Dancing’s class act (From The Northern Echo)

Dancing’s class act

3:37pm Monday 30th January 2012 in Features By Chris Webber

Anna Kennedy was just another mother worried about her son at school when she received devastating news that changed her life, and hundreds of others, forever. Chris Webber speaks to one of Britain’s most inspirational mums.

DESPERATELY unhappy, unable to relate to other children and just seven years old, Patrick Kennedy stood “with his face buried in the wall” at school. His mum, Anna, beside herself, watched her boy. The headmistress approached: “What are we doing to this young man?”

Anna, a Middlesbrough-born dance teacher living in London with her husband, Sean, had come close to a number of car accidents trying to get Patrick to school. He’d fight so hard not to go. “He hated human beings and would just sit in the reception area when he got their anyway,” she said.

While all this worry was going on, Anna was already looking after her younger son, Angelo, then four, who was diagnosed as having autism. He would not wear shoes and would not sleep at night.

But, for all the trouble, Anna was insistent on somehow getting Patrick, a child who much preferred the company of animals to other children, to school.

After all, he’d been brilliant. “I thought I had a little Einstein.” Anna recalls, recounting how he was reading the dictionary when many couldn’t read at all.

The headteacher organised a special meeting to look at all the information about Patrick and have all the people important to Patrick’s development there. A psychologist’s report was handed to Anna.

A report that held a devastating truth. “Shocked, I remember saying ‘it says here my son has Asperger Syndrome’.

They agreed. I said: ‘It says he was diagnosed three years ago. This is the first we’ve heard anything about it’.”

For three years, the Kennedys had laboured, worried out of their minds, about Patrick when all the time there was a diagnosis that explained everything.

It was just that no one had thought to tell Patrick’s mum and dad.

And life just kept on getting harder.

Angelo was offered an extra term at nursery school. The assessing officer told Anna, ‘you might as well take it, no one else wants your son’. “If I could have put my hand down the phone and strangled her I would have done so,” says Anna, with feeling.

To make matters worse, it was becoming apparent Patrick was so unhappy he couldn’t continue going to his mainstream school. His headteacher helped secure some home tuition from the local education authority, but the schools for autistic children were clearly not suitable for someone like Patrick who didn’t suffer a severe version of the condition.

In the end, the family were turned down by 26 special needs schools, many clearly not suitable for either of the boys.

The blows kept coming. The council in the London borough where the Kennedys lived, said there would be no increase in his home tuition. A bright lad, Patrick was receiving just five hours teaching a week.

THOROUGHLY let down by the system Anna and Sean decided to fight harder. During an autistic care support group meeting, Anna stood up with a bold idea. “I said, ‘let’s set up our own school for autistic children’.

It prompted laughter from some of the other parents, but we got key support too.”

The parents soon heard about a disused special needs school, derelict for 18 months. To say it was run down was an understatement. The roof had holes in it, trees were growing through the windows, the toilets had been smashed from the walls by vandals.

The first fight was for the council to allow them to use the property, but that victory in principle was just the beginning of endless, bureaucratic meetings. In the end, the authority said the Kennedys and their new charity needed to find £450,000. They had £3,000 in the bank. No bank would lend them the money, despite any number of attempts.

It could have ended there, but, not for the first and certainly not the last time, the network of fellow desperate parents of autistic children came to the rescue. This time, a dad of an autistic child, James Coombes, a former teacher and, crucially, a bank manager, put together a plan which eventually led to a loan agreement.

With that, the council finally came round and agreed to formally lease the building for 25 years, the first five rent-free.

Really, they were only just beginning.

Anna went on a publicity spree with the intensity of Bob Geldof and Live Aid. She had a two-page feature in the Daily Mail, an hour-long TV documentary, endless fundraising, bringing in tens of thousands of pounds. Eventually, £627,000 was raised in five years.

The Kennedys still they had Angelo, an autistic boy who kept them awake almost all night, every night.

They had the worries of trying to get Patrick the education and socialisation he needed. Still they had their money worries. Something had to give, and Sean gave up his warehouse job to work on the project full time and receive a wage from the charity.

Nobody else would.

Eventually, having remortgaged their own home, they received the keys to the school. They had a derelict building, no expertise, no teachers.

The Kennedys and a key parent, Alex Honeysett, began painting. Others joined. A core workforce of seven were joined by many others, often grandparents and brothers and sisters of autistic children, who pitched in when they could.

One parent was an electrician. He took the entire wiring job on himself.

Another became a maintenance manager.

Unbelievably, the building began to take shape.

But what about the teachers? Once again they got lucky. A first class headteacher, totally committed to the cause, came forward with ideas for other staff. The rest fell into place.

ON September 4, 1999, the school, Hillingdon Manor, was opened. “Very bad for my mascara,” says Anna. “I kept on crying.”

Her boys had a proper school at last.

Even that moment was just a start and their troubles were not over: Sean was diagnosed with Aspergers himself in 2003… yet the project kept on growing.

Ester Ranzen took on the cause and, today, Anna and Sean’s charity has expanded the original school, from 19 children to 150; founded a senior school, an adult education centre and a centre that acts as a bridge for some of the autistic people into mainstream society. Their opinion and advice is sought across the world.

Anna has written a book, Not Stupid, and it’s selling well. She has 50,000 followers on Twitter and she and Sean have had awards presented by the Prime Minister.

Most recently Anna has returned to her dance roots to release a dance DVD, Step In The Right Direction, using Britain’s Got Talent dance sensation from Teesside, James Hobley, 12, to help autistic children.

For all that, she’s clear about her proudest boast? “My boys got the education they deserved.”