mousytrap

Last December. We spoke about it at the time. He is making academic progress, but he is in maintained EBD school, getting regularly bullied (occasionally by the Head), shouted at by staff, and having to travel 40 mins or so each way by taxi for the pleasure. That's when he gets in it. Since last October I've had to drive all that way to collect him 10 times, deliver him 5 times (when he said he would go in if I took him) and excludes another 8 times he point blank refused to go (two of those days being directly related to the shouting incidents). We (parents) are being blamed for passing our negativity on to him. It is difficult because they still haven't provided the sensory assessment the tribunal said, even though they've had months, also the SALT is allegedly only starting to happen shortly. Over 5 months they've had. Academically we haven't had any reports, but have been given the grades at the AR. I took our legal rep and EP to ours, but my OH was unable to cope with going. No, but we have a suitable psychiatrist in mind prior to our next tribunal. We won't make that mistake again. It is about 25 mins, so closer than where he is now.

Would involve extra mortgage of about 65000... A serious commitment, but then the stability of our whole family is at stake... OH is in a really bad way about things and won't go on antidepressants...

The school is independent. We went for a residential place at tribuinal and lost. Not enough proof of educational need for residential. Now have the possibility of getting a day place I believe. We are assuming we will have to either go to tribunal or set the wheels in motion to do so for year 7 anyway.

Just wondering if anyone's been forced into self funding for a year or so, to sort out a complete stressful debarcle, and if so, were there any issues trying to get the LEA to take over again as from year 7? Thanks mousy PS The desired year 6 school is secondary as well.

Our legal rep will be reading through it in depth tomorrow and report back to us after the weekend. We got quite a lot of what we wanted in parts 2 and 3 and we don't hold out much hope of them managing to supply all of it. For example we got them to agree on a maximum class size of 10 (we wanted 8). The LEA wanted 15 but were happy to go for 12. Their EP piped up and said he needed a max of 10 really so that was decided... My OH saw the head's face go a bit green. Our son's current class sizes are 10 and 12 according to the head but now 11 and 12 according to our son... BUT in year 6 they have bigger classes (2 of them) in preparation for many of them going back into mainstream, which is why they wanted max 15. I think this is going to involve extra cost for them and big headaches as they have no spare classrooms and would have to do major juggling. Surely if they don't provide what they were forced to agree to, JR is an option - but maybe not the best one if the placement was all wrong to start with. Looks like we're far from sorted and we'll now be trying to juggle both children's SEN situations at the same time... mousy PS We did tell him. I don't think the reality has set in yet. Reality will be when we have to get him back into the taxi.

Now I've got it I don't want it... Part 4 dismissed... We can't tell him this before Christmas...

No. They do tell me they're open Thursday and Friday next week though...

Oh dear... Well, I'm still having trouble from time to time with my 9yo son pooing when we're out in the countryside walking. One time the path passed quite close to a couple of little cottages. I turned around and called out where are you? He called back (loudly) I'm over here having a poo... Bad enough, but actually he was only 10-15 metres from their back fence and he'd taken his trousers and pants off and hung them over a tree like washing... I'm not out of the woods yet... A few days ago, I turned around to find son 2 (aged 6) weeing in an animal's drinking trough... I swear I am not related to these people... I CAN'T be... mousy

Well, no, I don't want to drive there as it would be a few hundred miles and I've got the SALT coming to assess son 2 tomorrow, then a grocery delivery coming Thursday and possibly delivering son 1 to his grandparents, so much of the week is spoken for... Also we're on file for result by email, which is a lot easier. Our legal rep is in regular contact with them re other children's results so may well lay her hands on it before we can. mousy

They just keep saying they haven't received it from the judge yet. They have done their chaser emails on working day 7 and 10 and say the next one goes to higher up.

Still waiting... Next chaser will apparently be the judge's boss. mousy

Finger nails gone and scalp not good... mousy

We had our hearing on 1 December and we still don't have the answer... They are chasing the judge again... This is a bit like going into extra time on a pregnancy... Mind you I heard what a pittance they are paid... Apparently a lump sum for each case of £500 for the judge and £250 each for the other two... It's a wonder they can find people to do it. mousy

That doesn't come anywhere close... You're right. He's in an EBD school with a handful of ASD kids, but from what we can make out, they are not high IQ AS... or at least he doesn't think so from the work they've been doing. He's year 5 and he does literacy with the lower year 6 group. Room for moving up this year maybe, but then what would they do next year...? mousy

It's the thought of going through 3000 more pages of paperwork!!! LOL mousy

Ours obviously pulled the zero-cost-for-schooling-and-zero-cost-for-taxi one... but we can't even come close on the funding side so we're not going there at all. mousy

