Heather said she and her husband had first tried to get help for their daughter, Abigail, when she was four.
However, she said it took until she was nine to finally got an autism assessment and diagnosis.
She said it then took another 51 weeks for her Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) to come through, despite legislation stating plans should be finalised within 20 weeks.
“When she was in school we were seeing patterns in her of burnout and shut down, not wanting to eat, drink, get dressed [and] hurting herself,” she said.
“As a parent, to go through that, that’s really hard because all you want is for them to be happy and she wasn’t.”
With her daughter out of school, she said it was impossible for her to work.
“You can’t function and think about work because you’ve got to get them through it, because no one else is there for you,” she said.
