A Welsh mother says she has reached breaking point after her disabled daughter was denied both a school place and the transport needed to get there, leaving the family in a desperate and exhausting battle with their local council.
The mum, who has fought for months to secure the right educational setting for her daughter, says she is done staying silent. “I’m not keeping quiet any more. I’ve had enough of it,” she said, summing up the frustration felt by countless families across Wales who struggle to get basic support for children with additional needs.
Her daughter, who has a disability requiring specialist educational provision, was rejected for a school place that the family believe is the only suitable option. On top of that, the council also refused to provide transport to help get her there, a double blow that has effectively left the child without any education at all.
For families in this situation, the rejections do not just mean paperwork and appeals. They mean a child stuck at home, missing out on learning, social development and the kind of routine that many disabled young people rely on heavily. For parents, it means taking on a second full-time job fighting a system that is supposed to be there to help.
The mother says the process has been relentless and demoralising. Every step forward seems to come with two steps back, and the emotional toll of constantly having to justify her daughter’s needs to decision-makers who do not know her child has worn her down completely.
Wales has a legal framework in place designed to protect the rights of children with additional learning needs, including the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal Wales Act, which was introduced to improve outcomes and make the system fairer. But campaigners and families say the reality on the ground often looks very different from what the legislation promises.
Transport is a particularly thorny issue. For many disabled children, getting to school is not straightforward. They cannot always use public transport, and parents are not always in a position to drive them, whether because of work, finances or the demands of caring itself. When councils refuse transport alongside refusing a school place, families can find themselves completely stuck with no realistic way forward.
Local authorities in Wales are under significant financial pressure, and decisions around school placements and transport are increasingly being made with budgets in mind. Families and advocates argue that cost-cutting should never come at the expense of a disabled child’s right to an education, but the pattern of rejections suggests that financial considerations are playing a bigger role than they should.
The mum in this case is now preparing to challenge the decisions made against her daughter, but the appeals process is lengthy and complicated, and in the meantime her child remains without a school place. Every week that passes is another week of missed education that cannot simply be handed back.
Disability and education charities in Wales have repeatedly called for the system to be overhauled so that families are not left fighting this hard just to access what their children are legally entitled to. The stress, they say, falls hardest on those who are already dealing with the most.
This mother’s story is far from unique. Across Wales, parents of disabled children describe similar experiences of being passed from department to department, receiving vague refusals and having to become amateur legal experts just to get their kids into a classroom.
What makes her case stand out is her refusal to accept it quietly. She wants other families to know they are not alone, and she wants councils to understand that parents are not going away. The fight, she says, is far from over.