At the start of this week I had a real clear direction on life and Charlie’s education. I believed the only way forward was to work on our EOTAS plan. EOTAS is Education Other Than At School, so it’s effectively a mix of community and home learning but is paid out of the LA’s budget. And I had started the planning for it. Emailing local occupational therapists, educational psychologists and Speech and language therapists for costs and to find out what I would need to put this plan into action.

It’s actually been quite time consuming and labour intensive, that and the fact I am currently doing an online course in Special Educational Needs and Disability. And we have started home learning. Every day, Charlie has engaged in some form of learning with me. It is all based off YouTube at the moment, but any education is better than no education and I really thought this would be our step forward. This was now the education plan. On Wednesday, Charlie’s school got in touch with me to give me a proposed timetable for the term for him to come back. On Thursday, he had horse riding, horse riding has always been the key to getting Charlie back into school.

So on Thursday, I literally said “we’re going horse riding at 12.30pm”. He asked Alexa to set an alarm and got ready with me to go! Shocked was not the word. He loved horse riding, rode independently and even did some exercises on the horse, what an improvement. His favourite teacher met him there and asked him if he wanted to come into school to see his classmates and tell them about his summer. Charlie said yes! And he went! I am honestly in so much shock, what a turnaround! Fantastic effort from them all, school, Charlie and his classmates. We were on a high. After almost 4 months out of school Charlie has gone back. We still have a long way to go but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Everything looked perfect. On Friday the plan was that we would meet his classmates at a local park.

Unfortunately, someone drove into my car and damaged it so it was undriveable The insurance is now invalid and I am waiting to see if it is completely written off. So our return to school was killed off. I have no car, and getting to the park would of taken 2 buses and that is just not possible for Charlie. And so without a car, life will be even more difficult and we will be even more isolated not to mention the difficulties it will take to get Charlie to school. What a disaster. All day Friday was spent trying to get evidence and filling out forms for the insurance and the police. The man that drove into me, drove off. Luckily there are witnesses but it is all time consuming and definitely not what I need right now. You can go from feeling on top of the world to back down in 24 hours, and this has been a very cruel realisation of that. We will see what next week brings, but for now, I am glad it’s the weekend.

Take care

Georgina x