Silver Taylor struggled for 10 years to get the care she needed for her neurodivergence, with her mum Sarah blaming the NHS and education system for failing her
An 11-year-old girl tried to take her own life after pleas for her specialist care were dismissed, her mother says.
Sarah Taylor says her daughter was just 11 years old when she made her first attempt, and would make another a short while later.
She believes her daughter’s suffering was directly linked to her being denied proper support from schools and the NHS despite showing clear signs of being neurodivergent.
Sarah told WalesOnline: “It’s because of the whole relentlessness of the hoops you are made to jump through. You have to constantly raise concerns and so many doors are shut in parents’ faces and there is no support for the child; they are left to flounder.
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“Silver can’t be the only one, but where are they? There are no facilities like Alderwasley Hall in the whole of Wales. It gave her a future.”
Describing how Silver’s traumatic school experience began, Sarah said: “Before she started school at about four Silver had always been a little bit quirky, but you think that’s just how she is.
“But then she didn’t really speak in school for the first couple of years. I went to a parents’ evening and the teacher asked how I thought Silver was doing and I raised that she had no social skills and no friendship group.
“The teacher said she was really glad I had raised that because that’s exactly what she thought – but that’s where the support ended.”
However, it wasn’t until Silver turned 11 that she would have her neurodevelopmental autism assessment – by which point she had completed primary school having received no significant support for her difficulties.
Sarah said: “She went all the way through primary school without significant support. She had little bits and pieces like a social skills meeting or having a teaching assistant play a game at the door to try and get her into school.
“They basically just left her. I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall saying she is really struggling.
“She had no friendships, she didn’t have a clue how to play. Academically she was behind because she couldn’t understand what was going on in the classroom and she couldn’t keep up with instructions.
“She even struggled with things like handwriting and pencil grip or doing her buttons while getting changed for PE. She had no coordination and she had no occupational therapist during that time.”
Sarah said this manifested in anxiety so severe that from the age of seven Silver often made herself sick to try to avoid going to primary school, or to ensure she would be sent home.
Sarah believes that an earlier autism diagnosis could have made a difference to Silver in those formative years, perhaps ensuring she had tailored support.
Despite her difficulties in primary school Sarah said Silver “just about got through it”, but when Silver made the move to secondary school “that’s when the wheels really started to fall off”.
By the end of year seven Sarah said Silver had begun making attempts on her own life. After her first attempt Silver was referred to the health board’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). However Sarah claims she did not receive help having been told that “all autistic people are anxious”.
CAMHS was contacted again after Silver’s second attempt, and she was offered several therapy sessions. However, Sarah said these sessions were not appropriate for Silver, who struggled to understand and talk about her feelings in a conventional way.
It wasn’t until Easter that year that the local authority arranged for a tutor to visit Silver at home, but again Sarah said this tutor was not an autism specialist and so the sessions were not appropriate for Silver.
Silver’s anxiety resulted in her missing a lot of school during year 10, but a turning point was just around the corner.
It came when Sarah – who juggled working shifts at the NHS – contacted a law firm to help her obtain a more robust and accurate SSEN that better reflected Silver’s needs.
Sarah explained that HCB immediately arranged for independent specialists to make assessments and draft comprehensive reports about Silver and her needs.
Crucially, a private assessment by Dr Chris Wade found Silver to have “severe expressive language difficulties,” directly contradicting the school’s and NHS’s previous findings.
Carmarthenshire council conceded to the firm’s request for a change of placement to Alderwasley Hall, a specialist residential school, just a week before a scheduled tribunal. Every recommendation from HCB’s experts was finally added to Silver’s SSEN.
Despite an initial delay due to the Covid pandemic, Silver started at Alderwasley Hall in Derbyshire in June 2020, at the age of 15. The transformation has been profound, Sarah said.
Now 20 and coming to the end of Year 15 at Alderwasley, Silver is thriving. She will leave Alderwasley in July with seven strong GCSEs and is on track to achieve a distinction in her level three health and social care qualification. For the past two years, she has also been attending a local college with support.
Most remarkably, Silver has received unconditional offers from all the universities she applied to, including Swansea University.
She plans to attend the University of Gloucester in September to pursue a level four qualification in Health and Social Care, with aspirations to work in mental health or social work.
Liz Carroll, service director of the mental health and learning difficulty clinical care group at Hywel Dda University Health Board, said: “We are unable to comment on individual cases due to patient confidentiality. We are always sorry to hear when our service and the patient’s experience do not meet the level expected of us.
“We acknowledge that our waiting lists are longer than we would like but we are continually working to improve our services and to reduce our waiting times.
“The health board provides a dedicated single point of referral service for children and young people under the age of 18, which means we can offer rapid help and support five days a week from 9am to 5pm.
“The Children and Mental Health service also provide a 24/7 crisis assessment and intervention service, including a dedicated crisis Hub based in Carmarthen that is there to support children and / or young people who may be going through a mental health crisis.”
If you’re struggling and need to talk, the Samaritans operates a free helpline open 24/7 on 116 123. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] if you’d prefer to write down how you feel. You are not alone.