A Gravesend mum has hit out at her son's school after receiving a letter criticising his attendance, despite the fact he was having life saving treatment.
Louie Wilders missed most of Year 8 after being diagnosed with aplastic anaemia.
Also in today’s episode, an Ashford woman says she has been left unable to sleep because of the stress of living in a mould-ridden flat.
Barbara Hasiuk suffers from leukemia and says issues with damp at her home in Downland Court have made her poor health even worse.
As Rishi Sunak gives a speech to try and win over voters, we have been taking a look at how a general election could play out in Kent.
A polling analyst has been on the Kent Politics Podcast following a poor set of results for the Conservatives in local council ballots.
As we mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week, KentOnline has been finding out how a barber shop in Medway is helping men get the support they need.
No Bad Days on St Mary's Island was set up by Jake Cox as a safe place for people to talk about their emotions.
An 11-year-old girl from Sittingbourne has had life-saving surgery after being diagnosed with a rare bone cancer.
Ivie Adams was about to start her first year at Highsted Grammar School when she started experiencing symptoms.
And, bosses say they are hoping to make a six-screen cinema the "epicentre" of Ashford.
The former Picturehouse site at Elwick Place is now being run by the council and The Big Picture Limited.
10. Kent Online News News You Can Trust This is the Kent Online Podcast. Lucy Hickmott Hello, hope you're okay and had a chance to enjoy the sunshine over the weekend. Thanks so much for downloading today's podcast on Monday the 13th of May. Our top story, A Gravesend Mum has hit out at her son's school after receiving a letter criticising his attendance. Despite the fact he was having life-saving treatment, Louis Wilders missed most of year eight after being diagnosed with a plastic anemia. He was due to return to school last September but that was delayed as Northlete Technology College hadn't put measures in place for him. Mum Vicki Tasari has been speaking to reporter Keeley Greenwood. You've got a letter from the school about your son's attendance. What did it say? It said that it was in a worrying state at 50%. Louis's been for a stem cell transplant and he's lucky to be alive and no one is more worried about his health and his attendance than I am so I was quite disgusted to receive that to be honest. So you would do for him to start back at school in September was that sort of like the earliest time that he was ready to start? It was yeah but he was going to have a phased return maybe just a couple of lessons a day to begin with? Yes and you wanted him to start at the start of the year? I did yes but I got a phone call to say that they weren't quite ready and they hadn't done their risk assessments yet so actually it was delayed his start and so that was down to the school. So you sort of been building up to him starting the first day of the school year? Yeah we discussed it a lot he was excited to see his friends again excited to get back to a bit of normality and when he was really disappointed to get that phone call to say that we couldn't start on the day that we expected. And then so how long did you have to wait before he was allowed? I think there was a couple of weeks of touring and then eventually it was a three or four weeks later I think he actually started again. So the school was sort of the ones making his attendance bad. Yeah so the school were contributing towards his poor attendance and then having the front to email me or message me and say that his attendance was poor when actually they've been the ones that had contributed it to this year as well. The school's been approached for a comment but at the time of recording we hadn't had a response. Can's online reports? A van driver's been charged following the death of a seven-year-old boy in a suspected hit and run in Folkestone. William Brown was going to collect a football when he died on Sandgate Esplanade in December a 49-year-old from St Mary's Bay is due in court later this month accused of failing to stop following a collision and driving without insurance. Two teenagers arrested in Ashford have been charged with attempted murder after a 19-year-old was stabbed and shot in East London. He was attacked while riding a bike in Dagenham 11 days ago and remains in a critical condition in hospital. The 17-year-old boys were detained on Friday and are due in court today. Now an Ashford woman says she's been left unable to sleep because of the stress of living in a mold-ridden flat. Barbara Hasieux says issues with damper to home in download court have made her poor health even worse. She's been asking her housing association to sort it out for nearly two years. I've got leukemia then. I can't breathe right now and there's horrible. I am afraid sometimes to go to the sleep. It's made me or was like I said I can't breathe. I just go to my neighbours during the night. There was some Saturday because I was scary. I couldn't breathe. I go into bed and I look like a fish. Suddenly I think there's stress when I live so long. They're supposed to come to the kitchen. The first there was 28 of February. I'm be waiting. I remove everything from the kitchen and then around 12 o'clock they're supposed to come between 11 and 12 o'clock. I've got the message no sorry no nothing