mossgrove

Minxygal Melatonin is freely available in the USA because it is classed as a food supplement and not a drug. (It occurs naturally in the body in small quantities). Simon

Amanda The main effect of melatonin is to regulate the sleep cycle and help people get off to sleep. There is conclusive research that suggests melatonin will help people (adults and children) get off to sleep. Research about the effect of melatonin for keeping people asleep has been less conclusive, but many parents report that their children stay asleep better when they have taken meltatonin. I think it would be appropriate to use melatonin to help your son get off to sleep. Some GP's are reluctant to prescribe it so you may wish to speak to your pediatrician. Simon

Nellie It makes me angry too! I was just trying to explain what I think is going on in terms of the process, which is that LEA's are increasingly declining to assess if the school is not providing any help from within it's SEN provision. In that sense the Tribunal were doing what they had been told to do. This doen't mean I agree with it! It is going to become a major issue in the next few years because if this becomes the norm then no child who does not get support from school will get assessed with a viw to a staement. It stinks, but that is the system and we all have to do our best within it until such time as as the rules change. Our 5 yo old has 10 hours of 1:1 support funded by the school which was agreed by the previous headmaster before he started at the school. The current headmistress called us into a meeting to explain that due to funding restrictions she would not be providing any support after all. We only got the 1:1 support because my partner refused point blank to leave her office until she agreed to honour the commitment. An hour and a half later the headmistress gave in. She did this because we knew we would be unable to get an asessment until the school put the support in. I know schools are caught between a rock and a hard place, especially if they have large numbers of children with SEN, but as a parent, forcing the school to honour their commtments is increasingly becoming part of the process. I know that's easier said than done! As a consequence of this, and insisting the school met all the provisions in the statement for our 7yo who is at the same school, our relationship with the school has collapsed as they feel we are being unreasonable, when in practice we are guilty of nothing more than asking them to honour their commitments. We are now looking for alternative placements for our 7yo and awaiting a decsion on whther or not our 5yo gets an assessment. Please do not interpret my posting as meaning that everything is OK, I know it isn't! Simon

Rabbit My thought are with you at this difficult time. Ironically enough, this latest asessment means that the Special school is probably the right place for your son. It's an emotional time getting a diagnosis (our 5 yo was diagnosed with ASD last month). Relief that someone has understood and you have confirmation that your weren't imagining it all, but confirmation that it isn't just going to go away. I am lost in admiration for what you have been able to do for J though. He is very lucky to have you. Simon

Lisa I am so sorry it has come to this. I know from past postings that we have similar situations with our children. I think you have falled foul of something that operates in our area too. I am sure this is not what you want to hear right now, and re-entering the fray is probably the last thing you want to do but this is what I think the Tribunal meant: In financial terms, the LEA assume that the first 5 units of financial provision (12 units being full time 1:1) are the responsibility of the school, and can be met out of their SEN funding. Unless they think that the child has needs over and above 5 units of provision they will not assess as they assume that the school is able to provide for those needs, and there is no need for a statement as provision of 5 units or less would not release any extra funding from the LEA. I suspect that most LEA's take a similar line. If they provide provision and problems persist you have an excellent case for asessment. If you are asking for more than 5 units of provison when the school aren't providing any then it's probably not too suprising that they conclude that we need to see what happens when the 5 units of provision is put in place before assessing with a view to a statement. If she is doing academically OK with no provision, they were obviously not convinced there is enough evidence thus far that she needs more than 5 units of provision. They have taken the view that the school has those 5 units of resouce and despite what the SENCO says, they have SEN funding that Laura is entitled to part of. This is why your SENCO is absolutely wrong. Your school has special needs funding and if Laura needs help they are obliged to provide it. The Tribunal was, in effect, saying that they were not convinced that a statement should be provided to to make up a shortfall between what the school is legally obliged to do and what it proposed to do. They school simply do not have the right to decline to provide provision up to and including 5 units (roughly 10 hours 1:1)and that is perhaps where you need to look next. If your school are denying that Laura has any special needs at all that is a different issue, but if they are saying Lauras has special needs but they do not intend to provide for them, that is an outrage and should not be allowed. Even if you were successful in getting a statement the school would only get extra money for provision over and above the five units, so the school would still need to fund 5/12 of a full-time 1:1, so a refusal up-front to fund any provision is not a good start. I honestly think that the problem is the school and not, as it first seems, the Tribunal. If you can get the school to acknowledge their obligations and provide some 1:1 support then you still have a chace of getting a statement in the future if Laura still has problems. If they continue to refuse to do what they are legally obliged to do, then it is going to be a rocky road ahead. Hopefully your IPSEA rep should be able to advise on how to tackle the school as they need to recognise their obligations before this can move forward. Simon

