Help please - ANNUAL REVIEW and not received forms

[madsadie]

Hello

 

We are supposed to be going to the Annual review meeting on Monday but have not received any reports or forms to complete. this is an Early review ( a month earlier than scheduled)

What should i do? We have a very complicated case, have been to tribunal last year and upper tribunal regarding school placement.

My son had to go to the LA school and it has been a disaster - he has been at home for most of the last year, and has not attended at all since January.He is now 15 and has been left with nothing to do for weeks. So, I am keen to find out what the LA's suggestion is. However I don't think we should be going to AR without having had the papers?

 

I would be really glad for some advice.

 

thanks

[bjkmummy]

i dont have any real advice but that is terrible that they have given you nothing to go on. did you call the early review or was it the lea? code of practice does say that you should have reports 2 weeks before the review

[Sally44]

Firstly you went to appeal and lost.

You had to have the LA placement. This has not worked.

I would attend the early review anyway and leave them to tell you what they suggest. Don't be drawn into telling them what you want. You say something like "we want our child to be happy to go to school and to learn and to retain that learning." It is up to them to state HOW they are going to achieve that. But do ask them HOW they intend to do it.

 

Make sure the AR is minuted by yourself, or your spouse or any friend that can come with you to take notes.

Find out if there are any reports, and if there are, ask for a few minutes to read through them before the beginning of the meeting.

 

After the meeting send a letter to the SENCO and copy that to the LA stating that you are very unhappy that you were not provided with reports two weeks prior to this Review as per the SEN Code of Practice.

 

If no reports are provided, I would word it even stronger stating that you are very concerned that your child has been out of school for xx months and that no education has been provided for him at all, and an early review was called, and that no-one had seen your child or produced any reports, or gave you any indication of HOW they intend to reintroduce him to school.

 

I would wait for the outcome of the Review, and appeal again. I was told that no SEND Panel will recommend that a child is placed at a school they are currently refusing to attend. And that was the decision of our Tribunal.

 

Did SEND word the Statement, and has that provision been supplied by the school? Have all his needs been identified in part 2.

 

Why do you think the placement has broken down?

 

You now have evidence that things have deteriorated and that the placement has effectively broken down.

 

Is your child under ClinPsych or CAHMS? You need them involved to back you up that his school refusal is due to him not coping in school. Ask them to put in writing that your son is not in school due to anxiety [which is a medical condition]. You need that so that the LA/school don't involve the Education Welfare Officer. And once you have that letter your child has a legal right to tuition at home, or another suitable environment. But you need the consultants letter that it is due to anxiety or any other medical grounds [ASD is a medical disorder].

 

Why is he refusing school? Is it anxiety?

 

What placement were you seeking last time, and what independent reports did you go to the Appeal with?

[Sally44]

My son was out of school for 11 months and received a further diagnosis of an Anxiety Disorder, and now has OCD.

 

We won our appeal.

 

But we had two meetings in school, attended by the SENCO, parents, Social Services, Inclusion Officer, EP, SALT and OT. And they kept trying to get us to say what we wanted. We kept batting the ball back into their court by saying that THEY are the professionals. They should be advising the school on how the school and professionals can support our son back into school. It was farsical to see those people spent an hour trying not to commit themselves to anything.

 

They came up with an idea for a MLD teacher to collect him from home supposedly to take him for some things he might enjoy such as swimming and trampolining. That never happened and I wrote to the school/LA stating that the teacher informed me she was not qualified to do those things with my son. What she did do was take him into school for two 1.5 hour sessions a week. My son had to be taught 1:1 in the store room because he was too anxious to meet anyone else or go into his classroom. He would not go outside to play or meet with other kids. He usually demanded to go back home and returned within the hour. We documented every session and what he said happened and what the teacher said had happened. After some months we had the Appeal and the Panel agreed that it was unlikely he would ever return to his former school.

 

He was at a primary school that was classed as enhanced resource because it had a high number of ASD children within the mainstream part of the school. They also had an autism unit, but my son was too cognitively and socially able for that to be a suitable peer group. The LA had nothing else they could offer us.

