The school staff would restrain the five-year-old as they locked the door.
"I get a bit upset when I usually don't make it to school. 'Cause I really want to, but somehow I don't know how to get there," Frieda says. "How many of this is medical, how many of this is school refusal, how many of this is kids on holidays? That's where the problem lies because it's really hard to resource and plan and intervene when you don't know how big the problem is," Dr McKay-Brown says.
"I felt like I wouldn't actually get a job when I get older. I would be homeless, sleeping on the side of the road," the 12-year-old says.He'd been falling behind for years, and becoming more disengaged.When Ethan's mum Sam saw how he was treated in class one day, it left her heartbroken. When Kurt's 16-year-old daughter Hayley couldn't get out of bed to go to school, the daily texts started coming.
"The school stuff was hard, but the stuff where you cry yourself to sleep sometimes is having a child doing that themselves … and working in the industry knowing what the outcomes can be," Kurt says tearily.In a statement, the NSW Department of Education said, "where attendance improvement support has been unsuccessful … and the parents have not meaningfully engaged, the matter may be referred for consideration of legal action".
Alice has seen parents post on Facebook about giving up their careers to homeschool their kids. It's an option she's thought about a lot for Frieda who has been diagnosed with autism.When Frieda doesn't make it into school, Alice isn't able to get through a normal work day. To make up for lost time she works into the night or over weekends.
"The principal did explain it's just how the system works, and it doesn't need to be a scary thing as they may have more resources … but if I didn't have the heads up, I would have been terrified," Alice says. For most MacKillop students, the school is a transition period to get them back into a mainstream setting.
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