Rabbit I am delighted for you, you have worked very hard to achieve this. Here's to a much better spring and summer than you ever expected! Simon

Please pass on my best wishes. She has been such a help to so many people, it's son unfair she has to go through this. Simon

We re in exactly the same position too, awaiting placement for September. Our son (7, aspergers) is very bright (98th percentile on maths and english when tested last year) but utterly unable to cope in mainstream. The school where we think he is likely to be placed is a school where most of the children are academically significantly less able. This appears to be a side-effect of an LEA policy that academically capable autistic children should be educated in mainstream with support, you have to really fight to get your child into special provision. The way we look at it is this: If he is remotely as stressed as he is now, by next year he won't be learning anything at all if he stays where he is. The goals for next year are to reduce his stress levels to a point where school is no longer a massively negative experience for him, rebuild his self-esteeem and teach him some social skills/coping strategies. For the moment, rapid academic progress is a 'nice to have', rather than being essential. The school say they will be able to do some additional academic work with him if he outstrips the others. We are also happy to do some extra work at home if it is needed. Hi self-esteem is so low at the moment that I can't help thinking having a year of being the cleverest in his class is exactly what he needs. I think sometimes it is possible to look too far ahead. For the next year at least, if we get this placement things will be moving massively in the right direction, and that is something we have not been able to say for a while. Simon

Well done for sticking to your guns. I think asking a parent to be present during a transitional period is OK, as long as the school don't abuse it. If it becomes a long-term need the school need to employ someone. Simon

It is the schools responsibility to provide the 7 hours. It is out of order for the school to put the responsibility on you to argue the case. They are legally obliged to make the provision in the statement and need to discuss any funding concerns with the LEA and not with you. Our school tried to do the same thing with us. We refused point blank to discuss finances with them and said we would be raising the issue with the LEA. The school backed down. You school wil have been allocated special needs funding. If schools are not used to having kids with special needs they can get used to fudging their budget and spending the mony on other things. If this is the case with your school thay only have themselves to blame. Sorry to go on, but this sort of thing winds me up a lot. You have been through all the staementing and the trauma. You should not have to argue the case all ober again. Rant over! Simon

Annie Congratulations on standing your ground so well. I think you have illustrated the importance of taking someone with you to these reviews, as it makes it so much harder to be fobbed off. You are evidently articulate, organised and not afraid to make connections and stand your ground. Despite all this the LEA have sent you and your son to hell and back. It is frightening to think how badly children must fare if they have parents who are unable to stand their ground so well. Best of luck with the follow-up meeting. Simon It must have been satisfying to see the culprits skewered though!

Jan Apologies for being late in replying to this thread. One of the things that separates children with ASD's from NT children is that tried and tested approaches that have been used for 30 years don't work. A headmistress that thinks she no longer has anytjhing to learn and cannot/will not grasp this simple fact is a nightmare. The end result is that she is unable to accept that the problem may well be that her approach is not right, so she then loks for ways to blame the parents. It is unjust and you shouldn't have to put up with it. How you approach the review meeting is hard to advise. Putting the actions of the headmistress aside for a second, you need to decide what it is that you are looking to get from the meeting, especially as your son will be moving to a new school. Specifically, you need to decide if you wish your child to continue in a mainstream environment. Specialist provision for academically able children is hard to come by, but it does exist. The basics you will be familiar with, i.e. looking through all the provisions within the statement to see if you fell thay have been met, if you feel they are still relavant, and is there any further provision required? There should be some kind of autism outreach team within the LEA that can advise mainstream schools that have children with Autistic children. As a minimum there should be a requirement that they visit the new school so any appropriate interventions can be identified. I know this will go against the grain, but please tread carefully. You may need to bite your lip and let the headmistress 'get away' with certinan things, at least for the time being, if you are going to get the best for your son. It's also worth phoning the LEA statementing officer and seeing if he/she can be present at the review, likewise try and take somone from CAMHS or Parent Parternship in woth you, as their prescence will keep any bullying behaviour by the headmistress in check. You should also communicate your concerns about how the review is being conducted. Good luck! Simon

