school choices

[leemahaha]

I am hoping for some advice on a difficult question

 

my five year old son has just started primary school.

 

the school psychologist has just assessed him and thinks he shows signs of mild asbergers.

 

she said she felt he was a bright little boy but he was struggling to concentrate in his class of 24 kids.

 

she wondered how we felt about referring him to an asd unit !!!!! Or we had the option of extra supports in his class.

 

What do i do ????

 

the unit may be less distracting but if his needs are mild and he is then in a group of children with higher needs

will he learn more negative behaviours so find it harder to mix with local children and will he fall behind in his schoolwork so never be able to cope in mainstream.

 

Plus the school he is in is a little village school with great staff . I live in Lanarkshire and i dont get to choose a unit but the two options are <Edited by moderator> and a school in Lanark. Both about six miles or so away from me so id be facing the prospect of him having to get in a taxi with some stranger to get to school.

 

or

 

will it help him ?? because although i have all these concerns i want the best for him

 

other parents must have been in a similar position , what did you decide and how did it work out ?

 

grateful for any comments

Edited November 27, 2011 by mossgrove
Remove names etc.

[justine1]

Hi and welcome <'>

 

I am guessing your son has not got a clinical diagnosis? An educational psychologist cannot diagnose aspergers so if she suspects he may have aspergers you may want to look at getting a referral from your GP so that he can be diagnosed(or not.)

 

Another thing is,not sure how it works where you are,but children generally have to have IEP's and be on school action plus before even been considered for specialist help. To get into an ASD unit the child usually has to have a statement of special education needs which takes about 6 months to obtain,if it goes in your favour(not always the case.)

 

I think the ed psych may be jumping the gun a little here,I do understand why this may be because in reception there are no real expectations and targets that a child should reach,it is more free play. However when a child is in year 1 and 2 things become more difficult and children with special needs start to struggle,so she may be wanting to get the ball rollling now in preparation. With my son age 8 now,we started noticing more problems towards the end of year one and we started the statement process about 4 months into year 2. He now attends an ASD unit where he is very happy.

 

I have to say I do understand your concerns with regards to him copying behaviours at the unit,also you have to like both the unit and the school itself because the children are re-integrated back into mainstream. At the moment my son is at the unit 70% and in a mainstream class 30% by the time he reaches the end of year 6 the hope is that he is either in mainstream class full time or at least 70% (so the reverse of what it is now.)I had a fight to get him into the unit he is in because I was offered the nearest unit, the unit at that school was great but I absolutley hated the school,it has a very bad reputation.

 

With the copying of behaviours I have seen that with my son but it is not that extreme,the staff do explain things to the children so that they do not copy and also the sanctions they have in place mean the children would not want to copy because they do not want to get into trouble. With the education side my son is really flourishing,the smaller class means he can concentrate more and his behaviour has improved so much.

 

I do think you need to speak to the psych more about this and see where to go from there. If you want to you can still go view the other schools and see what they have to offer him. My 5 year old who also has ASD attends a small mainstream where he is doing fine,just because he has ASD does not mean he needs support if his needs change then I will reconsider.So you may chose to keep him where he is for now especially if he is happy.

[Sally44]

We had similar worries. Only our EP's verbal advice to us about a unit was denied by the LA, as if it had never taken place

 

Anyway, he stayed mainstream in a class that was classed as 'enhanced resource' because it had extra staff and there were about 5 children in a class of 20 with an ASD. The other children were low academic achievers - but all still mainstream.

 

At the time I had the same concerns as you. The ASD unit had more severely autistic children in it [however you need to visit the options yourself to see what the children are like and talk to the staff]. But the environment was right - small groups of 7 children.

 

But I thought he might socialise more mainstream, and they promised support etc so he stayed mainstream.

 

It didn't work.

 

My son became very anxious. He could not concentrate in the class and found it very frustrating. I found written notes [i later did a Data Protection Act search] in the SALT notes which stated he used to become very distressed in class and would remove himself into the corridor to do his work.

 

We also found out [further down the line] that he also had dyslexia and dyspraxia. So, due to the combination of diagnosis he had he was not performing well academically, socially, from a sensory or physical point of view due to sensory processing and dyspraxia. So there was no area he was doing well in. This affected his confidence and self esteem.

 

He refused school in Jan 2011, and developed various nervous habits and tics. He has now been given a further diagnosis of an anxiety disorder. By this time he was self harming and threatening suicide.

 

Whilst all this was going on school were saying everything was fine and did not refer to any other professionals or provide any further support at all.

 

We were referred to CAHMS and Clinical Psychology who said his behaviour was typical of a child not coping in school.

 

We recently had an educational tribunal and we won. The Panel ordered that he went to the parental choice of school, an independent ASD specific school that has speech therapists and occupational therapists on site. Class sizes are up to 8, with work being 1:1, or 1:3. The Tribunal Panel also ordered that a dyslexia teacher had to be provided for 3 hours a week. My son moved to this school recently [he is still a year 6 pupil] and will remain there until 19. It is for students who are average cognitive ability or above.

 

It all depends how your son is coping, what his difficulties are, where you think he could/should be for secondary school.

 

If you keep him mainsteam, he may or may not cope. If he isn't coping he may/may not get extra support. If it fails, you may still have an option of an ASD unit, or they may all be full. You would then need to go to an educational tribunal for his primary placement. It is not often that parents win an independent primary placement.

 

In which case you would have to cope with where he was [which could even be out of school] and consider an independent secondary school [but that would definately mean an educational tribunal and you would almost certainly need to spend money on independent reports, independent witnesses etc.

 

The other option is that you move him to the ASD unit and see if he makes progress [academic, social and emotional progress] and see if he copes. There is usually at least one local authority mainstream secondary school with an ASD unit and he would/could feed into that for secondary transfer, and he maybe fed across to mainstream for some or all lessons??? It depends how they do it.

 

Regarding local children/friendships etc. Our children struggle to make and keep friends. My son has no local friends. And those he did have have tailed off because their social skills are now way infront of my sons and it makes things awkward.

 

My son did join Cubs for a while, but stopped going due to anxiety. Your son could keep in touch with school friends via beavers or similar.

 

Don't know if that helps or not??

 

If they are thinking of an autism unit, does he have a Statement?? Usually a Statement is needed to secure such a placement? And if the EP is suggesting it, then she must be doing that for a reason.

Edited November 27, 2011 by Sally44