 

We also wrote to professionals [sALT, EP, OT and specialist teaching services] and the school to establish what qualifications they had, and how many professionals they had, and what was their caseload, and what qualifications the professionals had to meet each of our sons needs.

 

It turned out the school and LA had no-one in their specialist teaching services for a child with ASD, or Dyslexia. So we could prove to at the Hearing that they did not have anyone suitably qualified to meet my sons needs. The LA did provide his former school with funding for a part time OT. We proved she was not qualified to deliver a Sensory Integration Programme [which my son needed for his Sensory Processing Disorder], and the school had no room they could dedicate to this therapy.

 

We also found out that there was only one Autism Outreach Teacher with a caseload of about 200 children. So she could only dedicate 1 day per child per year [which is obviously not enough]. There was one specialist teacher, but with no additional qualifications for either ASD or Dyslexia, and she too covered all the mainstream schools. She admitted she did not even go into my son's school because it was "supposed" to have that expertise themselves. But the letter from the school confirmed they had no-one.

 

At Tribunals the LA and their witnesses tend to turn up and promise to do everything. You need to demonstrate that they cannot provide it or cannot provide it to a level for it to be effective provision for your child.

 

So I would recommend you appeal again. We originally appealed in 2009 and got alot of what we were asking for, but not the placement. Like you, the placement broke down and we appealed again in 2011 and we won.

 

Also include that you want him to learn life skills, and to reach his potential so that he can be a useful and independent member of society.

 

Your child is now 15. This is the most important time in school that decides his qualifications etc. He has been out of school for a year. What is the school/LA providing for him?

 

The fact that he is not in school proves that the current Statement and the provision and placement it details is not sufficient to meet your son's needs.

 

Did your parental choice of school go up to age 19?

 

Is your child cognitively able and in a mainstream secondary school? Does your LA have an autism unit at any of their secondary schools?

Edited March 24, 2012 by Sally44

[bed32]

Certainly they are not following the rules. The regulations make it clear that they need to give the evidence 2 weeks in advance. However there is nothing you can do about that at this stage.

 

I don't think the process necessarily matters provided that you get an appropriate outcome. If you are not happy then you can insist that they do things properly - but all that is likely to do is delay the whole process.

 

If you feel confident to put your views across in the meeting you seem to have nothing to lose by going along. Probably ask them at the beginning why they haven't sought and distributed the reports. Then you can argue for the review you want, and if they don't agree then insist that they do it properly. It may be that the school has already decided to say that they are not the right place,

[Sally44]

You also have the experience of having been to a Tribunal, so you know what to expect.

 

You also know why your first appeal failed, and so you should be able to address that at a second Tribunal.

[Sally44]

Good luck for tomorrow, and let us know how it goes.

 

Remember that there have been changes to the right of Appeal. After a Review of the Statement and the LA's decision, parents can now appeal whether the LA decide to amend the Statement or not. And you can appeal any part of the Statement.

[madsadie]

Hello everyone

Just to say thank you for all your speedy replies and words of encouragement . Unfortunately it was a complete farce. There were no reports and they expected me to fill mine in on the spot. I refused of course. No one took any notice of me and I wish we had taken someone with us. I did record on a voice recorder.

 

We received their reports a couple of days ago and I am sickened by the untruths. I can't go into any more detail because it would take all night , but have phoned IPSEA today and am waiting for a call back. Yet another holiday stressing over paperwork!

 

thanks again to those who replied and good luck to any one else going through all this.

[Sally44]

What was the outcome of the review?

Were they talking about how to get him back into school?

Are they going to put together any plan?

Who attended the AR?

Was anyone there from the health side ie. Clinical Psychology or CAHMS [if any of those are involved].

 

Remember that whatever the outcome [if the LA decide to amend or not to amend], you now have the right to appeal.

 

And if you do appeal remember the key points that win tribunals:-

 

Lack of Progress [in any area eg. academic, social, emotional, behavioural] of deterioration. If your son is out of school he will be deteriorating in all those areas.

Increased Autistic Behaviours or Anxiety due to not coping.

