A mother has slammed an NHS trust after her eight-year-old son was refused treatment for a speech defect because he is at private school.
The mother-of-four, 50, from near Horsham, West Sussex said her child’s “routine” referral was refused by their local hospital because of where he went to school.
An NHS spokesman said they cannot offer the service due to their “commissioning arrangements” to children from private schools
The mother, who runs an equestrian business from home, said the family now faces paying privately for a diagnosis and treatment sessions which could cost several thousand pounds.
She told MailOnline she had visited her local GP a month ago because her son’s speech defect had not improved by his eighth birthday.
However, she received a text message from her GP last week saying: “The speech and language department have indicated they cannot accept his referral as he attends an independent school.”
She told MailOnline: “I was livid. I spoke to someone at the hospital who said the service was joint-funded by West Sussex County Council and the NHS but that is no excuse for excluding someone because of where they go to school.
“We pay into the system. How is this fair?”
Horsham Hospital has found itself at the centre of the row
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Explaining why she decided to get the issue checked out, she told MailOnline: “I wanted to know if he needed medical intervention because two of my older children had been tongue-tied at birth and had procedures to correct it.
“My son might only be eight but I didn’t want him to get older and be picked on if it wasn’t resolved.
“It is grossly unfair and prejudicial not to treat him just because he goes to a private school. There is an assumption that because we are paying independent school fees, we can afford to pay for everything.
‘What is the point of paying taxes, national insurance and everything else if we can’t access the services that we are supposed to be paying towards?’
West Sussex County Council said the ‘responsibility for meeting speech and language needs lies with the school and family’
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She added parents opting for private education should be able to take the allocated state school funding for their child with them if they face such prejudice.
The mother said: “There is this huge misconception about the families that use private schools, that they are all attended by very, very wealthy people. They are not.
“This is a typical Labour Government, wanting to dumb everyone down.
“It is envy politics and it is dripping down and infecting the NHS.”
A spokesman for the NHS in Sussex said its commissioning arrangements meant it could not offer its Speech and Language Therapy service, jointly commissioned with West Sussex County Council, to children from private schools as they are not funded by the local authority.
He told MailOnline: “This is similar to NHS and local authority commissioning arrangements nationally.”
A county council spokesman said: “If a parent chooses to send a child to an independent school without an Education Health and Care Plan, responsibility for meeting speech and language needs lies with the school and family.
“This is because the child is being educated outside of the maintained system.”
