Gallery

The images on this page were created during art workshops by parents of Service children with additional needs, and the quotations are their own words.

Select an image to enlarge it.

We’ve got depression, anxiety, PTSD from the seizures, therapy, pills, exhaustion, distance, no social life, overwhelmed, alone, skint.

And that’s the reality of living with a child with SEND, I think.

A marriage with SEND kids is a parenting team without respite. And a marriage with SEND kids and serving personnel is bittersweet torture.

Three outline images of children with an oval of text around each one; Each child image is surrounded by wavy shading and an oval of text, looking a bit like a force field. The text between is partly linear, like a flowchart, joined with arrows

Bittersweet torture

A young white woman is walking across a tightrope above a sea where three sharks are swimming. On her back are sacks. In her hands are two sticks on which plates are spinning at head height, and the broken ends of a rope. Her hair is unkempt. She is in tears and wears jeans and a 'camo' T-shirt with the slogan 'Make it stop'. In the distance a ship sails away. Each item is labelled.

Walking the tightrope of military life

I don’t think people, unless they’ve got a military connection or have lived that life, actually understand the gravity of it… it impacts absolutely every aspect of our lives as spouses, their lives as children, there’s not a single thing it doesn’t touch.

Unless you’ve lived that, you don’t have a clue.

I think you’re almost prejudiced AGAINST because you’re a military family.

I didn’t have any understanding of where this was going to take us, and the lack of support that was available, the lack of understanding for her needs, the resistance to even contemplating and understanding her needs.

LHS - two child figures are playing in a meadow with a large tree in full leaf - the sky is blue and birds fly overheard. RHS - Four human figures (the same two children as denoted by their clothes colours) are on the edge of a dark tunnel with indistinct shapes inside. At the end of the tunnel is a bright light.

There's light at the end of the tunnel, but... there's hurdles in the way

Fog, cloud, tornado, lightning images, a jagged section labelled 'Fracture', rounded doodle/scribble, partly shaded, with words e.g. school, sensory, conflict-seeking, 3d cylinder filled with scribbles, asterisks, ticks, crosses, zigzags; empty cubes, boxes, some with ticks and crosses, labelled Society, school, expectations; an angry hooded figure with sharp teeth and a glaring eye, with scribbles coming out of the mouth, and a tiny stick figure in front of it.

Hell on earth representation of what's going on

He was in mainstream school, beautiful little village school.

Beautiful teachers, caring, nurturing. Kind students who accept… his quirks and differences.

But mainstream school wasn’t designed for him.

The explosiveness of military life

Trial and error approach to school placements:

It was like trying to put a circle in a box, right?… But he had to go through the trauma of seeing it through to see if it works.

He was an emotional wreck… He wasn’t facing going back in. I was getting school refusal. I was getting anger. I was getting tears.

A stylised face image with radiating lines in almost rainbow colours; a line of grey uniform heads & torsos to each side

"Hi and Bye" is the cost of coming and going

Forever a question mark

You’re not listening. What are you not hearing me say? How many times do I have to say this?

Or am I just a mother, and therefore my… narrative doesn’t matter, because I’m not a professional?

I’ve lost count, the amount of times I’ve been told as a parent, ‘Well, we wouldn’t just take your word from it because you’re not a professional. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Very easy just to say, ‘Well, they’re Service kids, so there’s something wrong with them’. You know, ‘They’re quirky, they’ve got all this interrupted learning.’

I think that it’s a bit of an excuse, and it stops, perhaps, our educators and those who are there to support our children and young people, I think it stops them just scratching past the surface, and maybe finding out a little bit more.

He came home for the first couple of months, just a little bit more broken every day, and he would sit on the kitchen floor and sob his heart out.

Top: a baby sits sideways to the viewer, downturned mouth, large emphasised eyes. Around him are boxes with unkind comments. Below: a young child with a hurt and confused expression faces the viewer, with s snake curling around her. In splashes/splats are comments about the child. The splashes drip down her face and from the top of this section too.

I got painted with all these words... and my brother got boxed in by them.

A clump of tanged red and white shredded tissue paper, a background of black tissue

It was a really, really, really dark time

One of the teaching assistants says, ‘Well, the thing about military kids is, you know, they just get on with it, don’t they? They’re really resilient.’

