Choosing School

Sue Bush: Leaving Home Aged Three


Sue Bush was born in 1948 in London. At the age of three she was sent to Chailey Heritage, a residential special school in Sussex, where she stayed until she was sixteen, then going onto college in London.

Here Sue talks about the decision to place her in a residential school at the age of three.

https://howwasschool.allfie.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/leaving-home-aged-three.mp3

Transcript

At the age of nine months I contracted Polio, so I spent until I was one in Great Ormond Street Hospital, and then from one to two I went to St Mary's Hospital in Carshalton, in Surrey, where I stayed for a year, but I was neglected there, so my parents removed me, and I spent the next year at home, in north London, so yeah between the ages of two and three I stayed at home. But my parents lived in very poor accommodation and they had two other children and they were told that I would never be accepted at mainstream school, so arrangements would have to be made for me to receive education. And then they were told there was this school in Sussex that took disabled children of every type, physically disabled that is, so at the end of the day my parents really didn't have much choice. So at the age of three, I was sent down to Sussex, and spent my childhood there until I was nearly seventeen.

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