Jay’s Story:

I'm Jay, I'm 18 and I've recently finished school.

I have autism.

No kids could go to school unless your parents were essential workers.

I was going to school, the first lockdown in 2020 I was at school.

All the classes were combined into about two different classrooms and the different teachers teach the classroom from different faculties.

Yeah, while the other teachers are at home doing online learning and there was just set structured work.

It wasn't doing different, they just, they gave us work to do that we just had to do that day and we just did it.

It was fine it was just we had different teachers that weren't in the ... special needs areas, so like mainstream teachers come and teach us.

I just needed support, that was about it because again my teachers and teachers’ aides weren't there.

So we didn't really have, and then the yeah, the head of support wasn't really there either because she had to look after her staff.

So yeah, it was ... I had some of the teachers there that support me but that was it really.

We were back in our classrooms again.

We just spent nine weeks at home not being with anyone except for ourselves for the second one, and now we're just lumped back into school with like 1300 kids again over the course of two days.

So yeah, it was a bit hard.

After the first one it was kind of getting back to normal up until end of that year, beginning of last year.

And then just when I got back together again, properly to a point where everyone was stable, you know, and fine and not, you know, cautious, then it happened again.

But once we came back from that, we just recovered from that and haven't really gone downhill since.

They should give them the option, even if they don't want to be at home to come in to school with their designated teacher and be able to at least learn one and be in the class together at least one day and then one day off at home with the teachers, and then one day at school with their teachers.

Just they can still get, just so they’re not completely cut off and have to stay at home.