Our son was diagnosed with Aspergers a few years ago. He is also dyslexic. It was a nightmare of a bureaucratic process. Three years of road blocks and dead ends. We were lucky, many families don’t get there. I assumed that the support and help my son needs to develop to his full potential would then follow. Sadly that was wrong.

In a world of cuts and austerity many key services have been cut. Our Local Authority has cut back Autism Support Services. It provides no specialist educational Dyslexia support. As a result many children like my son are provided minimal additional support.

With a new School rapidly approaching I tried again to gain support. Luckily our wonderful NHS has now started trying to help my son better understand what ‘living with Aspergers’ means. However no educational support is available. They won’t even do an educational assessment of his dyslexia to see what are the best strategies his new school can adopt. It’s left to the parents to take this forward. Unfortunately my son has a rather limited parent in this field.

We met up with his new school and they suggested a novel approach to the issue. Some other parts of England still provide Dyslexia and Aspergers support to children. The school asked if we had considered moving out of the area. My son immediately responded by saying he was really happy living here but if he had to move would it be ok if we moved to Canada.