{"id":456505,"date":"2026-02-03T21:57:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/456505\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:57:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:57:12","slug":"thousands-of-parents-seek-support-as-children-cannot-go-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/456505\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands of parents seek support as children cannot go to school"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sydney mum Lisa was at a loss.<\/p>\n

Her daughter Mia was spending her school days either in a darkened room in bed or roaming the streets with other young people.<\/p>\n

“I was looking everywhere for help from anyone,” Lisa said.<\/p>\n

On her first day at high school, Mia had found herself in a classroom of strangers \u2014 she had not been placed with a single primary school friend.<\/p>\n

Lisa said she was not a parent to make a fuss and told her daughter she would have to cope.<\/p>\n

But the young student’s anxiety grew.<\/p>\n

“We hit a point of, ‘I can’t get to school’, ‘I can’t get out of bed’, ‘I don’t want to go’.”Alice can’t get her daughter to school. She knows you’re judging her for it<\/a><\/p>\n

A growing crisis of kids refusing to go to school is gripping Australia.<\/p>\n

Lisa has shared her story with a new podcast created to help parents of children experiencing what is known as “school can’t”.<\/p>\n

School can’t is described as a child’s loss of capacity to attend or participate in full-time education.<\/p>\n

Lisa said meetings were held with Mia’s school, but they were not helpful.<\/p>\n

“It became a case of trying to calmly get her going and then drive her to school.<\/p>\n

“And we put a lot of pressure on [saying], ‘this has to happen’, so there was a real build-up of stress around the whole family,” Lisa said.<\/p>\n

Mia spent much of year 7 at home, returning in year 8 only to find being at school was still unbearable.<\/p>\n

Lisa turned to online learning but it drove Mia out of the house, too.<\/p>\n

“So she disappeared. We had her go into a mode of becoming almost a street child,” Lisa said.<\/p>\n

“I think it came down to the pressure we put on her, the expectations we had, but not understanding fully the mental health concerns or the anxiety.”\"A<\/p>\n

Mia was finding it difficult to go to school. (ABC News: Magie Khameneh)<\/p>\n

Thousands join online support group<\/p>\n

Lisa is one of thousands of Australian parents and carers who have had to turn to their peers to work out how to cope with “school can’t”.<\/p>\n

Sometimes referred to as ‘school refusal’, ‘school can’t’ is the preferred term of advocacy group School Can’t Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lisa joined the School Can’t Australia (Parent\/Carer Peer Support) Facebook group in 2019, when there were 2,000 members.<\/p>\n

There are now nearly 17,000. The group has a waitlist of almost 3,000.<\/p>\n

It has become the go-to place for Australian parents and carers of kids struggling with school attendance.<\/p>\n

“We have a waitlist because new members tend to arrive in a very distressed state and it’s hard work to moderate and keep the group feeling safe,” one of the group’s administrators, Tiffany Westphal, said.<\/p>\n

The group has issued an urgent call for more volunteers to help with administering the page.<\/p>\n

\"Students<\/p>\n

An online support group for parents whose children cannot go to school has thousands of members. (Adobe Stock: rawpixel)<\/p>\n

School can’t comes as surprise to Dayne’s mum<\/p>\n

If Donna had to date her son Dayne’s school can’t journey, she would say it began on his 12th birthday.<\/p>\n

He had never had a problem attending on his birthday before, so Donna found it odd.<\/p>\n

After trying to persuade him, she gave up and took him out for breakfast to find out what was going on.<\/p>\n

Dayne, who was on a waitlist for an autism assessment, said he was finding school difficult.<\/p>\n

\"Generic<\/p>\n

Dayne was finding it difficult to go to school. (ABC News: Timothy Ailwood)<\/p>\n

Donna emailed the school to let staff know.<\/p>\n

“But these days kept happening,” she said, baffled by her son who’d been described by one teacher as so great they’d like to “have a class full of kids like him”.<\/p>\n

Dayne’s mental health was declining with his attendance rate.<\/p>\n

Then Donna made a heartbreaking discovery in her son’s grade 6 year book.<\/p>\n

“The kids wrote what school they were going to, what they wanted to be when they grew up and their friends in primary school.<\/p>\n

“Not one child had put my son as their friend.”<\/p>\n

When Dayne was diagnosed with autism, he was given a learning plan.<\/p>\n

But Donna said the goals seemed to be more the school’s than her son’s: attending more often, arriving on time, speaking up in class.<\/p>\n

The school even rejected a request to arrive late, when things were quieter for Dayne, before finally relenting.<\/p>\n

Donna began searching for “school refusal” online and stumbled across the same Facebook page as Lisa.<\/p>\n

After a waiting period, she said she was relieved to finally join and realise she wasn’t alone.<\/p>\n

“I’d thought it was me, that I was a bad parent,” she said.\"Children<\/p>\n

Donna says not one of her son’s classmates had listed him among their friends. (Getty Images:\u00a0courtneyk)<\/p>\n

