A furious mum has claimed her seriously ill son is being "denied an education " due to his extremely rare health condition.
Kara Dobbs insists son Leo is being "left behind" due to the serious life-limiting illness and school transport issues.
The 29-year-old first suspected something may be wrong with her newborn after he suffered bouts of vomiting when he was born nine years ago
The Liverpool Echo reports Leo was diagnosed with Infantile Pompe disease at the age of seven months.
It is a rare condition which affects only 25-30 children in the UK and results in sugars harmfully enlarging vital organs in his body.
The progressive condition causes muscle weakness, lack of reflexes, difficulties breathing and swallowing and an enlarged tongue, liver and heart.
Despite complications and short life expectancy which come with Infantile Pompe, Kara has been tirelessly trying to make every day with Leo count.
He is now now eight years old, but she will not let his condition get in the way of him "living his life".
Kara, however, has claimed her son is now being "denied" an education because he is not being provided with suitable transport to get to school.
She said: “Leo's been using Wirral Council transport services for years.
"Last year, his health started to decline quite seriously but when he started to stabilise he was given half-days at school to try and get him back into education and see if he’d cope with it.
"He was doing from 10am until 2pm and handling it fine so the doctor said he should go back to school fully because Leo’s education is very important to him and he gets a lot out of it.
“The doctors and nurses came to an agreement with the transport service and had meetings in February this year about moving Leo back to normal school hours.
"The transport service said they couldn’t sort it out until September so we came to an agreement we’d wait until then for it to be sorted."
Despite agreeing to wait until September for Leo's transport to be sorted, Kara feels her son has been "fobbed off" by being put in a taxi that doesn't cater to his needs as a ventilated wheelchair user, rather than a bus.
Kara said: “He’s not being able to get into school until this is sorted so it's impacting his education now and his mental health is going to be affected by that.
"The transport service has known about this since February and they’ve had the whole summer holidays to arrange everything. I’ve been calling and emailing every day but nothing has being heard.
"It’s heartbreaking and disheartening because these children have the right to an education and the council isn't facilitating that. It feels like he’s being denied that.
She has also claimed that, when Leo has been taken to school in a taxi, he has been put at risk by not being strapped in properly.
She said: "They don’t care for the safety of children because the taxi driver they assigned him to didn’t even strap the wheelchair in properly.
"They only strapped the front of the wheelchair in when they need to be at the back and the front.
"He’s complicated, he’s on a ventilator and he needs full support.
"At the end of the day, its Leo that’s suffering because it means he’s not getting his education.
A council spokesperson said: “Wirral Council has a statutory duty to provide home to school transport to more than 1,200 young people every day.
"There is currently a recognised shortage of providers of this kind of specialist transport - a situation which has been compounded by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Because of this we have had to look at alternative options, which includes the use of private taxis.
"Every company and driver contracted to provide home-to-school transport in Wirral has, however, received training and been fully risk-assessed, so if there is a suggestion that a provider is not operating safely, this is something that will be investigated."
