Oscar’s problems first became apparent when he was two. He went to nursery like other children, and he was very well supported there – the staff were great.

But then once he had his EHCP [Education, Health and Care Plan – a legal document that sets out the tailored support a child needs], we were asked to pick a school. We didn’t know whether to send him to a mainstream school or a specialist school.

We’re not experts, and it was the first time we’d been through this process.

Schools are different. Some schools are more generalist, others specialise in children with more profound physical disabilities, and some cater more for children with behavioural issues.

So you really have to choose carefully, because it’s not one-size-fits-all. But until you’ve been offered a place, you’re not allowed to go and look round a school.

It’s a really difficult process. You’re an expert on your own child, but you don’t know anything about the individual schools, and the council won’t even give you a list of them, so you don’t know what your options are.

You don’t know what you don’t know. It’s very much shooting in the dark.

It puts a very heavy mental and emotional burden on parents. You just can’t imagine.

We ended up opting for Grove Road School. It has a targeted mainstream provision (TMP) unit, which makes it a bit like a hybrid option, potentially offering the best of both worlds.

But once Oscar had started there, it soon became apparent that he wouldn’t be OK in a mainstream setting. He’s still non-verbal, not fully toilet-trained and has problems understanding what’s said to him.  

At his nursery he had one-to-one support, which he really needed, but a mainstream school just couldn’t offer that, even with the TMP unit.

The TMP staff were amazing with him, but it’s not designed for children like Oscar. It’s designed for children who can cope in a mainstream school, but with support. Oscar needed to be in the TMP all the time.

Oscar’s EHCP was reviewed in spring 2023 and finalised in the July, and then we appealed in the September.

The initial hearing date was to be in October this year – that's how backlogged it is.

North Yorkshire Council missed the first deadline to answer the appeal in December, and then missed the next one in January. That’s really common.

The whole review was badly handled, with poor communication and a lack of responsiveness.

Then in February, the council’s tribunal department called to offer us a place at Mowbray School in Ripon from September, which negated the need for an appeal. But if we hadn’t had that call, we’d still be waiting. That’s a very common situation.

I got the impression that North Yorkshire Council is just chronically understaffed. There seems to be a revolving door of people – we've had five case workers in three years. You’re supposed to have one. I don’t think Oscar even has one at the moment.

When one case worker replaces another, things are often never communicated, so when you send an email, you end up cc’ing everybody in the hope of hitting one of them.

I’m not blaming the council – it's not failing children because of a wilful lack of care. I’ve met some really lovely, caring people who work for the council.

It can’t be easy. They’ll be dealing with a heavy workload, a lot of red tape, not enough funding, and parents in a heightened emotional state. I wouldn’t want to work in that department.

The system as it is now just doesn’t allow them to deliver the service they want to. It must be incredibly stressful.

What I’d like to see first and foremost is more specialist provision.

There’s been this push for inclusion in the mainstream school system, and that’s a wonderful idea, but a single educational setting is not going to work for every child. It’s square pegs and round holes.

[The push for inclusion] means the number of specialist school places has gone down, but it needs to go up again, and that means more SEND teachers and educational psychologists.

One of the problems is the lack of educational psychologists, which causes big hold-ups, because you need them to assess a child for an EHCP.

There’s such a shortage of them that a lot of assessments are still done remotely, online. Oscar has still never been seen in person by an educational psychologist.

As far as I’m aware, no political party has made this cause a priority. But they should, because ultimately, it would benefit everybody – the children with special needs and the children in mainstream schools.

I’d also like to see more standardisation in the way SEND is administered by local authorities nationally. As it stands, each council has its own way of doing things, and that can make the whole situation even more difficult to navigate. Sometimes even the forms and the terms they use are different.

There needs to be a much more uniform approach, because the way things are now, it even restricts where you might want to move to. The thought of moving somewhere in a different local authority area – and the bureaucratic headaches that could bring – is just horrendous.