His current school being unable to meet his needs. [and if he is refusing to go he has voted with his own feet and a SEND Panel is very unlikely to rule that he remains at that placement].

 

The difficulty, as you know, is getting reports that do identify each and every need so that you can prove his current school cannot meet them. And I know it is costly.

 

Are you clear as to WHY you failed to get the placement of your choice last time? Do you think that that/those issues can now be addressed?

 

Type up what is on the recorder, because you can't submit tapes as evidence. Don't wipe clean the tape incase the LA challenge the minutes. If you only used one recorded, don't be surprised if next time they insist that you double record it so that any LA inclusion officer can walk away with their own copy. But the fact that they have let you record this meeting has kind of set a precedent.

 

We had two MDT meetings. I recorded the first. At the 2nd the Inclusion Officer refused to allow me to record it unless I could give her a second copy of the recording. I said if that was the case then we would have to cancel the meeting until I could get another recorder. Thankfully everyone else at the meeting was okay with the recording, and the psychiatrist knew how to rig up a desk top computer with a mic - so we could proceed.

 

Don't worry if the meeting was a farce. And if they spent alot of time talking, but deciding nothing and trying to pass the buck from department to department. That just looks even better for your case. Your child has been out of school for xxx months time and these minutes demonstrate that nothing significantly different or extra is being suggested to try to get him back into school.

 

If there any other placement that the LA could offer that might be able to meet his needs eg. Autism Unit at another mainstream secondary school?

 

If there is you must visit it, and get detailed information about the qualifications of those in the unit [especially relating to autism or any other difficulty he has], ask if any other children have the same combination of diagnoses as your son. Ask them if Clinical Psychology or CAHMS professionals go into the school and/or give advice to the teaching staff.

 

An important point we argued was that my son had extreme anxiety [and actually went on to get a diagnosis of an Anxiety Disorder]. In ALL our LA autism units in secondary school the model was to feed children across for some or all lessons. That would not work for my son. He needed a small class, low arousal environment of no more than 8 peers.

 

You also need to know if the unit has children with a similar emotional and behavioural profile. If they are less capable socially or have disruptive or challenging behaviour, and that is not what your son is like, that that is another reason it would be inappropriate.

 

Our children must be in a similar peer group. The fact that your child is refusing school is almost certainly also due to the fact that he is not in a similar peer group. He is with mainstream children and is not coping with that.

Edited April 5, 2012 by Sally44

[Sally44]

Remember too that you have to be seen to be cooperating with any Plan they come up with.

Just remember to get everything in writing and start to write a chronology of what your son is like [what he says and does] every day.

 

If the LA does come up with a Plan, make sure you find out about the finer details of it.

For example they arranged for my son to be collected from home by a specialist teacher and taken to his old school. They said he would be taught in the autism unit. It turned out they did not take him into the actual classroom because those children in the unit would not cope with that [that was additional evidence that the unit was not suitable for my son]. They actually taught him in the store room because he refused to go into his class and he refused to see anyone else and he refused to go into the playground. I talked to this teacher every day for her to tell me what he said and did and recorded it all down. Then I talked to my son and asked him what he had done etc.

 

By law the LA should provide home education after a child is out of school for 2 weeks. But my LA refused to do this without a letter from a health consultant stating that my son was off school due to medical reasons. ASD and Anxiety are medical disorders. So you may need to push a medical consultant to do that for you. Or check with IPSEA if it is a legal requirement for this - because I never found out if it was. My GP did write a letter to the LA after speaking with the Psychiatrist, but the LA would not accept that either. But the EWO did.

 

If you think it would be helpful you can submit DVD evidence, but you have to try to do it without the child knowing they are being recorded. We used a digital camera that we left out on the worktop for a couple of days before we starting recording so that my son got used to it being around. We recorded how he responded to any work I attempted to get him to do, and how emotionally volitile he was throughout the day, and how his autistic behaviours had increased, and how poor his language and social communication was [when it was stated it was around average!].

 

I do really feel for you, having gone to a tribunal to consider having to do it again. But now maybe your best chance of winning.

 

Have you looked at any independent schools, and has your son visited them and liked them?