lisa

Fantastic news. I'm really pleased for you. Lisa

Shouldn't the LEA give a date of when the provision in the proposed statement will start irrespective of the details being finalised? My daughter's provision started on 1st October but we're still to-ing and fro-ing with the LEA trying to sort out the wording and haggling over how many hours she's going to get. In her proposed statement, in part 3, it says "from 1st October 2006......will receive....." and so on. Lisa

My youngest AS is mixed dominance and so am I. We're both write right handed, and at the moment she seems similar to me, I have a tendency to use whatever hand is nearest. I can use most things equally well with either hand, I can write left handed but it feels more comfortable to use my right hand. I eat left handed. When my daughter was having an OT assessment it got me thinking about how I do things. I started trying to monitor which hand I used for different tasks but it's always very inconsistent. It's probably laziness!! Kettle's near my left hand, tap near my right so that's the hands I use IYKWIM!! I also found out (not sure how) when I was younger that I can mirror write just as quick as normal writing. A bit weird. My grandad was also mixed. I've never seen anyone else be able to do this but he could write with both hands at the same time and write different things. It was a bit of a party piece he did for us grandkids. Lisa

We've had a lot of problems with pharmacies as well. The best place to get them is the hospital pharmacy and our consultant now prescribes 6 months supply at at time. As my daughter has an appointment every 6 months we're ok most of the time. In america you can buy them over the counter in health food shops so when we were on holiday we stocked up on them for emergencies. I quite often take them, they're very good!!! Lisa

After a very difficult year with one particular teacher I bought a book as a final parting gift. It was called "Could Do Better" !!!!!!! I couldn't resist. Lisa

Thanks Carrie. Looks like it could be even more likely that she may be dyslexic. Lisa

Just noticed Carrie that you said they tested tracking. My daughter in an OT assessment scored on the 10th percentile for tracking and has quite a few problems with this. Missing out letters, words etc. when reading, even though she is a good reader. She has a plastic sort of ruler thing with a hole cut out so she can only see the line she's supposed to be reading. I didn't realise that this could be part of dyslexia. Lisa

Thanks for the replies. My daughter has had two IQ tests over the past 3 years so not sure they would do another one. This is the reason it was queried as to whether she does have dyslexia because her full scale IQ is 88th percentile, reading was 39th and spelling 24th percentile (maths 4th percentile!!!). That combined with her low score information processing and poor decoding skills indicated possible dyslexia (and dyscalculia!!). They didn't diagnose dyslexia though. I wonder why? So it sounds as though it's more of a general assessment procedure like the one for ASD's rather than an actual "test". Lisa

My daughter has a diagnosis of AS. She is performing academically on the low side of average. She's a good reader but her spelling is much weaker (24th percentile). It was noted she has poor decoding and slow information processing skills. In a private EP report there is concern that she may have dyslexia. Her father has quite severe dyslexia and we know it can be hereitary. I suppose I sort of dismissed it a bit because she's a good reader it seemed unlikely to me that she could be dyslexic. At an event recently the local Dyslexia Association had a stand and my eldest daughter collected some leaflets. Going over the checklist my AS daughter does seem to tick the majority of the boxes. Through a bit of research it appears that the fact that she's a good reader doesn't mean that she doesn't have dyslexia. People with dyslexia go to university and get degrees. In fact a friend of mine disclosed that she has dyslexia but she did 'o' levels and had a good job in a bank before having kids. I didn't want to approach the school and ask for testing, to be honest I feel a bit embarrassed that the school will think I'm neurotic as I'm not convinced she does have it. I can't seem to get past this "but she's a good reader, she can't be dyslexic" thing. So we contacted the local the Dyslexia Association and have now booked a private assessment for next month. What I wanted to know is, how do they test for dyslexia? Is it conclusive and a definite test? Like she either has it or she doesn't, definite, end of story. Not open to negotiation. I'm asking because the LEA did appear to question whether my daughters AS diagnosis was correct because it was a private assessment. The NHS paediatrician and SALT ended up writing to them confirming that in their opinions there was no question, she definitely fits the criteria for AS. It's just got me wondering how they know if a child has dyslexia. Lisa

