And then he started to be assessed. I think that was driven through the GP in the end. And he had a battery of tests. He was tested by about eight different professionals, and it was November 2005, about 7th November, and my daughter and her husband were summoned to a multi-professionals meeting and they asked me if I would go too, because I had got knowledge of the special needs department of the of the local authority and I knew quite a lot about what might happen. And I said, to them, well I was quite clear that it was their meeting. That I would only intervene if I thought that I could add anything. I was clear that they were the parents, I was only the grandmother, but I did have rather particular knowledge.
And we turned up at this meeting in a place not far from here, not in this local authority and sat in a room and I thought this was the most appalling experience that any set of parents should ever be expected to go through, where eight individuals sat round and told my daughter and her husband all the things that this child could not do, and how he failed on these tests, and that test and not one person had any grace to say, a) that he was a nice little boy, or b) notice anything that he actually could do. It was compounded by the fact that the paediatrician was a complete and utter, I think we’d have to put some bleeps in really now for the word I’d want to use about her. And she certainly should never have been working with parents and children. She was an absolute nightmare.
And the upshot of this was that this little boy was put on a waiting list for absolutely everything, nothing was offered to immediately at all in terms of help, and they were told, my daughter and her husband were told that if they didn’t accept the diagnosis that he was autistic there and then, he also would not be put into the Earlybird Scheme.
