Sazale

How did your meeting go?

Fantastic! Can I ask if the peer group is the same year group as your child or whether they considered the ability in older years?

Great news Sally x

I've also been to visit that school and it is amazing! It made me sad to think of all the input our kids are being denied. Unfortunately it's a little too far as a day pupil and I don't want residential mon-fri but its still on our list. We've just had annual review and are waiting on LA response so we can file for tribunal. I've regularly read your posts bjkmummy and its great to hear about the other side of tribunal. Sally gives good advice as always x

We went to visit Alderwasley last week and absolutely loved it! My daughter is 14. It will be roughly 45 mins to an hour journey for her which initially concerned me but when I thought about it as she has transport to the special school she is in ATM it takes 50 mins to an hour anyway as they drop off the other side of town first (the school is a 15 min drive away max). They also told us they are having discussions about whether to extend provision to 25 years with the new green paper. Just got to figure out how to get her in there now but I know that with the input there she would stand as better chance in life than the none ASD specific input she gets now!

Thanks Sally. We are due to see the clinical psychologist again next month and he is considering medicating for anxiety. The lower arousal environment came to be in the statement as camhs said she has sensory processing difficulties in all areas but she has never had a full OT sensory assessment which I think is what we are going to do next. We haven't seen a school yet that we felt was right but are going to visit Alderwasley Hall tomorrow. I'm hoping that will give us some answers. A waking day curriculum was briefly mentioned by camhs before Christmas but not mentioned again as I think she got blocked. She suggested it as dd has no self care or independence skills and she won't let us work with her. These things are mentioned in parts 2 & 3 of the statement as is her inability to generalise her learning but the only provision is for school to teach them to her and help her learn to generalise her learning. As she is 14 now its a major concern. Not only that but her behaviour is significantly impacting my other children, especially my 5 year old who has his own difficulties and it's adding to his anxiety as she targets him with criticism and at times physically hurts him inadvertantly (eg cushion over his face to shut him up) which means he is scared of her and we can not leave them alone unsupervised. I will def sumarise the meeting in writing an email it to all concerned.

The meeting went well and the Head also attended. Over the weekend all the difficulties in school that dd was having came flooding out and I typed it all to hand out at the meeting. The Head also attended and admitted they were at fault and that there was no wonder she was struggling. Many things have been promised and they've said they believe they can make it work, We're back to 1 to 1 support which is what we d hoped to avoid by moving to special school. In Dd's statement it states she needs a lower arousal environment which the school isn't and that is part of the problem. It is full to rafters with stuff and the walls covered in stuff. They've said they can't change it as they have kids that need the sensory stimulation but they are going to build breaks in the quiet room into her timetable. I think we're going to have to bite the bullet and try to secure independent ASD provision. Does anyone know what are the grounds for a waking day curriculum?

Thanks. There will only be us and dd form teacher who is also the deputy head. I rang the SEN dept and explained the situation to them and they said school should have notified them. They rang school who said that it was settling in problems after Christmas! I intend to pin them down to specifics as I'm 99% certain they aren't fully delivering the statement. As I said to the SEN dept either they aren't delivering it or they are and it's not working either way it's not good. We saw the CP yesterday but he just said school need to be speaking to the autism communication team for support and advice. He said if she's not showing physical signs of anxiety like sweating and light headednesd then she's not anxious. What a load of tosh, I think we need a new CP!

We got a statement for dd 14 in August last year and we were talked into trying the Lea's generic special school (/against our gut feelings). She started there in October and her anxiety at home as consistently increased until she had a major meltdown on Tuesday evening that lasted 3 hours and resulted in me having to lock the doors, her putting a black bin bag over her head, opening the bathroom window and threatening to jump out and flushing her fish (/still alive) amongst other things. She hasn't been back to school since and is saying she won't go back and I'm not happy sending her back. It does not appear to be as ASD friendly/knowledgeable as the Lea lead us to believe. School have asked us to go in to meet with them on Monday to find a way to make her less anxious. I'm not convinced they're implementing her statement and I understand why it's happened and i had warned school numerous times she wasn't coping. Any advice of what to ask/what next?

What great news!

Thanks Sally. I thought I had to go through the complaints procedure first but the way my complaint has been handled is shocking! The social services manager who was dealing with it left in September (I've not been told officially but a school friend of my husband is on maternity leave ATM but normally works in her team) and no one appears to have picked it up. The complaints team have lied to me as has the elected member and the only time any contact has been made is when I've chased them up. My daughter is in special school now (generic lea) and at the first meeting with them to change the CAF to a family CAF, so it can include my other children, they mentioned respite. Hopefully it will be discussed at the first family CAF.

Hi Sally, I've not been on for a while and it's great to hear that you're finally getting somewhere and of the success with the LGO! My own request for a core assessment in April which resulted in a refusal and a subsequent complaint is still ongoing! I was promised lots of things including assessment, 3 months ago but it's still not happened. I asked for stage 2 and the LA said it was stage 2 for them to turn around and say it wasn't moved to stage 2 as they'd expected me to withdraw my request after the meeting where all this fictional support was offered! It is now at stage 2 and the independent person is currently investigating. I think I may complain to the LGO once this is all sorted. I officially made the complaint 6 months ago!

Thanks Sally. The manager said that they'd hoped that the meeting would have resulted in me withdrawing my request to stage 2! I have everything in writing/e-mail. I was thinking of relaying the events so far to her. She's not in the office till Tuesday so going to send her an email. They're doing everything they can to stop this complaint moving to stage 2 and have been a bit devious about it. I just want it concluding and it needs to be stage 2 as I'm disagreeing with a couple of the responses from the social services manager which means that it needs an independent person. She says dd not eligible for their services but their eligibility criteria (that she gave me) says she does. She says that the carers assessment is a form for me to fill out to then put on a database to register me as a carer and that's it. I'm saying that a carers assessment is meant to more than that. I just can't believe the way it's been handled and their refusal to follow their own complaints procedure.

Got an email now from the quality and performance manager now apologising for any misunderstanding, saying how hard the staff are working to sort out my complaints and offering to meet with me to decide the best way forward. Why won't they just follow the complaints procedure and move it to stage 2?

They've not began anything yet! I'm still carrying on with my complaint that the manager says my dd doesn't fit the disability teams criteria even though according to their criteria she does so I'm asking for more clarification. Also they agreed to a carers assessment but old me it was only a paper exercise where they send me out a form and then register me as a carer - I'm asking for more clarification on that as well as everything I've read says that's not what it should be! It's turned into a right farse. I put the complaint in 58 working days ago and still no further on apart from a visit to try to get me to drop my complaint. We're managing ok ATM and dd accessing short breaks for 3 hours once a week so part of me wants to walk away from it all but the other part of me says no! She only has 3 weeks short breaks left and then back on the waiting list and it's the stress it's all causing my other kids and they could do with Mum time and support. Will see what today brings! Angry doesn't come near!