Helping parents feel like they are not alone<\/p>\n

Leisa Reichelt is the host of The School Can’t Experience podcast, which features Lisa’s story.<\/p>\n

She also remembers how important finding the Facebook group was to her.<\/p>\n

“I just remember that kind of embodied feeling of relief, of coming across a community of people who were having the same experience,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Because, in real life, the school always makes you feel like you’re the only one who is experiencing this.”How Sienna overcame her school refusal<\/a><\/p>\n

A group of schools that allows high school students to study all subjects in a small class with a single teacher could be part of a re-think of Australia\u2019s education system.<\/p>\n

She had tried juggling the daily school struggle with a full-time corporate job, but it eventually got too much and she had to quit.<\/p>\n

When somebody suggested she start a podcast, it seemed like a good fit.<\/p>\n

“I came from a qualitative research background, so finding people to interview, and interviewing, and making sense of interviews was something that I had plenty of experience with,” she said.<\/p>\n

If you or anyone you know needs help:<\/p>\n

Featuring a combination of real-life stories and expert advice, the podcast had tens of thousands of downloads in its first year.<\/p>\n

“So many people are very willing to share their story because they know \u2026 just how desperately they would have loved to have heard a story like that when they were going through it,” Leisa said.<\/p>\n

She said mental ill health and suicide came up regularly in episodes.<\/p>\n

Resources for parents<\/p>\n

To help parents languishing on the Facebook group waiting list \u2014 or parents who haven’t even heard of it \u2014 School Can’t Australia<\/a> has just released an e-book.<\/p>\n

The e-book, Understanding School Can’t, discusses the signs of school can’t, offers tips on how to best work at home or with schools, and shares contacts and resources.<\/p>\n

\"Tiffany<\/p>\n

Tiffany Westphal says parents are now able to speak about their experiences with school can’t more openly. (Supplied.)<\/p>\n

Tiffany Westphal said it was based on 10 years of knowledge built by parents and carers on “what works and what doesn’t”.<\/p>\n

“It’s very exciting to be finally speaking about our lived experience knowledge in a much more public way,” she said.<\/p>\n

“A lot of past members of our group have felt judged and criticised and that it’s unsafe to speak publicly about this experience.<\/p>\n

“But that’s changed a lot since the Senate inquiry into school refusal\/school can’t.”<\/p>\n

The Senate Inquiry into the National Trend of School Refusal<\/a> released 14 recommendations in 2023, including one around improving resources for parents.<\/p>\n

Ms Westphal said her organisation would offer the e-book to schools and clinicians around Australia to promote as a resource for parents.<\/p>\n

It can also be downloaded from the School Can’t Australia website.<\/p>\n

\"Girl<\/p>\n

Tiffany Westpahl says community attitudes towards school can’t have changed since the Senate inquiry into the issue. (Supplied: Pixabay)<\/p>\n

Pandemic a circuit breaker for Mia<\/p>\n

For Lisa’s daughter Mia, the pandemic provided a much-needed circuit breaker.<\/p>\n

She did not have to go to school and she could not run away.<\/p>\n

Lisa, who worked in marketing and public relations, spent the time learning about anxiety, mental health and the nervous system.<\/p>\n

She learned so much that she has now become a holistic counsellor.<\/p>\n

She believes her daughter’s anxiety began in primary school, when she often complained of tummy problems, and that her inability to attend later wasn’t about behaviour but a nervous system on high alert, leading to mental ill health.<\/p>\n

“There’s no learning happening until you actually heal that.”<\/p>\n

In year 9, Mia was enrolled in a small class, 10-week TAFE course.<\/p>\n

“She went there every day, not a problem, for 10 weeks,” Lisa said.<\/p>\n

She got a job shortly afterwards and, four years later, is described by Lisa as an “amazing employee”.<\/p>\n

“She hasn’t stopped working. It’s been a huge turnaround. She’s doing really well.”Tailored learning plan for Dayne<\/p>\n

While Lisa’s school can’t journey is over, Donna’s continues.<\/p>\n

Dayne, who is going into year 10, is now doing a tailored learning program.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Dayne is now doing a tailored learning program. (ABC News: Magie Khameneh)<\/p>\n

It is a class of about eight students, and Dayne attends for two hours a day, three days a week.<\/p>\n

He wants to be a geologist, but Donna said he was not currently on a path to university.<\/p>\n

She said he hopes he will still find his way.<\/p>\n

“While I fully understand the importance of school, I also know that there are a lot of other options for success these days.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney mum Lisa was at a loss. Her daughter Mia was spending her school days either in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38573,235188,2555,43,44,3755,235187,20637,34585,34584,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-456505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-back-to-school","tag-e-book","tag-education","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcast","tag-refusal","tag-school","tag-school-cant","tag-school-refusal","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}