Siblings of disabled children like my daughter have been deeply impacted by lockdown – they need more support

“She isn’t asking for much.”

This was what my wife said of our daughter after one of the less successful days she’d spent guiding our high-functioning autistic son through his coronavirus-prompted homeschooling.

Britain’s very necessary lockdown has left us on the horns of a nasty dilemma that will be all too familiar to parents of children with disabilities and/or special needs.

It has created severe challenges for our son. But it has also posed them to his younger sister, who has successfully been getting on on her own, having already done a stellar job as a carer when both of us where stricken with nasty cases of Covid-19.

Of late she’s been feeling pushed to one side. It’s not as if one of us is able to take her out and make a fuss of her, which we’d normally do in this situation, because we absolutely recognise the issue.

There’s nowhere to go. A trip to the local park and a bit of impromptu basketball coaching from me is about as good as it gets.

The Redbridge Information, Advice and Support Service (Riass) for children and young people with special needs, which has assisted us during the ongoing battles we’ve had to engage in to secure support for our son, says it has spoken to a number of parents with the same issue.

I shudder to think what families in the cramped accommodation common to major cities – many with greater challenges than ours –are going through.

Sibs, a charity set up to address the needs of siblings like our daughter, says 75 per cent of parents who responded to a survey it undertook, felt their sibling child’s mental health had worsened. One in three of those children were feeling isolated and were missing support from family and friends, 50 per cent were providing more care during lockdown.

The lack of respite provided by school, or via other means, was another issue that cropped up.

I’m not entirely sure about the title of its report “Coming Second All the Time”, which I fear could add to the guilt that plagues the parents of children with needs, ourselves included.

The charity’s CEO Clare Kassa, however, told me they had thought “long and hard” about it and that it came from the response of a parent. “It is how many siblings feel,” she said.

What I don’t take any issue with is the report’s conclusions, the first of which says that siblings need to be recognised as a group of children who are vulnerable, who are often in need themselves, and who require greater attention and planning.

It calls for schools, for example, to identify pupils who have a brother or sister with disabilities or special needs. They may require extra pastoral and academic support when they eventually return to school.

They may also need help from childhood and adolescent mental health services. This is not easy to obtain at the best of times.

Nor is financial assistance, which the report says that siblings may require given they often live in households where there is increased risk of poverty and hardship.

The point is well made. Hardship is something that all too frequently goes hand in hand with disability in a Britain that treats its disabled citizens with contempt and has thrown them to the microscopic wolves of a deadly pandemic without any support..

That pandemic, and the attendant lockdown, has made it clear to us that our daughter, who also frequently assists her disabled father unprompted, needs attention. As my wife said, she’s not asking for much. A session with the basketball in our yard is sometimes all it takes.

But as much as siblings need attention from their parents, they also need it from the authorities, and agencies that are supposed to provide support to families but too frequently fail them.

Britain does not do well by its special needs children. The battles parents have to fight to secure the necessary help so they can thrive are exhausting, counter-productive, frequently ridiculous.

Ask anyone who has been involved in them. We all have a story.

They are damaging parents, children with disabilities and/or needs, and they are damaging their siblings.

Sibs says the pandemic is highlighting their issues. It is correct. The pandemic is throwing up many problems and challenges. This one has been little reported. It needs to be addressed.