West Midlands boy with autism spent whole year out of school due to waiting lists
The average family is waiting more than 200 days for social care assessments
A mum in the West Midlands has told us how her son missed a whole year of school because of waiting lists for children with disabilities.
Natalie Thompson cares for her son Azuriah who has autism and is non-verbal.
She told us she suspected Azuriah may have autism, when he started to miss his speech milestones at 24 months old.
Despite that, she was told Azuriah may be at least 8 before he was diagnosed.
"I fought every day. I wrote emails and I called. I started to become awkward because it was starting to affect my son's education," she said.
"My son spent a year out of education"
When Azuriah turned 4, Natalie fought to get him a place in a school that would meet his additional needs. She was told there were no available places:
"My son spent a year out of education. Azuriah started to regress. He got to a point where he could socialise with friends at nursery, even though he was non-verbal.
"He spent such a lengthy amount of time outside of school, that by the time he went back into education, we had to deal with lots of difficult behaviours," she said.
"I had to give up work"
Natalie told us about the toll this has had on her: "It has been emotional and financial. I had to give up work when it became apparent Azuriah was not going to have a school space.
"We should have more special schools by now. A child should not reach the age of 4 and be told no school in his area has any space," she said.
Waiting lists for disabled children:
Almost a fifth of families (17%) surveyed across the UK for national disability charity 'Sense' said they had waited more than a year to be seen by children's social services.
The charity said the current system sees parents having to "fight for the care their children deserve".
It's polling, carried out by Censuswide, of 1,000 parents or carers of a disabled child in the UK in February and March this year suggested an average wait of around 210 days for an assessment by social services.
The charity, which said there are 1.8 million disabled children in the UK, said waiting for an assessment leaves families without appropriate support from their local authority.