Hannah noticed an article in the Guardian, 13 January 2012, about a young girl who refused to go to school. It mirrors some of Mina's experiences in My Name is Mina, including a referral to a unit for children with behavioural problems. If you want to read the full article, you can find it here: Refusing to go to school. This is an extract:
" ... eventually I was sent to Larches House, a pupil referral unit that specialises in children with behavioural problems at risk of being excluded. I was 13. There was a boy whose epilepsy ... made him unpredictable and aggressive. A girl who cut off her hair with a pair of kitchen scissors because she thought her mother wouldn't send her to school if she looked like she'd been scalped. There were swings. They were kind. They asked me what I wanted to read. They let me write stories. I was happy there. I made a friend who was like me – clever and quiet and no trouble at all, so long as she was getting her own way. We walked around the gardens and decided to invent a new language. I remember my mum commenting on how bright and happy I looked, how she hadn't seen me smiling, with my hair up, for months and months. But my placement there ended because I refused to carry on going when it was made clear that I could attend for only one term and the aim was to ease pupils like me out of their phobias and back into mainstream schools. I declined."
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