Curra Congratulations. That's fantastic news. Lisa

It's my understanding that the LEA can force the school to accept a child and overturn their decision. A mainstream school would have to have a very good argument as to why they couldn't cope with a child who has only been awarded 17 hours in a statement!! You have the right to appeal to SENDIST (again!!!) and SENDIST can order the LEA to name the school. You have a very strong case. One minute the LEA are saying Luke's fine and doesn't need any additional help at all and the next a mainstream school is saying it can't meet his needs!!!! Sounds barmy to me. To make a parent go to tribunal to assess, then tribunal to make a statement (even though you didn't have to attend it still counts as you won the case) and then make them go back again for refusing to name parental preference school. Disgraceful. I don't think SENDIST will be very pleased. Make it clear to the LEA that you will not be accepting this decision and plan to appeal. They'll know that they won't stand a hope in hell. Lisa

In our case our son sounds similar to yours when he was 6 and luckily for us things did get easier as he got older. The running away had practically stopped by the time he was about 8 or 9 (he's 12 now) which makes things a lot easier to cope with when out and about. Although he still does have a tendency to get distracted by things and I still lose him occasionally but I can usually backtrack and work out where he'll be from what probably caught his eye. With the sleeping we now use melatonin and story cds which usually does the trick. Dressing we use rewards. He has to be fully dressed, shoes on, breakfast, teeth brushed before he's allowed the telly on or to use his playstation. We get him up early enough to allow him about 30 mins. If he rushes and gets ready mega fast he has more time on the ps2 which works well. My kids stress out if I try to rush them so I find it helps to get everything ready the night before as well so there's no last minute rushes in the morning. We lay the clothes out, shoes and book bags, PE kits by the door, packed lunches made and in the fridge, even brush and hairbands laid out. I've even been known to make packed lunch sandwiches for the week in seperate sandwich bags and put them in the freezer. I think I'm a bit AS myself. Lisa

My daughter's school will teach any language at GCSE wherever possible. If a child speaks for example Turkish at home they can then do a GCSE in Turkish if they want. In another local school which has language college status my friends son is learning Mandarin!!!! Lisa

congratulations!! Lisa

I have 3 kids in 3 different schools (2 different boroughs also). I was adamant that I wanted my NT daughter to go with her AS twin brother, if truth be known to look after him. She wanted to go to the school her friends were going to which was all girls but she was also worried about her brother and sort of wanted to be with him too. She is fantastic with him and has always been a bit of an old woman about him. It was a hard decision to make. She went to the girls school and he's doing fine without her. She is flourishing. I think for the first time in her life she's her own person. When we go to parents evening we only talk about her, not autism!!! I have 2 AS kids and she's my only NT child, which can be hard on her. I think it was for the best. I don't think she'll ever stop caring for him or worrying about him but at least at school she gets a break from having to think about his needs all the time. I do wonder who the mum is at times, she has a right go at him if he's late home or she's tried to phone him and he doesn't pick up. She watches out for his bus after school. It's quite sweet really. Lisa

My son's "provision map" is very similar to an IEP but has more on it. It briefly explains his disability, core difficulties, quantifies the TA hours he gets, social skills, life skills, typing classes he goes to, what outside agencies are coming in to him etc. It has the clubs he attends on it. It has his targets for the year and because he's in secondary school and has lots of different teachers, it lists the teachers names and each are allocated an area to work on or action to take during their lesson. It also has his current attainment on it. We get to see it at parents evenings (which is twice a year) or whenever we want if we decided to contact the senco for a meeting. If agreed they/we can add things or change things at any time of the year as appropriate. It is a lot better than his IEPs at primary school because you know exactly what provision he's getting and when as well as his targets. The downsides are it is only a yearly thing, instead of three seperate IEPs so you don't get the paper trail if you're gathering evidence for statutory assessment or re-assessment. For us this isn't a problem (at the moment!) because he has a statement already and is doing very well. It's the first year he's had a "provision map" and so far we haven't had "outcomes" like you do with an IEP so don't actually have on record a copy of how successful he has been at meeting his targets. I'm not sure whether we will get one when we go to parents evening this term but if not it's something we'll be asking about. Lisa