and they will come the 13th of March and then next March I'm be waiting and then I've got another message that will come on to the second or something April and then after then I've got another message that will come on March 4th. I am being visited yesterday in the doctor and doctors said you know I supposed to complain I said I complain for a month for a year two years almost two years and he said you cannot live like this in New York especially nobody's supposed to live like this especially you in this condition. Clarion housing have apologised and say they're working hard to identify the cause of the problem and resolve it. Kent Online News. A convicted child sex offender from Chatham has been jailed after police found a secret phone during an unannounced check. Janil Varena had been banned from owning a device that connects to the internet without registering it with officers. The 63-year-old from the high street has been given a 16-month prison sentence. A Sheppy man's been left heartbroken after two of his dogs died following a walk on the beach. Jack Harris took them to visit Minster Lees and it's thought they may have eaten rat poison while off their leads for its urging owners to show extreme caution. As Rishi Sunak gives a speech to try and win over voters we've been taking a look at how a general election could play out in Kent. In recent local council ballots the Conservatives lost their former stronghold of Tumbrid Wells to the Lib Dems. They also failed to secure an overall majority in Maidstone with the Greens making big advances. Martin Baxter from Polling Group Electoral Calculus has been speaking on the Kent Politics podcast about what could happen in a national vote. We use a number of methods to predict elections here. We tried two different methods and they came out with very similar answers both showing the Conservatives on less than 100 seats. And again it's a consequence of the fact that nationally the Conservatives are so far behind. With this 20% deficit behind Labour and Conservative voters have split off. Yeah so in recent months the Conservatives have tried all sorts of different things to move the dial. We've had tax cuts, we've had talk of increased defence spending, we've got Rwanda ongoing but nothing seems to work. From your research what are the things that they could do to shift the dial or is it just a done deal it's not going to happen? Wow yes a sort of political strategy is harder to put numbers on. In terms of we did a poll earlier in the year where we asked people what their big issues were to them and many of the people leaving the Conservatives go to reform or staying at home were worried about crime and immigration. So doing things on those might help. But you could be right with the sort of implicit thesis of your question which is it's too late now for the Conservatives no matter what they do it's not going to make much difference. Just finally as we as we wrap it up you recently described the Conservatives in polling terms as mass spectrum repulsive. Apart from some particularly nasty condition what does that mean in polling terms? What that means in polling terms is that people who voted Conservative in 2019 are deserting the Conservative Party in every possible direction. So of every hundred voters in 2019 about 45 were Conservatives. Of those 45 eight have gone to reform eight are staying at home and not voting. Five have crossed the floor and switched to Labour. One or two have gone to the Lib Dems and one's gone to the Greens. So they have gone essentially in every direction possible and that's why they're coming to that mass spectrum that across the political spectrum or the Conservatives have repulsed their supporters, their left-a-centre supporters, their right-a-centre supporters. They've managed to repulse half their supporters in all directions. Elsewhere Sikhistan was facing more questions for allowing Dover's Natalie Elthik to defect to Labour. He's apparently been sent a letter from the presidents of the trades Union Congress who's described the decision as alarming following her support for minimum service levels during strikes. Former Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland has also accused the MP of asking him to intervene in her ex-husband's sexual assault trial in 2020. Labour's Chris Bryant used to chair the parliamentary standards committee. I would have thought that if what Robert Buckland has said is true he should have told our committee. So if anybody should be being investigated by the Parliamentary Commission for Standards, frankly it should be Robert Buckland. Police are investigating after a woman had water thrown at her while being harassed by three men in Maidstone. The 26-year-old was walking along James Watman Way when they started shouting at her from a white pickup truck. She was left in tears as she was worried the liquid was acid. One of the men also threw a plastic bottle in her direction. As we mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week, Kent online's been finding out how a barber shop in Medway is helping men get the help they need. No bad days on St Mary's Island was set up by Jake Cox as a safe space for people to talk about their emotions. He says it makes a huge difference. I like the idea of adding something extraordinary to the mundane. So if you can make small changes to small businesses it can make a big impact. So I always knew that I wanted to