JO HAYWOOD talks to a York woman who is being forced to send her disabled son out of the county because no residential care is available closer to home.

MANDY Brunskill wants her son to be able to live in his home town. Not too much to ask, is it? Perhaps not for a child with average needs. But 11-year-old Liam suffers from severe autism and his needs are anything but average.

His obsessive compulsive behaviour, which his family believes was caused by the MMR vaccine, has always been unpredictable but now, as he grows bigger and stronger, it is also becoming uncontrollable.

"To keep him safe outdoors he needs a minimum of one strong adult with him," says Mandy. "He is extremely strong and extremely unpredictable. If he hears a noise or something is not quite right, he spontaneously runs out into the road.

"When he goes, he goes. The easiest option would be to stay in the house, but that just makes his rituals and obsessions worse. And anyway, I want him to be part of the community. I don't want him to be locked away from the world."

Liam is medicated for his behaviour, but this does not control his outbursts. Some of his rituals are harmless, if draining for his family. He compulsively strokes people's hair and pulls at their fingers; his toiletries have to be laid out in a specific order; he will only eat certain foods if they are arranged in a certain way; his sister, Amy, is not allowed to eat noodles; and, perhaps most inexplicably, she is not permitted to have a bath on a Tuesday.

"It would be funny if it wasn't so serious for Liam," says Mandy, as her son lies on the floor of their Clifton Moor home creating an intricate model of a boat. "I once forgot and ran her a bath. He banged on the door and screamed until she came out. He literally tried to pull the taps off the bath and drag the whole thing out of the room.

"He obviously thought something awful was going to happen if she had a bath. It was a very distressing evening. Amy was in a right state and Liam just screamed and screamed for hours. In the end we had to get him an emergency bed at the Glen a York respite centre.

"What you have to understand is that was one incident on one night, and we have a lot of nights like that."

Some of Liam's compulsions are far more serious, putting himself and others in danger. For instance, he is convinced that you have to cross the road when the red man lights up.

"He pulls me into the traffic," says his mum, who is a slight woman and no match for her strong son, especially when his obsessions make him aggressive. "If I try to break the ritual he gets very distressed and lies down at the side of the road. It has got to the point now when we can only get across if his dad carries him. I just can't handle him by myself."

Liam's increasingly uncontrollable behaviour leaves his family having to make a heart-breaking decision. After 11 years of dedicated parenting, working day and night to keep their son safe and relatively happy, Mandy and her husband Rod have decided he now needs full-time residential care.

Unfortunately, none is available in North Yorkshire. The nearest school offering residential care for children with autism is in Doncaster. And, while there is a place available in September, there are still no guarantees as City of York Council has to agree to pay the £4,000 a week fees (a decision is scheduled to be taken on March 2) and the school itself has to vet Liam to ensure he is suitable for its programme.

"He loves going to school he is in a small class of autistic children at Lidgett Grove in York. He would go every day if he could," says Mandy. "Children with autism don't know what to do with their free time. He likes the timetables and the routines. He's quite a clever lad inside. He can surprise you with what he knows."

As if on cue, Liam starts to read a few words aloud from his boat building instruction booklet. He receives heartfelt praise from both his parents and beams with delight.

"I always imagined he would leave home at about 19," says his mum, watching him proudly as he "sails" his completed boat around the room. "In some ways I don't know how we have managed for 11 years, but in others it seems too soon to send him away.

"If he was in York or even in the county, we could still pop in whenever we wanted and take him out bowling or something. You know, make him still feel like part of the family. It's going to be difficult to make him feel part of our lives when he's in Doncaster."

The council provides one night a week of respite care for the Brunskill family and one after-school session. Two new schools for children with special educational needs are being built in the York area, both of which will have specialist staff and facilities for children with autism.

"We now have a very successful provision for primary age children and new facilities for young people of secondary age will open in September, which should reduce the number of children who have to be cared for outside the city," said Murray Rose, the council's assistant education director (access and inclusion).

"The council recognises that many families who have children with very demanding needs require a great deal of support. There is already respite care provision in York and the new Children's Trust Board, which provides strategic input into children's services in the city, will review any gaps in provision."

A place will be available for Liam at a new unit for 11-19 year olds, called Applefields, at Galtres School in September. But this is just a day school and, according to Mandy, not enough to meet her son's needs.

"He needs help every day, not just in term time between 9am and 3pm," she says. "And he's not the only one. There are other children in York with severe autism whose parents are going to have to make the same terrible decision as us.

"Surely building a residential home in their own city would cost the council far less than paying for these children to be sent all over the country for £4,000 a week each.

"York is an affluent city, but I think there is something about autism that puts people off. These children look normal, but they don't behave normally. People prefer not to have them around."

Liam has seen the brochure for the Doncaster school and he knows that whatever happens he will not be returning to Lidgett Grove in September. He points happily at the glossy pictures and says "school" and "September", but how much he understands of the anguish and upset surrounding his move is unclear.

"It's difficult enough having to send your child away, but to have to send them so far away is heartbreaking," says Mandy, breaking down for the first time.

"I know the people in Doncaster will take good care of him and prepare him for life after school in the community. I just wish it was the York community, his family's community, where people already know him and he knows them.

"Some days I just want someone to take him away and not bring him back. But when he's not here I miss him. He has been my life for 11 years. I can't imagine what my life will be like when he's 40 miles away."

Updated: 09:47 Tuesday, February 24, 2004