Caller 'losing herself' as daughter with special needs is 'abandoned' by school
25 January 2021, 19:02
Caller 'losing herself' as special needs child 'abandoned' by school
This caller told LBC she is 'slowly losing herself' as her daughter with special needs has been 'abandoned' by her school during this period of remote learning.
Caller Jo has a nineteen-year-old daughter with special needs and told Eddie Mair how both are struggling with home schooling.
The only time her daughter's carers contacted her was during the first lockdown, which first began ten months ago.
"She needs feedback, she needs contact for someone to give her praise," Jo said, "she's at college, but we're also at a vital year of transitioning.
"We're also fighting with the educational authorities with regard to her next placement because no accommodation has been made, in terms of lengthening any of the timelines for people with special educational needs."
Eddie asked how fighting for her daughter is affecting Jo herself.
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"I feel like I'm just slowly losing myself because...everything I try to do, even with being proactive, even when trying to make the phone calls, doing everything that one can possibly try to do to make everything different, I just keep coming up against brick walls.
"You just lose the will. It is just so despairing. I might sound together but I'm really not. I have days where I'm crying."
Both her and her daughter are also in the extremely clinically vulnerable group "which adds another dimension" and she is unsure when they will both receive a vaccine.
"We've pretty much been shielding since the beginning," Jo said.
She asked of listeners: "How to engage with a school that really does not want to try to engage, that's more interested in making policy decisions rather than looking at the individual child's needs.
"At the end of all of this, which nobody seems to recognise, there's a human being."
