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(UK) Scottish 13 year old with autism waiting 18 months for secondary school place

June 9, 2019, Scottish Sun: The One Show’s Carrie Grant blasts school place wait for autistic daughter, 13 – who’s been stuck at home for 18 months—TV's flame-haired vocal coach is seeing red as the Govt slashes funding for families of disabled children https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4346388/girl-13-is-too-academic-for-special-school-and-too-autistic-for-mainstream-heres-how-you-can-help-our-give-it-back-campaign/ IMOGEN Grant is 13. She is autistic. And she has been waiting at home every day for 18 months for a school place. Her predicament is the heart-breaking result of her disastrous move to secondary school and funding cuts robbing the families of disabled children of vital support and services. As well as autism, Imogen has ADHD, which makes it difficult for her to concentrate in class and her behaviour can be disruptive. While she attended a mainstream primary school, her parents — vocal coaches Carrie and David Grant from BBC1’s Fame Academy — secured her a place at a specialist secondary school in September 2017. But she was a pupil there for just six weeks. Rather than implement a strategy to deal with her needs, Imogen was forced to spend days alone with only a teaching assistant for company. Things reached crisis point when a text from Imogen flashed up on Carrie’s phone as she boarded a flight for work. “Please help me, Mummy,” it read. “They keep putting me in this room on my own, I’m not allowed to play with anyone, please help me.” ... When The One Show reporter Carrie, 53, returned a couple of days later, the headteacher decided the girls’ school could no longer provide for Imogen. With no suitable alternative place available within 90 minutes of their North London home, Imogen has been stuck waiting ever since.... This is why the couple are backing The Sun’s Give It Back campaign demanding the Government plug the annual £434million funding gap for care services for disabled children. David, 62, who has just finished coaching the Spice Girls for their UK tour, says: “I’m really pleased The Sun is engaging in a campaign to try to get this money back.... “Children have to live day in, day out without that access to services. That has a profound effect on a child’s mental health — and their family.” Imogen is just one of thousands of children with disabilities and -additional needs that are being let down by the Government, leaving her parents to pick up the pieces. Carrie and David have four children, all with special needs. Their two eldest daughters are Sex Education actress Olive Gray, 24, who has ADHD and dyspraxia, and Hollyoaks star Talia Grant, 17, who is the first autistic actress to play an autistic character in a UK drama. She has high-functioning autism and has struggled with her mental health, including with suicidal thoughts, since she was just nine years old. The couple also have an adopted son Nathan, nine, who has ADHD, dyspraxia and attachment issues related to trauma in his early life. FAMILIES with some of the most vulnerable children in the country are disintegrating because the support they desperately need is not available. This needs to stop, and it is why The Sun has teamed up with the ¬Disabled Children’s Partnership, an umbrella organisation of 60 leading disability charities in the UK, to help. We are asking: The Government to Give It Back and plug the £434million funding gap for care services for disabled children. ... A Disabled Children’s Partnership survey of 3,400 parents found 40 per cent had experience relationship breakdown since their diagnosis — with the lack of Government support often cited as a key reason. The toll is felt by the parents, but especially the mothers — who have to give up their jobs to be at home trying to be a caregiver, counsellor, advocate and educator. Carrie Grant And 53 per cent of parents had to give up work to fight for their child. ...

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