This was my first thought too. Lisa

If you think your child has ASD keep pushing. The ed psych insists that my daughter doesn't stand out in any way from any other child in classroom observations and if she'd had anything to do with it she would never have got a diagnosis. Lisa

Is your tribunal in London? We had an IPSEA rep help us and he was absolutely fantastic, he presented a brilliant case. Good luck. Lisa

PSA I'm so, so pleased for you and Luke. This is fantastic news. The LEA know they don't stand a chance at tribunal. Lisa x

Lizzie It wasn't easy, took me 2 and a half years and a tribunal. Basically I made phone calls and wrote letters to all professionals begging for help. I explained our worries, my daughter was 8 and at the time had already made suicide threats and was doing mild self harming. I am ashamed to say I did cry quite a few times in meetings with SALT, Paediatrician, ASD outreach and Ed Psych. I told them that as a family we couldn't take much more and if she didn't get help I felt I had no other option but to take her out of school. I suppose I wanted to make them feel guilty that they were failing my daughter so badly. As you know it's so hard when you see your child suffering so much and nothing you do seems to make the slightest difference. I'm normally quite a shy person but in the end I blatently asked professionals straight out to write in support of our case and badgered them. I got everyone I could think of to write something for the assessment, family members, Ls sister, anything that would support our case. I really felt like they didn't believe what she was like outside of school so had to get anyone I could to corroborate it. If I managed to get a professionals email address, I'd email them every so often to make sure they remembered us. When we applied for assessment I wrote to everyone to refresh their memories about Ls case and told them that we'd applied for a statement. I said that the LEA would contact them and stressed how important it was they submitted something for us, I also said if they didn't receive a request from the LEA could they send something anyway and gave them the address and time scales. Bit neurotic I know but it seemed to work because she's just got her statement this week. It's truly disgraceful that we have to go to such lengths, we have enough to cope with looking after our ASD kids without having to fight so hard to get their needs met. Lisa

My daughter is exactly the same. I'm positive it's to do with school. My daughter's so much calmer in the school holidays, it's been lovely this summer and I really don't want her to go back. She's starting already, she always does when it's time to go back. She's getting moody and short tempered. I'm sure it's stress. It really has been a battle to try to get the school to recognise the problem and unfortunately I still don't think they really believe me. By all accounts she an absolute angel in school. Luckily through a lot of hard work and persistence, photocopying anything I could find that corroborates the jekyll and hyde behaviour of some AS kids, and asking every professional involved with my daughter to acknowledge this in their reports, I've finally managed to get a statement for her. So it can happen!! Lisa

Congratulations Auriel

Congratulations, well done Phas Jnr Lisa

Thanks. I've been through it a few times (quite a few!) and there are things that need to be added but hopefully the LEA will be ok with these. They put them into my sons statement without a fuss a few years back and she's already getting the support anyway on SA+ so I can't imagine they'd object (I hope). The first is SALT. I'm happy enough with the level she gets which is a termly visit by a therapist and a program delivered through her social skills group. Although it mentions the SALT program in part 3 and has extended it to include LSA input of the SALT program (which is something we wanted), it doesn't quantify the termly SALT visits. The second is the ASD outreach input. It refers to advice and training for the LSA from ASD outreach but appears to leave it up to the school when to call them in (although it doesn't say this). I know she'll receive some visits from them as she does already on SA+ but would like this quantified. Again I'd be happy with termly visits. There's no mention of keyboard skills training either which I also want written in. So all in all not too much at the moment. I'm waiting to hear from IPSEA to see what they think. I'm sure I'll find other stuff throughout the week. Is there anything else that it'd be useful to get added? Any ideas would be welcome. Lisa