Martha's* fight for Jake

Teachers alerted Martha to there being a problem when her son started school at four, and she doggedly battled on his behalf until he was formally diagnosed at the age of eight.

“Then it took six more months to get the help we had been promised - I had to appeal against the number of hours support he was given. Jake was almost in junior school before he got any formal help.”

She turned to IPSEA for advice. “IPSEA explained my rights and the codes of practice that are in place. IPSEA gave me somewhere to turn for help.”

“If anyone rings me and says they need advice, I say go straight to the IPSEA website and you can print off an example letter.”

Martha decided Jake needed more help when he was nine. She spent two more years fighting to achieve that, and finally won him a specialist place for his secondary education.

Jake is now 14 and after 7 years of Martha’s battling, he is doing well in the special school where she won him a place. “He loves the structure of the school. He’s doing marvellously there.”

Having faced a long, hard struggle to have her son’s educational needs met, Martha started up a support group for parents in similar situations.

* Names have been changed.