Published on 12, July, 2020
I am the Mum of an autistic 17 year old girl, who was only diagnosed in 2022, following two suicide attempts.
She amazingly masked so well.
She is with CAMHS and currently on medication for her high anxiety. They are really nice people at CAMHS, but keep focussing on the anxiety, which I think is never going to be totally un control because of her autism.
She tries so hard to go to college, but the noises, smells and lots of people generally peak her anxiety and she either faints or throws up. As you can imagine, this becomes a vicious circle, as she then becomes anxious about fainting or throwing up.
Her attendance is not good at all and the college, whilst they have been good and made lots of adjustments for her are quoting the 'fit to study' policy and exclusion. She is very academic and achieves As and Bs in her mocks and did extremely well in her GCSEs (despite not going to school for the last 7 months of the final year). I think she has PDA.
It breaks my heart seeing her struggle each day, only to feel like she's failed at going in and she is really worried about keeping her friends, due to her not going in much.
Does anyone know of alternative options for her to do her A Levels, that doesn't involve going into big group settings. I have looked at the apprenticeship route, but that doesn't appeal to her. Like is there an online way, whilst we work on developing and desensitising her to day to day challenges?
Any guidance or advice would be much appreciated please.
There are a number of online providers which you'd probably have to pay for. However its hard learnt fact that if you bang the drum enough you can eventually get stuff.
There are many drums to bang to get your point across. OFSTEAD the local council the local MP, Mims Davis disability minister, Kemi Badenoch (spelling)? is the equalities minister. All things the principal and management staff will want to avoid and its amazing what can be done to avoid unfavourable publicity.
You should easily be able to achieve online home learning (for non practical courses obviously) attendance would likely be required for examinations however separate rooms could be made available (at uni people went to a small room off the side of the library for extra time etc.
Its a sad fact but the work place like schools are not set up for ASD people and we need to scrap for anything. On a side note there is always the open university and bin off A Levels all together. They are top notch at student support especially people with all sorts of disabilities and cannot do enough. plus the whole institution is set up to be distance learning. (full disclosure I'm and OU Student)
This is great information, thanks very much Sleep Now in the Fire