If this school hadn’t worked, we would have had to move.

Family members fighting for good education for all.

In the Young Families Project we speak to parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities about their lives. Our findings are presented in a series of essays.

This is part 4.

In this fourth essay (PDF) we focus on how parents have to fight for good education for their child, and how siblings struggle at school because of the situation at home.

“We began with specialised schools. Throughout the entire process, we had no guidance from anyone. It was all trial and error, asking around, and often making decisions based on information that later turned out to be inaccurate. And of course, it’s the children who pay the price for those mistakes. You have to manage everything yourself.”

Read the full essay here: If this school hadn’t worked out, we would have had to move. (PDF)

Young Families Project

1. Introduction: What parents and siblings of children with intellectual disabilities face every day.
2. If you don’t know how to navigate the system then you are lost and your child is too.
3. Financial hardships in the family, and the difficulty of balancing work and care.
4. Fighting for a good education for their loved one with an intellectual disability, and balancing school and care.
5. Struggling with mental health and wellbeing and neglecting their own needs.