Katie Price has opened up about her life now that her son Harvey has left home and gone to residential college.
The 43-year-old’s eldest son Harvey, who she shares with former professional footballer Dwight Yorke, has enrolled at a £350,000-a-year residential college in Cheltenham.
Harvey, 19, is on the autism spectrum and was born with the rare disorder septo-optic dysplasia. He has disabilities including partial blindness, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome, which causes an excessive appetite.
Due to his disabilities, Katie was nervous about the journey for him from home to college as he makes the transition to adulthood.
He has been funded to live full-time at the college for three years, though his placement will be reviewed annually by his local authority which then decides on whether to continue to fund his placement.
She has now lifted the lid on his first time away from home in a new BBC documentary which charts Harvey’s first term at his new college National Star, which the pair were shown visiting during her BBC documentary Harvey & Me.
The 43-year-old star previously admitted she would struggle with him being three hours away, but that the college offers the opportunity to live more independently and gain more skills.
In a frank conversation on the new BBC documentary, the former glamour model said she’s not “got a bit of a life back” with Harvey at college.
She said: “I wake up and think, ‘Oh, I don't have to do anything’, ‘Oh, there's no mess’, ‘Oh, he hasn't been through the cupboards’, ‘He's wet the floor, oh I've got to change the bed’.”
“There's absolutely none of that. It's like, he's not gone, he's still in my life, but it's like that stress and that worry is taken out of your hands.”
She continued: “Because you're so used to those 19 years of having him around me, living, breathing, smelling, the noise, it's just everything - to then suddenly, he's just gone.
“How do I fill that void? Because I'm used to having so much responsibility that it's been taken off me. It's something I have to get used to.”
Elsewhere in the latest BBC documentary, Katie said: “For me, I’m proud of Harvey in so many ways.
“People have to remember I got told he wouldn’t walk, talk or do anything really and he does it all. He’s very challenging, as you know – he's on around 25 tablets a day and that’s just to keep him alive, keep him going and for his behaviour.
“So for him to go to college without me – because that’s all he knows – I'm really proud about how he has adjusted to me not being there.”
Katie Price : What Harvey Did Next airs Monday 7th March at 9pm on BBC One
