Ms Helen Holmes:

Our area was not reconfigured during that time so it was even more of a stressful position. Previously, we would ring and we would be told what was happening or coming down the line. A worrying trend I was told about in regard to my son, in particular, is that there were no therapists because they had been seconded to testing centres and help in response to the pandemic.

I understand that was an unprecedented event. Similar to what Ms Whitmarsh describes, we got a phone call to check how we were getting on and saying a social story could be posted out. It was not helpful at the time. As well as trying to be a child's teacher and doing homework with the child, we were expected to do occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and all of that. There was no end in sight, as members know, and we did not know how long the first lockdown would be. As the ladies mentioned, there does not seem to have been any forward thinking about what would happen when we were back up and running and where the capacity would be to support these children, who already have significant delays and have been regressing further socially, academically and in many other ways. There was no forward planning and we continued with the existing model, which did not take into account what would happen in a pandemic and its consequences.

It is a question of what we can do and there does not always appear to be forward thinking. That is where we are let down and we seem to go around in circles, putting out small fires all the time.