Independent Aspergers boarding school... mousy

Sorry for delay. Have had son B off school ill 2 days this week... We'll be meeting up with her on Tuesday morning. Had a very stressful (and expensive) afternoon on Friday as the bundle arrived after lunch and there was a mad race to try and get it all copied and sent off next day delivery so she could go through it over the weekend. Don't know how how I managed it - had to dash off out of the shop twice to pick up children - but finally we just made it around 4:40 for the mail pick up. that was 3 copies of about 390 sides. Glad it wasn't 3000!!! You must be broke by now. We'll be going through that on Tuesday. LOL... Can't imagine that being very effective. EP and SALT reports were independent. They will be essential for the case. OT we had to use NHS so it's very flimsy. That was always going to be the least relevant of the three though. Well, I've got my copies of everything on file with my indexing according to when sent in, but the tribunal service clearly have their way of organising things. The legal rep is doing loads of annotating this weekend so she can find things quickly. I hear she's very good at that. She's also sorting out the working document, but can't see anything getting agreed with the LEA in a week or so. The outcome of the handwriting problem was that it's not re pen grip/muscles etc, and because of his PDA/ODD probably not a good idea to go back and change his attitude... The sensory issues were mostly glossed over as mild and executive function and adaptive behaviour (BIG problem areas) didn't come into it. Good job it's on the EP report. The independent EP went in recently to ask some in depth questions on matters such as that. Basically he's in an EBD school which is trying to make itself look ASD friendly to ward off tribunal appeals. The head said he had 2 years ASD school experience but not with high achievers. He also reckoned his staff had some kind of training. Will need to get further details from EP if legal rep hasn't already. The two of them already know each other very well. He most certainly isn't. Most of the kids, I believe, are performing at well below his level, probably because of missing so much school in the past. He finds literacy especially patronising. There are a handful of ASD kids there but don't know that any of them are particularly intelligent. This is an area that our EP was going to be sorting out when she went in. I've been keeping a diary of all that since the beginning of September and those have all been emailed through to the legal rep. There's lots of important stuff in there, especially to refute "he's a happy boy and settling in well at his new school"... The diary covers incidents at school, behaviour when arriving home, psychological wellbeing etc. Will look at other post of yours in the morning... mousy

I meant, of course, "haven't" but isn't it annoying how you always notice these things after the button is pressed? PS I meant to also add that son 2, "B" if you like, has also been diagnosed autistic since I was last here, so we may well end up going round the loop again...

Firstly, I was absolutely thrilled to hear about your win, Sally. You must be exhausted after all that... Hopefully things will settle down now and you'll get some well needed rest... Things are coming to some kind of conclusion over here in the not too distant future. My son, "A" if you like, has been taxiing to and from the LEA's preferred EBD school for a few weeks now. Obviously they're all full of how well he's settling in and how happy he is... whereas we're seeing the psychological effects and it looks far from rosy. I've already had to collect him from school once. Had a difficult meeting today with them, given that we're at tribunal in only 2 weeks time. Not exactly the best time to be discussing "how things are going" with the other side. Worried I might have talked about stuff I would have been better being quiet about but find it very difficult when direct questions are put at me. The EP and SALT reports were excellent I think, but the NHS OT one was disappointing. Will I have much more to do? (apart from figuring out what we're going to do with the kids for the day...) It's been quite quiet since I sent all the paperwork off and I'm guessing it's my legal rep's turn to get busy... mousy

It says on the paperwork not to ring up to confirm receipt of emails and faxes... mousy

I just thought/hoped there might be somewhere where I could "sign in" to my case and check what they've got... Just feeling a bit nervous about it because I heard it was a very important deadline. Will just try asking for date she sent it and see what she says. She was also going to send off some paperwork to SS asking for a "core assessment". I've had nothing through the post from them related to that so will try to get the date for that too. mousy

Hi all, I haven't been on here for a few weeks but things are progressing well. Our deadline for submitting our attendance form was Thursday. Our legal advocate said she had templates for that sort of thing and would send it off. She emailed me the form filled in a couple of weeks back, but is there any way I can check she definitely did it? The reason why I ask is that she seems like a very busy person - takes a while to reply to emails and arrange times to ring. I would have felt better had I done it myself I think... mousy

We do... for what it's worth... Isn't it a little early for that? I thought the person from the tribunal service I had on the phone one time said they scheduled about 3 weeks beforehand... I wonder how far beforehand they used to do this before they got stretched though. EP definitely is. Legal advocate knows the date and hasn't said she isn't (she's still off reading the huge file I sent). As for the school in question, they haven't got the report from the EP yet. That's in the final stages. We had wind of this as being one of very few options quite some time ago so we have visited already. The EP has also been there this week (rather conveniently about someone else primarily) It's a dreaded EBD It must surely be that the LA's aren't caving... I imagine not... mousy

Asked our IEP about this today. She's had one late cancellation last week and one this week for the same reasons. Luckily in one case the LA caved, but in the other there's an end-of-year-6 pupil sitting there with no school to go to in September. Meanwhile I am starting to have doubts about we'll actually have ours in December or still be sitting waiting in February. Our son doesn't have a school for September either... They are discussing whether to choose him for an oversubscribed not-entirely-suitable special school, so at least they seem to be admitting he's got to come out of mainstream. A bit rich when the conversation is "if you get that school, will the tribunal still be happening?" though... I fear we might get discriminated against... mousy