Thanks for all the replies. There is still a way to go as we need to get all the professionals involved to have submitted their reports by the middle of next month as it's the last asessment panel before the end of the academic year, but things are moving in the right direction at long last. Meanwhile attentions turn to getting a statement for out 5 year old. He has recently been diagnosed as being on the spectrum a well, but we aare encountering considerable resistance from the school who are convinced he is fine because he doesn't cause them problems. (He is passive in the classroom and melts down when he gets home - sound familiar?) Luckily we have just recveived the report from the asessment unit he attended for 6 weeks or so earlier in the term, and that sets out his isues in clear and unambiguous terms. Not easy reading, but we are cautiously optimistic that things will proceed to a full assessment. We hould know in the next week or two. Thank god our 3 yo girl (NT) has taken to nursery school like a duck to water and our 18 month old is too young for it all! Simon

It probably doesn't seem like it right now, but J is a lot better off than he would have been if his mother wasn't fighting so hard for him. Simon

I'm on a roll now! Para 1.33 of the SEN code of practice (legally binding on all schools) Simon

Rabbit Just been pondering, and another thing about what you said bothers me. The preamble to the SEN code of practive says Part 2 of the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 amends the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to prohibit all schools from discriminating against disabled children in their admissions arrangements, in the education and associated services provided by the school for its pupils or in relation to exclusions from the school. If the schools involved said that they were not prepared to accept any more children in wheelchairs there would be a national outcry. The may state a desire not to accept more children with SEN, but legally they would probably not be able to enforce this. The onus is on the school to make suitable provision, not on you to agree to keep your child at home until a school volunteers to take him. Simon

Rabbit Our son has many of the same issues as J. He is 7, very bright (98th percentile for maths and english) and utterly unable to cope in a mainstream environment. 12k a year is expensive when you are paying your own way, but is not massively expensive by the standards of special school provision. It is possible that it costs less per place than the special school that J will be attending in September. Do a google search for an OFSTED report on the special school, and you will find the cost per pupil in the asessment. As the LEA have already kind of admitted that they cannot offer a specialist placement to meet J's needs, it might not be as implausible as it seems for the LEA to pay for J to go to the independent school. You have the option of threatening tribunal if they fail to find suitable provision. By way of comparison one of the two schools that our son could be going to next year is run by a charity and charges 23K a year in fees. Two of our friends with High Functionin Autistic children have children at the school funded by the lea. One of the children has ADHD as well. The school is all SEN (No mainstream) but I woud not let the sixe of the fees put you off asking the question. In the eternal game of cat and mouse that is placing a child with SEN in a school, threatening to request a place at that school above may well 'free up ' a place at an LEA special school which costs (according to OFSTED) about 9-10k per pupil that would also meet our son's needs. It's certainly worth making it clear to the LEA that you will be asking them to fund a place there if they are not willing to place him in the autism unit. I can't help thinking that if they need EBD's to get a placement in the Autism unit, the LEA only need to put J back in mainstream for 12 months and they will have all the EBD's they need! There is certianly no harm at all in asking what the LEA think. Simon

Rabbit Nice to hear from you, I was wondering how you were getting on! It is your LEA's responsibity to provide an education to meet J's requirements, not your responsibility to have a child that fits in with their provision. March is already very late in the year to arrange an alternative placement for J so you need to think carefully before re-opening that debate as rejecting the proposed provision is likely to leave you with limited home tuition or an unsuitable mainstream placement at best. The special school in September shouldn't be ruled out as , even if J is much higer functioning that the other children, it will still be an introduction into an environment where he is understood, with much lower stress levels than his last mainstream school. There is also the fact that there is nothing better on the table! If he is not being academically challenged enough, there are other ways of supplementing the provision in that area. From what you have said previously, I cannot see J successfully re-integrating directly into a mainstream environment in September. There would be no purpose in going down that route if he was back at home with his stress levels even higher, and in a mainstream school far from home, where he knows no-one, with little or no specialist ASD knowledge it seems highly likely that would happen. One route to consider is independent schools in your area who specialise in ASD's. I am sure there are some, you'll need to do some searching on the web to find them. You could than say the the LEA that, on the grounds they cannot meet your son's needs within a maintained school, would they please pay for your son to go private. My gut feeling is that you should send him to the special school in september as it will give J experiences of going to school for the day that are not wholly negative. It may be best to view it as something for the next 12 months. You could then spend the next year looking at a more relaxed pace for a more appropriate specialist setting. But you know your child best, and the above may be well off-beam! Good luck with whatever you decide. Simon