And I just looked at her and I just thought, ‘Okay, I couldn’t disagree with you more. For some children, it’s like that, but for some children, it’s horrendous.

Figure of a T Rex in army medic clothing, boxing gloves draped over arm and in a boxing stance. A monochrome time line/roadway. A hammerhead shark with a large dramatic wave

Mummy always has to fight for my rights

For at least 10 years he was away 100 days every year…. [One time] he went [away] for nearly 10 months, 264 days. The kids didn’t even know who he was when he came back. No idea.

Whenever concerns were raised, school blamed deployment and refused to look deeper until my daughter’s mental health became concerning for them.

There is a large central silver cloud containing words such as assessment delay, fight for everything, anxious, confusion etc. To the left of this is an image of a dandelion clock with weather symbols; to the right arrows point to some impacts on the child. Three further dandelion clocks labelled.

Solid and fragile roots

5 'clouds' containing stick-figure images of the child at different ages and explanatory text giving details The final image is a house.

He needs a lot of stability

The period between being given the posting and the move actually happening was always difficult as it would create anxiety with not knowing where he was going to be living.

My son loved school and loved learning and begs me to go back to our last location and I can’t do anything.

Moving around:

Until I have an actual address, I don’t even know what council I need to go and apply to [for a school place], and then Council turn around to you and say, ‘Well, until you’ve actually moved in, we can’t do anything… And we’re not giving you a place.’

Icons representing people and places (stick figures, map, cathedral, buildings) and activities (scales for tribunal, trampolining). Weather symbols - rain, storms, sunshine, clouds. A way line with stick figure travelling along it.

The tribunal was the turning point

Four main elements: a boat with three stick figures sailing in sunshine; the figures climbing a hill on a cloudy day; a life raf/shipwreck at sea in a storm, the figures in a life raft with no background

We're just making our way through it, because we have to

I do think there is something about Service families and the local authority perhaps thinking “Why should we support, and how long are they actually going to be here?’

And I think that has affected a lot of the services we’ve been able to access.”

They said, ‘You’re gonna have to start the process again.’

I said, ‘I absolutely refuse. Like, I know the waiting list’s long, but I’ve been doing this in two different countries. I have every bit of paperwork.

Like, there’s absolutely no way. He needs a diagnosis.’

A relatively detailed image of two parents and a baby in an ICU, the family beside a house labelled with county name, arrow and stylised mountains and lakes, labelled Scotland, then a red cross, NHS Scotland and NHS England, with text underneath

Moving and starting again

Cross-section of sea and sea bed. Floating ship, anchor with arrow to sea bed, atoll with bonfire, fish, seaweed

HMS ADHD

In all of our journeys, an overseas medical system was so much more efficient, simpler, helpful, more efficient than ours.

And it is a complete disgrace. This is why we’re supposed to have an Armed Forces covenant.

Weather symbols, boat and waves, book, a central section with a cowboy boot and hat, heart, sports equipment, US flag, map of state, Micky + Minnie mouse, map of UK, aircraft and looping lines. Labels in each section.

We just felt like we were really accepted as neurospicy people. And then, we came back

Now we’re in the system, so to speak, you know, with education and everything else, we don’t want to move again because it’s just so detrimental… You work so hard to get all the support for your child. We don’t want to move again and then have to start all over again.

[My husband], potentially, would turn down a promotion to be able to stay here – or sign off.

Heartbeat image in green, orange and red

It shouldn't be so hard just to live. The green's good; yellow's all right, and the red is the....crap!

Two children hand-in-hand facing away from the viewer; a multitude of spaces made with wavy lines and colouring, each with a word; simple line drawings of a school and children at play under a blue sky

All the barriers to normal life

He was on the front line…. And here he is, at the far end of that service. And nobody gives a damn about his children.

The Army’s approach is ‘Keep calm, carry on. Get on with it. Suck it up, buttercup… This is what you signed up for.’ It’s like, ‘No, no, no, hang on a minute…. I married him, I didn’t marry the Army.

Now the [military] knows more about mental health, and it’s taken a lot more seriously.

