WHEN Kian was diagnosed with ADHD at eight and then autism nine months later, I needed to find out as much as I could about it and I’m still learning now.

My son’s learning difficulties are largely invisible which meant it was harder to get him the support in school in the first place and this led to him being excluded at a young age.

Many people believe that a child with a disability means help is easy to come by, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

More often than not there is a battle to get and then keep the support in school – but the recent changes to the Surrey County Council transport policy mean that now it will also be the transport that parents of children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) will have to battle for.

After mainstream school I looked for local alternative schools that could meet my son’s needs and there were none. Six years later there are still none. So, like me, many parents of children with special needs are forced to send their children the other side of the county or out of the county to get an education.

This means the latest transport changes will impact a significant number of young people and children with SEND, now and over the coming years.

I would have loved Kian to have been able to attend a local school, but he has invisible learning difficulties that are not well understood and making it harder for him to learn anywhere except in specialist provision.

He has a severe expressive and receptive speech and language disorder. You can’t see it but it’s very common in autistic people and unsupported can result in severe behavioural problems.

He also has sensory processing disorder and he hears everything and cannot filter out noise which makes it hard for him to concentrate and hear the teacher.

Kian received the right support in his special school and is now ready to transition back into mainstream college and with the right support will be able to study carpentry.

He will still need the speech and language, and occupational therapies, but he is now much better able to self-regulate and express himself if something isn’t going well. There isn’t a college just around the corner that can support my son so he will continue to need transport to get to college for him to study.

I could give up my job and take him myself, but the cost to the public purse of keeping me at home would far outweigh the cost of his transport. In all seriousness though, why should I have to give up my job when Surrey have not planned for the young people with SEND growing up and needing to continue into further education?

If my son is to successfully transition into wider society, he needs to be educated with the very people he will meet every day outside of college.

He wasn’t ready a few years ago but now he is and he knows the direction he wants his life to go in and the only thing that will stop him getting there is a lack of transport.

I was part of another challenge in 2018 where we judicially reviewed almost £21million in cuts from the Surrey SEND budget. We didn’t win the case law but we successfully reversed all the cuts.

Please help me push back and challenge these changes so that children and young people with special needs all over the county can continue to be able to get to college or school and be able to learn.

Pledge money towards Alicia’s legal battle at www.crowdjustice.com/case/surrey-transport-policy-jr/