call me jaded

Excellent!

I'm sure you get asked to do lots of things because you're able and reliable. It can be very draining and you may be better off doing fewer things and allowing yourself some time to recharge your batteries. Short notice demands are difficult to manage even for NTs and I usually work on the basis that if I accept a last minute thing something else that's more planned has to drop off my schedule. If I don't I hit a brick wall of exhaustion.

Don't think I've done anything yet. It seems to have touched a nerve with quite a few people - 160 members and I only know about a tenth of them. On the look-out for a suitable petition to link into.

Good question. It wasn't made clear in the announcement but let's assume traditional care home. People are going to be left with £22.30 per week “to spend on things of your choice, for example stationery, personal toiletries, treats, presents for friends and relatives”, not to mention clothing, your own TV or computer. Many go out with family, friends, buddies and care workers to family events, parties, holidays. My own son goes to a youth club and a social club. I would expect this to continue if he was in a care home because all that would have changed is my own ability to care. Not really twice. We have a Motability car AND a Taxicard because you can't use a Blue Badge in certain parts of central London and parking is outrageously expensive. It's particularly useful for hospital appointments, or sometimes my mum, who doesn't drive, will meet my son from school transport and take him to her house in a cab because I'm out with the other children. The mobility component is the gatekeeper to other benefits. I would expect Duncan-Smith to have been briefed on that. There is absolutely no incentive for LAs to change their criteria either because their local budgets have been slashed so this would be an easy win for them. A campaign would take a least a couple of years to affect change. We're not directly affected but someone has already started that campaign. Lots of parents tell me they have the same difficulty. Hope that helps!

Just a few examples of why the mobility component is important to care home residents: it can be used to buy a motorised wheelchair (current local NHS criteria for children for any wheelchair is that the child must need to use it indoors as well as outside) it gives automatic entitlement to a Blue Badge (again locally, no automatic entitlement, no badge) access to the London Taxicard scheme (locally, one outing a week at subsidised rates) Add in the gross inaccessibility of public transport in London as another factor (many buses go by without stopping), the likelihood that family members here are much less likely to have a car than elsewhere in the country, and so on. With LA social care budgets also getting slashed I don't think they'll see the running of minibuses as one of their priorities. We foresaw this and part of the Aiming High capital was spent on a new bus for the residential respite unit, full service and parts for five years.

Thanks to everyone who has signed: 128 members in a little over 24 hours. Personally I think it's going to push about a million people from survival mode into crisis. Iain Duncan-Smith's response to removing DLA was that care homes 'can provide transport for them'. What planet is he on?

Chris, in principle ESA sounds great, the reality is something else. There is really no need to join the cause but quite few have done so in the first 24 hours. It's just a way of expressing concern that people will be affected unfairly by the changes just because they are disabled. Despite politicians' promises of understanding the difficulties of being disabled, they clearly don't.

It's a real step backwards: elite unis will select on ability to pay rather than ability.

Go for it bluesbreaker! As long as you don't defame anyone by saying something that isn't true.

Thanks Chris. I don't have a problem with disabled people being supported into employment, but the ATOS system is flawed and (having been through it in September with my son) humiliating. There are plenty of case where the 'wrong' decision is made, the appeal system is lengthy and there is NO back-payment if the decision is overturned. ATOS is paid on turn down percentages and once ESA at the 'fit to work' rate is paid that lasts for one year and then people will be on jobseekers or nothing if they have a partner. The financial costs to being disabled are enormous as it is. 500,000 able people from the public sector are going to lose their jobs so why would an employer opt for someone with additional support needs over anyone else? It is condemning disabled people to poverty.

I will be creating a website/blog over the next few days that will have more of an explanation. One of the changes on benefits is that disabled people in residential care will have the mobility component of DLA removed. This will leave them £20 a week for personal care items (toothpaste, clothing) and absolutely zero for going out in the community. I don't call that 'fair' which is what the LibCons say these cuts are. I think it's targetting the people least likely to have a voice (or vote).

Nothing has depressed me more than the announced changes to disability benefits that are really going to hurt disabled people. I have set up a Facebook cause to raise awareness of what these cuts are going to mean. Please join the cause if you are able to and ask your friends to join too. We cannot take this lying down.

My LA is doing some research that is showing exactly this - the headteachers in the cluster group can't get enough of it.

The quoted DLA turnaround time is 11 weeks so there is plenty of time. Late returns take about three weeks if they're straight-forward and you enclose a recent (six months or so) assessment report.

That's it in a nutshell!

The OFSTED review of SEN was published in September 2010 and there's a fair few quotes in the press release about expectations being too low.

There are six of us and three have some kind of sensitivity, coeliac is in DH's family and my FIL died from cancer of the stomach. My ASD son has a much greater sensitivity than the other two so in our own case I would say it's not more likely but question wheter ASD has an effect on the severity. DS does seem to have disrupted metabollic processing of some kind.

Watching live: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11566509

I would go ahead with it on the grounds that it is too early to see any sustained changes so all of the provision must stay in place. From experience the fewer professionals at the review the better - means they aren't going to challenge what you and the school decide.

There is a fair bit of paranoia about sure enough. I tend to make small talk with parents first before saying anything at all to children, even the ones in my children's classes at primary school. My children have definitely been given the message (from school) that people are out there trying to groom them, even my seven year old. Having said that there was an attempted abduction from my daughter's secondary school a few weeks into the term and it was a Y7 girl who he approached. She got away and they caught him, thankfully. So it was a reminder to us all to be vigilant.

That's what I call dedication!

Agreed 100% Baddad. The downside is that DDA causes parents and carers to link autism and anger. Inability to control anger on its own is rarely a disability for which reasonable adjustments must be made. However link the anger to autism (as in an inability to recognise the emotion, etc) and it definitely will be seen as something that must be taken into account. I've spent a great deal of time this term already with a student and a secondary school where we are trying to find the boundaries of behaviour that must be sanctioned, extreme impulsiveness that can be a danger to other pupils, and giving the pupil a chance in mainstream education. I'm really not sure where it'll go yet, but it will balance on whether he can implement the strategies he has been given. In this instance it's been quite useful to be able to cite several autism experts who link anger with the condition.

I'm sorry if this is going to sound confrontational but speedy and extreme anger in an autistic person to something that may seem trivial to someone else is a known phenomenon. There is plenty of research out there. Tony Attwood does a fair job of describing the kind of difficulties experienced in not being able to recognise emotions (and therefore gain control of them) in 'A Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome'. It's one of the things that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy can address.

Hopefully I've tidied up how the thread looks. Just wanted to say how 'sane' you sound, if that's not patronising. All credit to you for keeping it all together.

I think you need to get to the bottom of why the placement has been withdrawn - is the school saying she is too big a risk? What age is she? Was the placement named in a statement or accessed some other way? Recommend you get some legal advice as it doesn't sound as if the SW team are following correct procedures.