The noise of the Mosquito went quite a way – I had difficulty using my local bank across the road due to the noise!

As the person quoted in the article I await developments with interest.

Anna set up a special school for her own autistic children

By Sadie Dodds
IN desperation, Anna Kennedy remortgaged the family home to set up a school for her two autistic sons when teachers said they couldn’t be taught…

Anna Kennedy has to pinch herself when she surveys the 100 staff and 86 pupils at Hillingdon Manor school in North London. For she is not just the school manager and mother of two of its pupils, she was the brains behind creating the place.

The parents of two autistic sons, Anna, 47, and husband Sean, 45, a barrister, were at their wits’ end some years ago after their children were rejected from 26 mainstream schools. Unwilling to send them to “institutionalised special schools”, they remortgaged their house and talked Hillingdon Council into granting them the lease on a derelict former school.

“My son Patrick, who’s now 18, was four when he was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a condition similar to autism which means that although he is intelligent he has difficulty communicating,” says Anna.

“He suffers from a lack of empathy, impaired imagination and finds it hard making friends. But he doesn’t have the speech and language delay that comes with full-blown autism. I wanted him to have a proper education that came as close to mainstream schooling as possible.”

Her younger son Angelo, now 15, has far more complex problems. As a toddler he was diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that impairs his ability to relate, communicate and interact.  

“When the boys were diagnosed, I sat in the consultant’s room thinking, ‘Oh no, both my boys have autism, what have I done wrong?’ But you can’t blame yourself,” says Anna.

Five years ago Sean was also diagnosed with Asperger’s.

“We began to suspect it because some of his quirks were similar to Patrick’s,” explains Anna. “Living with a husband who has Asperger’s hasn’t ever been a big deal – I’d assumed his constant thirst for knowledge and structure was part of his personality. That’s the man I fell in love with and his symptoms don’t affect our day-to-day lives.”

The couple are very philosophical about the likelihood the boys inherited disorders from their father. “There isn’t anything we could have done about it. Research into the chromosome that may cause it to be inherited is, as yet, inconclusive,” says Anna.

“I’d dreamed of idyllic days on the beach and picnics in the park but autism snuffed out all those aspirations.

“Angelo is locked into his autism. You can’t have a conversation with him and he has no sense of danger. He doesn’t sleep either, which was terrible when he was young.

I’d spend my nights with him as he ran up and down his room letting out high-pitched screams. I was exhausted
Anna struggled to find a school that would accept her children.

“Patrick went to a mainstream infants’ school for 18 months. Every day he screamed and shouted when we got to the school gates,” Anna recalls.

“I had to endure pitying looks from other parents as I sat with him in the school corridor until he’d calmed down. It was very distressing and eventually the headmistress told me, ‘We can’t cope with Patrick any more’.

Anna lets off steam by tap dancing

“Meanwhile Angelo had been going to nursery and was getting one-to-one support but when it was time to go to school nobody could meet his tutoring needs.”

For three years Anna had both boys at home while she and Sean went through the soul-destroying process of approaching 26 schools in a 10-mile radius and being rejected by every one.

“Patrick and Angelo were having five hours of tuition at home,” says Anna. “I remember Angelo’s first tutor sitting on the carpet and crying after a few days. She’d never dealt with a severely autistic child before.”

In 1997, Sean and Anna turned their garage into a classroom to create a more school-like environment. Then they set up a support group, Hillingdon Autistic Care and Support.

“It’s such a lonely condition that we needed to share our experiences with parents of other autistic kids. We started with six members but now have 275 families.

“During that time I met Alex who had a grown-up son with Asperger’s. He felt his son had never had the schooling he’d needed and it planted an idea in my mind: if there wasn’t a school out there that was right for my boys, then I’d just have to create one.”

Having found the derelict school building nearby Anna, Sean, Alex and other friends presented a case to the local authority for saving it from demolition as a school for autistic children. They won a unanimous decision from the councillors: they could have a 30-year lease on the building if they carried out refurbishments estimated at £637,000.

“We remortgaged our house and Sean took redundancy from his job as an IT manager at Thames Water,” says Anna.

“In fact we did the work for a fraction of that cost. Among the parents of other autistic children were plumbers, carpenters and decorators. In September 1999, after 18 months of hard graft, Hillingdon Manor School opened.

“There were 19 children including Patrick and Angelo and we’d recruited teachers by advertising in the Times Educational Supplement. Each child had what’s called a statement of special educational needs, which meant they had funding from the local authority.”

Nine years on, Hillingdon Manor has 86 pupils aged three to 19 and the school is a centre of excellence. Anna has also helped set up the Old Vicarage Residence where autistic adults can live, plus West London Community College for 18 adults with autism and Summacare outreach support agency to help families with respite carers.

“Recently, three of our pupils achieved 21 GCSEs between them, which is terrific,” she adds proudly. “There is a ratio of one teacher to every eight pupils and the principal specialises in autism, educational psychology, speech and language therapy.

“We follow the national curriculum but tailor it to each child’s needs and also include lessons in movement and relaxation since autistic kids struggle with both. We even put some through the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme.

“Patrick has grown into a strapping young man who would like to study drama at mainstream college when he’s 19. He socialises with his friends like any normal 18-year-old and I can see him getting married one day and having a career and a family.”

Though Angelo has improved he’ll always need one-to-one care, says Anna. “Eventually I’d like him to go into supervised living so that he can experience a degree of independence, but I’ll want him close to us.”

While throwing herself into creating a better life for her sons and others like them – and writing a book, Not Stupid, on the subject – has Anna ever had any time just for her?

“Because Sean also has Asperger’s, I sometimes feel very lonely as he, Patrick and Angelo can be so locked into their own worlds,” she sighs.

“I let off steam by tap dancing on Thursdays but I haven’t had a glass of wine in years as I always need to be alert because Angelo is so erratic. We haven’t had a holiday since a disastrous trip to Disneyland Paris years ago. Angelo went walkabout and it took four hours to find him.

“Somehow, though, we’ve managed to have a reasonable life in our own way. Sean and I never used to go out but in the last year my mother-in-law and the children’s aunt have babysat so we could go to the theatre, which was a revelation I hope we’ll repeat soon.”

** Not Stupid by Anna Kennedy (John Blake publishing) available Amazon waterstones etc

Still, I am sure that they are locally obnoxious.

Joe