involve, involve mental health in what I do and give back to a charity such as Mind who pretty much saved my life about five, six years ago. Even having the name No Bad Days. It starts conversations and then once they find out the reason behind the name No Bad Days is that it's an affirmation that you can have bad moments within your day but if you if you do one thing in your day that you love you can never have a whole bad day. So it's more of an affirmation and a movement rather than just a business. So I wanted to set up my own mental health awareness training for barbers because being a barber can be quite a hard job at times. You're listening to a lot of people's worries and a lot of people's problems all day and it's going to be how barbers can protect themselves from hearing this kind of stuff or they're not taking too much on but also how to pick up early signs of mental health illnesses and mental health struggles in their customers and how they can signpost them to the appropriate professionals and also give them the skills to be able to listen to be able to listen to their customers and give them give them the space to feel comfortable enough to come into their shop and talk about anything that they want to. Everybody's struggling at the minute and the waiting times on the NHS is absolutely crazy at the minute and the NHS are very quick to just kind of bung you straight on medication and then you're sat on a waiting list or or you're sat on a year waiting list to get counseling or therapy and some people just need a conversation they just need to feel related to they need to they need to feel listened to and that they're not alone in their worries and that everyone else goes through the struggle and I honestly believe if every small business included mental health in their ethos and in part of what they what they do and what what makes their business I think the world would be such a better place because everyone could have loads of these little safe spaces that they can go to like safe space cafes, safe space libraries, safe space even like shops, clothing shops where they have people there that they know they can talk to and open up to going to get your haircut doesn't need to be something that you just go and sit in silence for half an hour. It can be a space where you feel comfortable enough to talk to that person and trust them enough to be able to talk to them. Our reporter Keeley's been chatting to one of Jake's customers Dean. He struggled with his mental health after his wife suffered a miscarriage and was diagnosed with cancer last year. With no bad days he's obviously been able to come here in a one-on-one environment and just talk as much or as little as you want about anything so sometimes I could come here and just talk about my week and football and my sort of hobbies and other times I could come here and talk about mental health. I might have had a bad week, I might be struggling, there may be no therapy available to me instantly so this is somewhat somewhere I can I can speak in a environment I know it's just going to stay between us no judgment whatsoever. Jake's going to listen and yeah I'm just going to be able to feel a lot better I just thought after a haircut just from being able to talk openly about any sort of mental health issues that I may have or struggles that may be going on in my life. And have you found it hard to get professional health because of the weightiness and things? Yeah I think obviously there's a lot of sort of professional power out there but it's it's highly likely in anxious itself any charity like mine that there's a lot of people that reach out to them so you might have a long way in this on something that sometimes you just need a conversation with someone but you three, four months later that conversation will be very different so it's sort of finding other ways to get that help if you don't have the sort of facilities or even sometimes money to reach out professional therapy. And also it might be hard for somebody to sort of pluck up the courage to go to the doctors and sit down and say I think I'm struggling. This is it like I think if you've got a cold you've got a cold okay this is a cold yet here's some tablets through this where if you're struggling do yourself know do you know if it's a bad day if it's a bad week how long it's going on before do you want to bother with doctors knowing overrun with an appointment where when you get there you might actually be feeling okay on that day so so yeah I do think it's obviously a massive thing that's all no bad days it is trying to achieve where you can just have an environment where you're not in a barbers and it's not just let's say sort of lad chat and you actually can become sort of very open of your emotions and talk about the things that matter in life I guess. You can find details of safe spaces across Kent in the story on our website. Kent online reports. It's feared a new housing estate in a village near Ashford will destroy people's view of the countryside. Plans have been submitted for 170 homes on land at Cotton Hill in Ham Street. Residents have also raised concerns about how the roads will cope with extra traffic. A campaign's underway to save a pub near Ashford from being turned into a house. The checkers in in Smarden is owned by the family of Celebrity Baker Paul Hollywood's wife and applications been put in to turn the 16th century building into a home but