Archie Battersbee: Hollie Dance calls for ‘more time’ for her son
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Hollie talked to Eamonn Holmes on Tuesday’s Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel on GB News following the conclusion of Archie’s inquest last week. The schoolboy had his life support withdrawn in August despite his parents’ failed attempt to overturn a High Court ruling that doctors could decide to switch it off. Hollie expressed her plea for schools to do more to support certain children as she talked about her heart being “ripped out”.
Archie was found unconscious in April last year following an accident at his home in Southend, Essex.
The inquest on February 7 found Archie had died accidentally in a “prank or experiment” gone wrong.
“How much do you miss him?” Eamonn asked the grieving mother in an interview on Tuesday.
“I feel lost – like my heart has been ripped out,” Hollie explained.
She continued: “He was literally the heart of my family, my home doesn’t feel the same.
“It just feels cold and empty, nothing’s ever going to be the same again.
“And if I can avoid this, whether it be via pushing for the SEN and the support within schools because I strongly believe…
“I fought for four years, which a lot of people don’t know.
“These people going on about, ‘Oh, she should have supported him,’ they haven’t got a clue – they don’t know me.
“I spent four years already fighting the system to get Archie’s education on track and getting into a mainstream school because he wasn’t getting the support.
“His education health care plan was formed over a two-week period when me and Archie’s dad split up and all that little boy needed was nurture and support within school, and he was failed.
“I spent four years fighting that and won that in court, and got him into mainstream school and that little boy proved everybody wrong.
“And his last headmaster, at the inquest, described Archie as a success story,
“And that’s how I want Archer remembered, not from the label that he was given when he was five years old.
“I worked so hard with that little boy. And I think that there’s so many children and parents that are fighting – I know so many – that are fighting to get their kids support in school.”
She tearfully added: “It’s just not there. And this is where these kids’ lives can be turned around, you know, rather than leaving them and then they just become a problem to society when they’re older, they can be helped.”
Last year, the parents’ legal battle with the NHS hospital in London, where Archie was being treated, was widely covered in the news.
Hollie and Archie’s dad Paul Battersbee tried to overturn the ruling that stipulated doctors could decide to switch off Archie’s life support machine.
After a months-long battle, it was determined the ruling would not change, and Archie died in August.
Eamonn Holmes’ full interview is available to watch on GB News’ website.
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