In July 2022 we had to make the difficult decision to close our Scotland Blue Sky Autism Centre in Stirling. After 12 years, this was not something we had planned for or expected but sadly the reality of running a small charity across 2 locations post covid began to hit us hard.
Having had huge success with the launch of our OFSTED registered Play2Talk Nursery at our London location, we were finally able to access some much needed government funding to support our services across the capital. However, the system in Scotland really is not set up for a small service like ours to open the equivalent provision north of the border. We did try, and we continued to try and secure much needed funding for all/ any aspect of our already existing services , but we just kept being hit with rejection after rejection. Taking a step back, we started to look at the situation objectively. Blue Sky had not had any grants to support our work in our Scotland location since 2019. We had somehow kept going through a global pandemic, but as the dust started to settle and the demands of a new (very unfriendly) lease began to weigh us down further, we needed to finally face our reality. The situation had become untenable.
For 12 years we have battled a fundamentally flawed system in Scotland where we have seen support for children with additional needs get worse and worse. We have battled statutory and education services who have actively tried to disrupt and obstruct our work with families. We have battled some impossible odds to keep on going. But sadly, as we started to sit back and talk honestly about the options we had going forward, we finally realised that we had none.
It’s tremendously sad that a developed country like Scotland has no motivation to support young children who need early therapeutic intervention. It is tremendously sad that we could not keep on battling for another 12 years. It is sadder still that so many Scottish families will not be able to access a centre where so much magic had happened over the years.
But, we move on. We keep on going into a new future where we can keep on supporting families in a different way. We keep on building from where we are now, hoping more than ever before that there may be a change in policy in Scotland soon, so that families can get the right support from the services that are funded to do just that.
For us, this ending is just a new beginning. A different path to take, and sometimes when something gets too heavy, it’s important to let it go.
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