We had the emergency statement review for our eldest son (Aspergers, 7) at the school today. We had requested it because our son's stress levels were becoming intolerable. Like Jan in an ealier thread, our relationship with the school had broken down entirely. The root cause of this was that the school felt we should be incredibly grateful for the help were were getiing, rather than badgering them all the time about the areas of his statement provision that they were not meeting. At a meeting with the school a few weeks ago (without the LEA present) they stressed repeatedly that our son was very demanding, that staff were finding dealing with him incredibly stressful, and that it was not reasonable for us to ask for any more, at one point waving the statement in the air and saying we can't possible be expected to do all this. It's here that we enter the kind of 'twilight zone' that often happens on these occasions. At the meeting today the headmistress started by stressing that the school were meeting the provisions of his statement, and our son wazs making excellent progress. An offer to go through the statement clause by clause was declined! I think what goes on here is that schools are terrified of being seen to have fallen short. In the end an agreed line was arrived at where we as parents acknowledged the excellent efforts by the school (Some way removed from our perception of the way the last year has gone!) and they in turn acknowledged that his difficulties were such that he was no longer able to continue in a mainstream environment. With the exception of the headmistress everyone (including the LEA statementing officer) was brilliant. The headmistress spemt her time grunting and scowling! It's leaves a bit of a sour taste as the eventual end product glosses over things that maybe shouldn't be glossed over, , but we got what we wanted, which is that he goes to the special needs asessment panel next month with a view to finding a specialist placement for next year. Simon

Welcome Leasam, corcaigh and Jan! Glad you have joined us, you'll find lots of support and advice here! Simon

Our son (AS, 7) is a picky eater and a very slow eater. Wheras most children will wolf their lunch down and run out to play, he will sit and eat his lunch for half an hour or more. I think the school are happy to allow this because he struggles to cope with a whole lunchtime of unstructured play. We used to have major stress with getting him to eat more than a very few things, but he has got a lot better in the last 12 months or so. He is still picky, but it's manageable. Simon

You may wish to speak to your paed about melationin. It has far fewer side effects that tamazepan, which doesn't seem like the sort of drug that should be given to a child this young. Simon

Sally I sounds like the school LEA are, in avery gentle kind of way, telling you to back off and trust that the professionals know what they are doing. Never a good thing IMHO! The comment about your son coping at school and letting it out at home being common with ASD's , but it not really an issue for the statement as that focusses on education is a telling one, and an example of not quite understanding what is happening. Your son lets it out at home because school is stressful. Therefore the solution is to reduce the level of stress in the school environment via visual timetables, time-outs, better support of any one of a number of strategies. This is absolutely an educational issue and MUST be addressed in the statement. The idea that you need to improve your parenting skills and find after-school clubs I find a little scary, and betrays a lack of understanding. The whole point is that he finds the enforced social contact in school can be a bit much, and needs his downtime away from it. To say that he needs more of the same in his downtime as well is to completely misunderstand the dynamic. This re-inforces what I have come to believe inthe past few months, which is that many of the professionals involved with our children , however well-intentioned and helpful, simply do not "get it". Assuming your private EP has a sufficient undertanding of ASD's and you can afford the money I think you should go ahead. The report could prove to be absolutley invaluable. Simon

Well done Sally. You are absolutely right to press ahead with the appeal until yu have it in writing that they will assess. The LEA have betrayed your trust by not asessing so far, there is no way you should trust the outcome when they take a second look. Simon

Ant-depressants certainly have their uses and can (literally) be a life-saver. Where I have a problem with them is when the presription continues for years without any other plan to deal with the issues, or where anti-pepresants are just a substitute for understanding and dealing with an issue. So if a child needs anti-depressants for years on end to help them cope with school, they are in the wrong placement. It becomes a dilemma when that alternative placement is not available, and there are often no easy answers. Simon