villages are trying to raise money to buy the venue and run it themselves as a community pub. An 11 year old girl from Sittingborne has had life-saving surgery after being diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. Ivy Adams was about to start her first year at Heistard Grammar School when she started experiencing symptoms. She's been telling reporter Joe Crossley what happened. At the very end of May we went shopping and I felt a little feeling in my leg but I didn't really think anything of it. I thought it was just from the sports I've been doing and then after that I started getting like shooting pains and sharp pains which we thought was crying pains and it went on for quite a while and her it started to get really painful when the tumour started coming out my bone. We went to the GP and we got an appointment basically like as soon as and we had an x-ray of my right leg and that's where they found out. And what was your reaction when you got a call that you'd got cancer? Well it was just it was the afternoon after I had my high seat transition day and well I like getting downstairs and well I didn't really know where everyone was and like my dad was here so then my mum and dad called me into my brother's room and they basically told me that they found a lump on the bone but I didn't really think I just thought it was a lump I didn't think it was cancer because I didn't really I don't really know any of it then and yeah and were you kind of worried scared at all that what might happen in the future? I was a little bit worried and after like later on I was thinking I was kind of overthinking it a bit but after that it was it was all right I just didn't really want to die. Yeah and so you had all the scans, the blood tests and then you had to go through treatment and what treatment was that and what was it like? We had I think it was six rounds of chemotherapy and we stayed there for three days and three nights what was it like having that was it you know horrible tiring so the first time when I had chemotherapy I didn't really know what it was going to feel like I thought it was just going to feel like like my normal self to be honest and then when I had it they put the you have anti sickness and the chemo but they put a bit too much chemo in and then I was sick basically for the three days and well I didn't it was just the first one was really horrible but so then when I came up to the second one I was quite worried that was going to happen again yeah of course and what was it all like the whole experience all together I'm guessing you don't want to go through it all again do you? So the experience was like I didn't really think I didn't I was I like tried to not overthink it and stuff because I didn't really I didn't really think much of it and the chemotherapy was like it I didn't I hated chemotherapy but um like after it after it I was fine and went back to school like the next week IVs also had surgery to remove her thigh bone and replace it with an artificial hip and knee she'll need to continue with physiotherapy as she learns to walk again but has been declared cancer free can't online news another 20 million pounds is being invested into a zero carbon logistics park in Sittingborne the money's coming from Panatoni which is Europe's biggest real estate developer the company's bought another 10 acres site at G Park in Kemsley and is preparing to submit a planning application for the second phase of a project that will create more than a thousand jobs also say they're hoping to make a six screen cinema the epicenter of Ashford the former picture house site at Elwick Place is now being run by the council and the big picture limited but some residents say the site is often empty Ben Hammond is the general manager of the Ashford cinema and has been telling us about plans to bring in more people I'm really excited about bringing the community more of what they want so we can expand the film program we are reinventing the menus from your brand new menu coming out the kitchen's going to be open seven days a week so once the cinema is open the kitchen's going to be open serving delicious fresh food a great kitchen team that have been really strong menu and really it's all about just a great value office for our family so really strong offers for family for children right the way through all the ages when we show a lot of our live content and our events cinema we've even reduced the headline ticket prices for that as well so really it's about opening up this whole cinema and everything we can offer to our community against groups hoping to restore a second world war aircraft that was salvaged from a frozen lake in Russia the shell of a hawker hurricane has been donated to the medway aircraft preservation society once completed it could eventually be worth up to two and a half million pounds and loads of you have been sharing your pictures of the northern lights which were visible in the skies above Kent over the weekend a huge solar storm in space meant the display was seen much further south than usual you can see some of the photos over on our website that's all from us today thanks ever so much for listening don't forget you can follow us on facebook x instagram tick tock and threads you can also get details on the top stories direct to your email each morning via the briefing to sign up just head to kentonline.co.uk news you can trust this is the kent online podcast
