lynne

We saw the specialist for the diagnosis than was discharged and told to ask GP for a re-referral if I had any crisis. The ASD lea team did go into school every week to help with my child Lynne

Has any one had a sensory profile done of their childrens classroom and school? Lynne

Missing assembly would be a REASONABLE ADJUSTMENT for the school to make. The LEA expect the school to make reasonable adjustments to allow special needs children to access the curriculum. I think you need to put it in writing stating that once your child attends assembley he is left anxious, restless etc etc and therefore does not access the curriculum. Hence, he needs to miss assembly to prevent him becoming ..........this means he would be able to access the curriculum in a calm manner. My 10 year old still occasionly misses assembly. At your sons age he was not attending any of the assembleys. I always found talking to the teacher and backing this up with a letter worked well as the problem was documented than the school had to act on it or ignore it and face going to tribunnel. Also we did use the letters I wrote when we did go to tribunal as the infant school was discrimminating against my childs disability. Lynne

Your GP is reponsible for your medical care. He refers you onto specialist and works with there advice. Hence, when you took your child to the GP he would not only give you the sick note by what is happening on the day but also by his medical history. It is totally unacceptable for your school to state the sick note should of come from your consultant as you are not able to ring up the consultant and make an appointment for that day or the next. Even emergency referrals for our children can take 3 or 4 weeks before they are seen. So there statement that the sick note should of come from the specalist is not acceptable. Yes your consultant can give you a sicknote but this would be at an emergency referral or during your out patient appointment. Lyn I

You can ordered a toughend glass I think its called laminated but check with your local glazer. You can ask you local glazer to come out measure up and replace the double glazed unit. Or you can take out the long beads all around the inside of the window and remove from the outside take the unit to the glazier and they will replace for the same. Take care Lynne

Well my 10 year old woke up at 10am (he did not go to sleep until 2AM). Any way he woke up really stressed. Did not want to open his presents, be spoken to or eat. All he wanted to do was sit on the settee in silence with my sitting on the settee but not by him. After about 50 minutes he calmed down. He has now decided he can open his 5 presents. He has also managed to have a wash. Hes excited as he has had a nintendo wii. His older brother has set it up and he has been playing on it for hours. He also has a bubble gum machine (normally he is not allowed to eat this). So my son has told me he is in heaven. Bubble gum and wii Hope everyone is having a relaxed day Lynne

Is this the GP who is doing the medication review or is it the specialist. If it is a GP I would question his/her experience and ask for a consultant to be involved. GP have a budget for drugs and obviously the more frequent drugs they can stop will have a positive effect on there medication. My friend is epileptic and went for a medication review with her GP. He told her he was not happy with the amount of medication and he would be stopping the one type of drug and reducing the other. My friends words were YOU ARE NOT STOPPING ANY OF MY MEDICATION. ONLY MY CONSULTANT CAN DO THAT Jen

Why do they need 8 weeks to put it on the document!!! When we went to tribunnal they LEA decided to give us what we wanted but we had it all in the statement before we withdraw our appeal. If fact they type up his statement emailed it to us we ammended it and than we all agreed on the final one. Keep strong Jen

Our child is 10 years old attends mainstream school with a full time TA (LSA) Our child is dyslexia and has ASD with a lot of sensory problems. He has tried all sorts of reading programs and multisensory learning as well. He still struggles with reading. At one time they were using a computer where the child writes the sentence into a computer, than the computer works out what the child is writing and than it is read back to the child. (Sorry I don't know the name of this computer, but it can be used with all children who have reading difficulties). The teacher only used this for a short time, so I presume they thought it was not working very well. Since February we have been doing a program called Toe Toe. This takes the child back to basic and slowly builds up the child learning over many months. (I would definately recommend this). In August we started a programme called the Dore programme. The child has to have an assessment and is than given daily exercises to do. You do 2 different kinds of exercise twice a day. The exercises take from 2-5 minutes each day and concentrate on getting the cerebellum working correctly. The exercises cover balance vestibular, Somatosensory-this covers joint and muscle movements, visual- visual exercises stimulate the visual system by making the cerebellum use information from a visual stimulus. The child has measurements taken every 6 weeks so you can see if there is any improvement in there performance. The programme takes a year (or longer) to complete. Our childs reading age has gone up from 6year 6 months to 8 years in 6 months and he continues to develope his reading skills. Before the programmed he would struggle to write 6 or 7 lines with assistance from his TA (LSA). He is now writing one or two pages of A4 paper using a wider range of description within his writing. His confidence in reading has grown and he is now prepared to attempt words he does not know by breaking them down. I do not know if this improvement is due to the toe by toe approach or by the Dore programme but I am definatley continuing with both programmes. The DORE programme is suitable for children who are dyslexia ADHD and dysgraphia. They have successfully worked with several austistic children. I find my childs austism to be of benefit within the DORE programme as he like routine. Every morning he will get his exercise book our look at the exercises to be completed and complete them under supervision. Then at 6pm he will complete the second lot of exercises with no problems. I hope this helps Jen

Hi Stephanie, My son is 10 years old He has continually toe walked to the point where his 3 smallest toes turned under his feet to help him balance. We have been visit a podiatrist for 2 years. This podiatrict measures and fits my son with insoles. Over time the depth of the insole has increased and this is correcting his balance. However, he will still walk on his toes when he is not wearing his shoes, but not to the same degree as before. You need to make sure he has a good pair of supporting shows which helps to restrict him walking on his toes.. Trainers are no good as they just continue to toe walk all the time. It also puts the spine out of place so a visit to a chiropractor will help. Is there no special needs football in your area, which your child could attend. Jen

Hi Anne, We also went to tribunal for discrimmination and won. We represented ourselves. I must say the tribunal people are excellent at interviewing the school and parents, getting everything into perspective such as training for staff incidences that happen, how they handle them etc. We were so surprised to find the teacher and headmistress lying at the tribunnal. I have always wrote down my concerns in a school dairy or sent letters to school and it was this evidence we used to prove the school discriminated against our son. Its a stressful experience but worth while. Go for it girl!!!! Lynn