But equally, we’ve got the aspect of how men will deal with their mental health… you know, they’re like, “Nah mate, just get on with it.” And it’s a very toxic masculine environment…

PTSD and husband's face (although no features), with jagged lines and arrows pointing towards the children; image of woman's face and pills, surrounded by a jagged red and orange border; a tiny image of a woman's faceless face with labels, a stick fugure of a child in school; images of children, pets and playthings, sectioned off from the rest by a line and the words 'This is a shield by mummy'; an image of a stick figure on a boat in the rain, labelled 'the cause'

Shielding the kids from everything

A great number of miniature images: stick figures, houses, books, the sea, wall, blue light, train track, a broken heart, medication, an image of a family within a heart, question marks

Things changed overnight

Going to someone’s office and saying, ‘I need your help…’ it’s quite a tough thing to do, especially if you’re a junior rank and it’s a really busy captain.

Not saying that they’d be negatively received. It might be, but the perception would be that you might just get told to get a grip. And then you go home and you’re struggling. Your family’s struggling.

Obviously, we’ve come here. Again, living somewhere I don’t want to live. Don’t have any support, no family nearby… It’s shit. I hate the military… Want [husband’s name] to leave so badly.

I absolutely hate everything about them as an organization. I don’t think they’re supportive. Service need. That’s all they care about.

Abstract block of colour on downward slope, mainly blue, labels (facts and emotions), some in clouds

Never fully happy again

A woman with an expression of extreme anxiety/stress/fear is holding two poles with spinning plates on the top. She is surrounded by a large number of other spinning plates. Around her feet lie plates that have fallen and broken. Each plate is labelled.

I had all these plates spinning, but something was going to drop

I had a full breakdown in their office. I was like, in tears, and I was just like, “I feel like I can’t be a good dad, a good husband and do this job with two additional needs kids. I don’t feel that I can do this.”

And I think the right thing for me to do is to leave the job.

Why isn’t it all coming together? Why are we all on our own, going through this minefield?

Because unless you literally hit rock bottom and you cannot cope and you are in crisis, then nobody helps you.

It just blows my mind how little it makes sense.

It all depends on your chain of command… My husband’s current [line manager] is fantastic and he gets it. His previous chain command held it against him and would remove him off courses.

A single labelled line like a gradient map runs diagonally across 2 pages. Stick figure; stacked bricks on plank, round balloons and wavy 'strings'. Simple brain diagram

This is me saying, 'I'm fine,' with a half smile, because I'm not really fine.

2 linear elements, one portraying emotions through symbols and jagged and straight lines, one using simple child-like imagery to depict house moves, circular insert labelled 'far away school'

There's like, beautiful world, we're just not able to enjoy it

Pride in the Army’s great, and most of us do have that.

But I think sometimes we all need to just put the
pride away, put the boots to one side… and all of us
just talk.

And remember that there’s kids in the middle of this,
who are real people.

Images of two daughters labelled E and C. Balloons with birth details, Covid in black/yellw 'danger' sign, box labelled 'Nursery', storm symbol, sun labelled [A] School, bullet points and labels throughout. Cloud shape with 'worries'.

No school for 2 years but now she's thriving

The teacher… said, ‘How can we make this work for [her] in the classroom? What can we do?… Where do you want to sit? Is it too busy? Do the displays bother you? The sound? Who do you want to sit next to?’

His education has bounced back and he enjoys going to school now.

The kids are like, “My dad’s a Royal Marine.” And I’m like, “Yeah, that is something to be proud of.

Four images with arrows between them: a pencil sketch of a family and newborn baby, with a red cross and different place names in clouds, a brightly coloured house, a soldier holding a heart with a family

I may not be at home, but I am always at home

On a wall next to a tree sits a cat, facing away from the viewer, its tail curling down. The tree is in grass; its branches are bare

Different branches to serenity

The small victories are kind of like, you know, brilliant breaths of air in amidst, you know the relentless tide…

There’s a lot of times when it’s been, like, quite dark, with the kids and Husband away and stuff. And this [families’ centre]… when I used to bring [Daughter] here, was absolutely my light.

There’s nothing I found more moving than when a teacher or, you know, a healthcare person takes the fight for you. It’s astonishing and unfortunately rare.