School parents - can any of this be salvaged and is it worth it?

We have kids who have had serious health issues. One child has had autoimmune issues which I think we’ve finally figured out, but it’s been 10 years of trial and error for a child, with major social ramifications for them and our family in our school community.

The autoimmune issues have presented as neuropsychiatric and behavioural issues - pretty good most of the time, but intense reactions that made others uncomfortable at other times. We’ve tried lots of medications and have navigated awful side effects that have often made this all worse too, with our child often unable to tell us what they’ve been going through. Our child is a good kid, but it’s very hard to get others in our community to give our child a chance and include them.

I am very good at seeing the bigger picture and see a lot of the other kids having their own issues and challenges, with families being protective.

In the past 7 months we’ve had significant health breakthroughs which have closed the gap and made huge inroads, with me having very real hope that all of the neuropsychiatric and more serious health issues may finally be in the past.

How on earth do we get the school community to give our child a chance too? The specific combination of health challenges have been so incredibly isolating and the community is very overprotective, gossipy and reactive, with very high behavioural expectations.

Recently I had an experience of a mother telling me she wouldn’t feel comfortable interacting with me because of my child. I won’t elaborate too much (just trying to retain some privacy) but there had been an issue where our kids get along, a mutual school friend (who is from a very wealthy family/major school donor) encouraged my child to do something silly that embarrassed the other child. This was addressed at the time, with my child being punished and apologising, but a year on, the parent of the impacted child is now unhappy with how the school handled it and pushing for my child to be excluded. The other child is seemingly not having the same experience despite being the instigator.

We are reasonable people, who have been through absolute hell on this path. Our child doesn’t want to change schools either. Objectively looking at how we’ve been treated - if we’d been more included perhaps we’d have had support and guidance about the health matters, which could have saved us years of pain and struggle, though we’ll never know if it could’ve made a difference. I am persona non grata and even trying to build relationships and connections in the community seems to further inflame the overreactive and intense feelings from the parents just by my presence or attempts to contribute. My child has not done anything truly terrible and I’m confident never will either, but has the stigma of being a problem child and us being deficient parents.

Realistically how can we possibly break out of this situation? There are a lot of complicating factors in our situation and I have a very low confidence that school leadership can lead us out of this either as they are all in the parent group too. As my kids get older, I’m not as trusting about confiding in other families about our health journey. I’ve started in the school with idealism and trust, but been very burnt and don’t know how to navigate all of this. If anyone has any tips or guidance, I’m open to ideas. TIA