We have been living in France now for eight months and although I have been blogging about our travels and our adventures I have not really shared much about what it has been like having a child with a disability in a foreign country. I have looked many times for blogs about raising and educating a child with special needs as an expat and have found very little. So I decided that maybe I should share my experiences and hopefully it may help someone else one day or lead to some good discussions and ideas.
We moved to Toulouse from Christchurch, New Zealand in September 2012 with my husbands work. We have three children and our eldest Hannah has Down Syndrome. Hannah was fully mainstreamed at our local school in NZ with a part time teacher aide and had government funding called ORS (ongoing resources scheme). We enrolled all three of our children in the International School of Toulouse and although our youngest two were accepted Hannah was not as they wanted to meet her before they decided if they could cater for her needs. As Hannah was enrolled in the New Zealand Correspondence school already (for extra resources) we changed her enrollment to full time with the idea being that as a teacher I could Home school her if necessary.
We arrived in Toulouse just before the start if the school year and met with the Principal and applied for a place at the school once more. We were told that Hannah could not be accepted until we had a full time teacher aide for her and that we would need to find one ourselves. This seemed very overwhelming since we had only just arrived and had very few contacts or supports. A new friend posting a request for a TA on a toulouse Facebook site and we had several people respond.
We found a lovely but inexperienced lady who was keen to work with Hannah. We then had to reapply to the school who finally accepted Hannah. Meanwhile I had been homeschooling Hannah. The next step was to work out the very complicated French employment laws. In the end we used an employment agency who have employed the TA and who do all the tax etc for us.
So come November and Hannah eventually is allowed to start school just part time with the idea being that the length of time at school would increase and that she would also be able to start staying for lunch. Hannah is a very happy girl as she can now attend school with her brother and sister and also meet new friends.
