Sunday brain zombism. Started the process when he was 5 – I think. About 8 when we got the diagnosis confirmed. 10 before we got the Education Health Care Plan. Now 12. The main thing is that it helps him understand why.

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  17. GAH. It’s, like—what was that show, Undercover Boss? Like, if they actually sent an undercover official to come in and observe how this “help” is given, I have a feeling they’d see things veeeeeeeeeeeeery differently. C’mon, they’ve got to have a James Bond on hand somewhere, don’t they?

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