Olivia Blake

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) for securing this debate and for raising awareness of the case of Matty Lock. I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities, and as one of the openly neurodiverse Members of this House: I have dyspraxia, dyslexia and—surprise, surprise—ADHD. As someone with personal experience, I know how transformative a timely diagnosis and the right support can be—something I unfortunately did not receive as a little girl. I was often considered disruptive and described as having little focus, lazy and not meeting my potential. I was moved to the “naughty boys table”, aged seven, away from my friends. Even though my handwriting was atrocious, I struggled to read and I had very difficult emotional dysregulation, a lack of attention and fidgeting, no one would ever have considered back then that I was neurodiverse. It has been many years since I was at primary school, but I would have hoped that the situation would have progressed. Unfortunately, it is hard to hear, again and again, about parents and children battling a system to get their needs recognised. It is troubling to hear from constituents who are in similar situations to what I experienced in the early 1990s, and about the barriers they are currently facing in accessing ADHD assessments, medication and therapeutic input. Those are not isolated cases, as we have heard. For both children and adults, waiting several years has become routine.