Nine-year-old Amy needs a special chair to stop her going into respiratory arrest. She has cerebral palsy and other complex health problems; as well as epilepsy she can't swallow so has to be fed through her stomach. She is unable to sit or hold her head up on her own. Her chair keeps her in the correct position, enabling her to breathe. But when Amy needed a new chair for school her mum, Kay O'Shaughnessy, faced a battle all too common among parents of disabled children.
"Health wouldn't pay as they said it was education's responsibility. Education said they had no money and social services said no as they had already paid for a chair at home," she recalls. "Eventually the local naval base purchased a chair for Amy. This inaction happens all the time."
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