Owen's Story

Negative school experiences left Owen deeply anxious about school and left his mum Michelle despairing at an education system which didn’t have a place for her son. Owen’s autism, selective mutism and social phobia caused him and his mum to feel like he was a problem that couldn’t be solved; then Inscape House School gave her hope.

“We had tried mainstream and specialist schools with Owen but we regularly found that whatever we tried, their systems saw Owen as a problem which they couldn’t fix and I was eventually being told to stop contacting the schools. This had a big impact on the relationship between Owen and me which eventually led to a period of around 18 months where he wasn’t in school at all; we felt abandoned.

“Many schools we looked at said they couldn’t help, the difference with Inscape was the door wasn’t shut immediately. There was a feeling of ‘If we can help we will help’, that offered us hope after years of feeling hopeless. Everything about Owen has changed, he’s happier and able to live a more normal life.