Autistic Child’s Mother Pleads with Macron Over Education Crisis

"I have already written to deputies, to Sophie Cluzel (NDLR: Secretary of State for Persons with Disabilities), to Emmanuel Macron, but nothing is moving and it’s even worse than before, because there are fewer and fewer facilities. (...) When I heard Emmanuel Macron talk about autism as a priority for his term, I believed it. Now, it disgusts me," laments Kahina. She has asked the President of the Republic to keep his promises, reports Le Parisien.

The despair of this mother is growing as no solution has been found to the problem of her autistic son who has not been in school for 18 months after difficulties encountered at school. "At school, they tell me that his place is not in the classroom, even with a school life assistant. So I ask for an IME, but it’s been three years that we’ve been waiting and they tell me that given the needs and availability, it can take ten years. Moreover, it would supposedly be too difficult," recounts Bilal’s mother.

On the side of the interministerial delegation in charge of the national autism strategy, launched in 2018, there is a glimmer of hope: "We will follow up on Bilal’s case, which may need to be re-examined to see if he would not be better off in a specialized class. Because the direction of history is that all children go to school together."

However, Kahina has little faith in this promise, as she had been given many before without any improvement in her son’s situation. "I’ll wait and see but I don’t believe it anymore. Especially since, if it is indeed a specialized and adapted structure that my son needs, he has already fallen too far behind," she hinted.