Carol Vorderman shares son Cameron’s special needs amid calls for more support funding-Lucy Norris-Entertainment – Metro

Carol Vorderman spoke candidly about her son and his special educational needs (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)

Carol Vorderman calls for more special educational needs support for children like her own, following local authority budget cuts.

The former Countdown presenter slammed support offerings for children with special educational needs and insists more has to be done.

Speaking from her own experience, Carol opened up about her own son’s struggles growing up and the little support they were offered as a family.

Her son, Cameron King, 25 – Carol’s youngest child with her ex-husband, Patrick King – has ADD, high spectrum autism, dyslexia and ADHD.

The 61-year-old also has a daughter Katie, 31, and spoke candidly on the latest episode of The Netmums Podcast: ‘If a child has special educational needs, like my son did, he was off the scale dyslexic, he was in special school for about five years in the end.

‘Sadly, there is not much support for them. Budgets have been cut in local authorities.’

The Countdown presenter shared intimate details of her family life (Picture: carolvorders/Twitter)

Cameron has an array of educational special needs for which his mum feels he was under supported (Picture: Instagram/ carolvorders)

Revealing she is ‘desperate to do a documentary’ on the topic, the TV personality continued: ‘Some people are waiting for years for that educational psychiatrist test.

‘It’s not a good place at all at the moment. I can only see it getting worse right now.

‘They end up being the forgotten ones sadly.’

Sharing a little more insight on her research, she told the podcast host that dyslexia is extremely common in youth offenders but demonstrated the wide scale of the diagnosis by claiming a big proportion of self-made millionaires are also dyslexic.

Signing off on the subject, Carol urged: ‘We are wasting massive potential of young people who see the world differently.

‘I spend my life giving back to education, giving bursaries to kids, doing reports, encouraging children from state schools, I was a free school meals kid, encouraging them to apply to some of the finer universities.’

This was true of her own son, who graduated with his master’s degree in animation and video effects from the University of Dundee.

Carol shared the day on her social media, telling fans: ‘We never dared to dream this day might come when he graduated with a first-class honours last year and now a Masters degree in Animation and VFX.’

Cameron, himself, has publicly opened up about his special needs in a heartwarming video shared by his mum.

In it, he thanks the public for their support and well-wishes towards him: ‘Thank you, everyone, for all your words of encouragement, it really means a lot to hear, especially from people who have gone through similar things in life.

‘I never thought my actions would mean so much to so many people. In the same way, I never thought I would get this far in life but that’s exactly what pushed me to do it.’ 

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