Lilya Coleman Jones: Teen's family seeks support for school centre

A support service for for neurodiverse children is being set up in memory of a 13-year-old girl.

Lilya Coleman Jones, who died in 2019, gained a large social media as she posted about her leukaemia.

Her older sister Mica Coleman Jones has since been working to establish a schooling centre to help children with conditions like autism and ADHD.

On Sunday, the Lilya Lighthouse Education Trust is hosting an event to gather support from local businesses.

Lilya, who was a pupil at Wollaton's Fernwood School and also had autism, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia - a rare form of blood cancer - in November 2018.

She was the subject of a bone marrow appeal by the Anthony Nolan charity, and posted online about the search.

After this, Mica decided to set up what is known as Alternative Provision, a school style setting designed to help mainstream education providers.

Mica said that while some schools dealt with the issue well, the overall service was patchy.

"The way we really want to work with other schools is to support them with whatever isn't working for a child currently, to get that right," she said.

"We would take referrals where we are asked 'Could you provide some education for this student who is currently struggling to access it?'.

"And we also want to work with schools to see if anything could be different in terms of how its environment looks or the approaches they use that might work for the child.

"We see it as a restorative process, because children shouldn't just be sent off for a set amount of time and expect things to be magically better afterwards."

The trust has invited organisations and businesses to the open day to gauge how they can support its work.

"We want to connect with local employers and businesses who do recognise and celebrate neurodiversity and might be interested in supporting us to get this provision open to create something therapeutic for young people in Nottingham," she said.