Insight
Blog: X Factor star Sam Bailey on the fight to get her autistic son Tommy into a special school
Sam Bailey spoke to ITV News Central Social Affairs Correspondent Lucy Kapasi about her battle to get the right support for her son Tommy who has autism
Blog written by Sam Bailey
A friend suggested to me that we get Tommy tested for autism because the things he was doing were similar to her children.
As soon as I got that diagnosis, it's like somebody took the blinkers off and it all just made perfect sense.
Like when we went into a bathroom and there were hand dryers and he would put his hands on his ears and scream.
Or food - he doesn't eat things like baked beans, spaghetti, pasta - it has to be crunchy food.
Going into secondary school was the biggest change for him.
It was a great school, my eldest went there, but it just wasn't right for him. He used to bang his head against his bedroom wall. We bought a weighted blanket for him because as soon as he came home, he was emotionally exhausted from crying, and he would lie on the sofa with it for hours.
We had him saying, 'I'm going to throw myself in front of the bus' and my eldest daughter had to bring him home.
They didn't understand him at the school, so I took matters into my own hands.
I pushed and pushed. It took me a year and a half to get him where he needed to be.
Every child has a right to an education. But if the school that they go to is not right for them, then they can't go to that school because they're going to hurt themselves or somebody else.
I had to really fight but not everybody has got the capacity to do that.
If a child is at home, a parent's going to have to be at home, which means that they're not going to earn money.
And where children are stuck at home, they haven't got an education. I used to be a prison officer and there are so many people in prison with ADHD, Asperger's, Autism, and they just were not given an education because they was deemed as being naughty.I didn't understand any of the terminology or acronyms, and there are so many different support networks that we didn't even know about. I had to find them for myself. And now there are so many people that have helped me out.
During lockdown I was doing live performances from my loft, streamed online. I set up a virtual tip jar and it was a great way to pay for Tom's speech and language therapy and his autism diagnosis.
I didn't tell anyone until it was all done and then I thanked them and told them they'd helped me get my solace. But not everybody has the capacity to do that. Not everyone can sing in a loft.
I want other people to know that they're not alone. We have to fight to get what we need. There's not enough resources, there's not enough schools, there's not enough education, there's not enough teachers out there to do the job, because it is a tough job working in a special school and my son's school is amazing.
They're not like teachers, you know, they're like his friends. And they talk to him like a human being. It's the best thing I ever did. He's made two friends at school and he never made any friends at his old school.
I'm so incredibly proud of what I've done, and I just want people to know that you can do it. You've just got to keep fighting.
Deborah Taylor, the Cabinet Member for Children and Families at Leicestershire County Council said: "Like other authorities across the country, we are experiencing increasing pressures on services for children and young people with SEND.
"We now have more resources in place to support with the drafting of Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), which should help speed up the assessment process.
"We also continue to invest in supporting the education of young people with SEND including the building of new provision in some of our mainstream schools and supporting the building of new special schools in the county."
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