Sam Bailey reveals 12-year-old autistic son’s heartbreaking confession & the agonising two years she’s faced since
X FACTOR winner Sam Bailey sparked a huge reaction after posting a picture of her son in mid-meltdown on Instagram.
It showed 13-year-old Tommy, who is autistic, at a London McDonald’s while Sam’s husband Craig, 49, tried to calm him down.
With Tommy’s permission, the singer made it public to raise awareness of autism and hidden disabilities.
Sam, 45, says: “Loads of people got in contact to show their support — even X Factor host Dermot O’Leary — and I told Tommy it was going to help make the world a better place.
“If you see a child with a hidden disabilities lanyard or wearing a pair of ear defenders, give them space. Don’t use raised voices near them. Don’t assume this child is just being naughty.”
Sam’s daughters Brooke, 17, and Miley, eight, were going to see Matilda, while Tommy had tickets for Stranger Things: The Experience.
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But during the trip he found the London crowds distressing.
Sam decided to document it when she noticed the situation was being made worse by people not moving out of the way.
She says: “People say, ‘Don’t take him into a big city’. But I don’t want Tommy to be stuck at home. It became a horrible experience to the point where he had a meltdown.”
Sam has been fighting for the right support against a “broken system”, ever since Tommy was diagnosed with autism and dyspraxia — a developmental co-ordination disorder — in 2020.
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Up to 1.8million kids are regularly absent from school in England, and campaigners claim many of them, like Tommy, have special educational needs.
Sam, who triumphed in the 2013 series of the ITV singing contest, says: “Tommy started secondary school in September 2020. But the school bus was a massive sensory overload. It was his worst nightmare.
“He’d be banging his head against the wall before he left the house. He told us he wanted to throw himself in front of the bus.
“We’d often get a call saying we needed to pick him up because he wasn’t behaving, or he’d run out of his lesson and gone missing.
"The school tried everything and the special educational needs co-ordinator was supportive. But they couldn’t meet his needs. There just wasn’t enough manpower.”
Sam’s application for an education, health and care plan (EHCP), which would have provided the funding for support, was at first rejected and she decided to take him out of that school.
She says: “Hearing the words, ‘I don’t want to be alive any more’ from a 12-year-old was heartbreaking. I knew I couldn’t have him going back.”
Tommy was eventually given an EHCP, which granted 20 hours of funding and a place at a special school he “absolutely hated”.
In July 2021, Sam and Craig took the decision to remove him from there.
It has taken until this term to get him a place at a social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) school which offers Tommy the calm environment he needs.
Sam says: “He’s so much happier. If he’s having a bit of a meltdown, they’ll take him for a walk or to go and see the therapy dog.
“I don’t want people to pity me, because I wouldn’t change Tommy for the world. I just want him to have a life where he can grow and meet people and maybe one day fall in love and have children of his own.
I just want him to have a life where he can grow and meet people and maybe one day fall in love and have children of his own. He can have that if we live in a world where the Government makes the system easier to navigate.
Sam Bailey
“He can have that if we live in a world where the Government makes the system easier to navigate.”
Sam has enrolled on a course with Bath College, which will give her a qualification in autism.
She says: “I’m doing it so I can better understand my boy. Autism doesn’t go away. He’s not going to get better, but he can learn to cope with things better.”
Next year will mark a decade since the former prison officer won The X Factor and she is currently appearing as Mrs Potts in a tour of the musical Beauty And The Beast.
Sam says: “I know a lot of people expect me to be working in a shop or something, but I’ve not stopped working. I never wanted to be so famous that I couldn’t go for a pee without somebody standing outside the door.
“I just wanted to do what I love and have enough money to provide for my family, to have nice holidays and an extension on my house.”
Sam still lives in the same Leicester home she had before finding fame.
She has also built a friendship with her X Factor mentor Sharon Osbourne.
While they have not been in touch recently, Sam hopes to catch up when the Osbournes return to England next year.
She says: “It would be nice. She has my number and I have hers. But because I don’t see myself as somebody famous, I still see myself as a bit of a superfan.”
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Sam adds of her time on The X Factor: “I was never one for winning it.
I just hope I’ve shown that if you put your mind to something, it’s never too late.”
