How should LA calculate costs of placements?

[nicadh]

Just received LA documents for tribunal and they have only calculated the additional costs of SN provision in mainstream to compare against the costs of the independent ss that we have asked for. They have quoted previous judgements to back up their method of doing this - are they right or have they cherry picked what suits and actually they need to look at the costs of having her in mainstream in the first place too in all this? Hope that makes sense.

[Sally44]

This is a complicated one, because the LA are going to try to make it appear that there is such a wide difference. But here are some ideas.

 

At our tribunal we quoted coventry vs browne http://www.11kbw.com...8HollyStout.pdf [this is right at the end of this article].

 

My understanding of the interpretation of this [but please check with IPSEA], is that whatever your child needs are therapy or specialist teaching wise, that the costs have to be applied to both placements ie. to the LA maintained and the independent school.

 

So if the SALT is saying that it would cost £9.000 to deliver your child's SALT, the LA cannot claim they can deliver the same input for £2,000. The cost of £9,000 has to be applied to both placements. For the independent placement it would mean adding up the provision to see if that is all provided within their standard fees.

 

But you need to be careful about this. If you have an independent report stating xx hours of direct 1:1 SALT from a suitably trained SALT, then it is wise to get two quotes for the delivery of such a programme. That is what I did.

 

And regarding your parental choice of placement you need them to see the Statement and the independent reports and for them to confirm that they can deliver the therapy etc within their fees. You don't want to go to Tribunal and on the day have the Independent school or the LA say that the Independent School cannot provide 9 hours per term of SALT and that it would cost an extra £XXXX for the independent school to provide it.

 

It is really not wise to try to provide things as cheap as possible, or try to avoid meeting certain needs because you are afraid of the cost.

 

For example. Our parental choice of school for my son was about £42K at the time. But he had also recently received a diagnosis of severe dyslexia and dsycalculia, and our choice of school did not have any specialist teacher for SpLD. So we got a couple of quotes for a specialist teacher to go into the independent school for xx hours a week [as specified by our Independent EP], and the cost of that was £10,000 extra pa. The Tribunal Panel agreed this figure and ordered the LA to pay it. So, as scared as I would to ask for it, the Panel agreed with me and his Statement needed £52,000 to fund it. So don't try to brush needs under the carpet. Lay it all on the table, including the costs of it, and make sure your independent school can meet it all, and if they cannot don't panic - just get quotes for that additional therapy or teaching to be provided into your choice of placement.

 

If I had not got a quote for specialist teaching the LA would have argued that my choice of placement also could not meet all our son's needs - which would have been true and which would have put the Tribunal Panel in a dilema.

 

My LA claimed it cost them £2,500 for my son's placement in an 'enhaned resource' mainstream school. However, I had earlier written to the school SENCO and asked her how much funding my son's Statement drew for the school. She told me £11,500. Quite a difference, and one the LA did not know I had a figure for, and which made them look very sneaky.

 

The LA also claimed that they could provide ALL the SALT therapy for an additional £2,500pa. Whereas our SALT had detailed £16000, and the two quotes I got were actually even higher than this. The Tribunal Panel commented to the LA Inclusion Officer that they doubted the £2,500pa would even cover the SALT's travelling expenses to and from the LA maintained school! - which made me smile. The Panel are not daft. But you do need to lay out everything infront of them for them to make a decision on it. They cannot come up with figures themselves. They go on what is in the evidence [correspondence and reports] infront of them as detailed in the Working Document and Case Statement.

 

Sometimes you can find things via your LA website. I often went onto my own LA's website and would search for something like "SEN Budget" or "SEN Funding". I came across documents that detailed the funding banding for children in certain placements. As well as the budget for certain professionals input into the school such as 6 hours per year EP time. etc.

 

But preferably you want to prove that the LA school cannot meet your child's needs. You do that by getting the Statement so specific that it is clear the LA cannot provide it. You might achieve this via a number of different therapy inputs. But for an example. If your child has a diagnosis of Sensory Processing Disorder, and an OT report that states xx hours of Sensory Integration Therapy per term. I can guarantee that no LA maintained school provides this as standard. No NHS OT service provides this therapy as no PCT agrees to fund it. So the only way it can be provided is if the LA buys in OT time and equipment to deliver the therapy in school. Or you find an independent school that provides it as standard. Then your OT report must state that OT should be delivered 'flexibly across the week'. This means that if your child is unable to access the OT session on Monday at 1.30pm [as per his timetable], that the OT can slot him in at a later time on that day or on another day that week. No OT bought in by the LA can do that because they have a 'fixed' slot for when they go into school to see your child. If he is too anxious, or will not engage etc, the OT has to leave and come back next week. That is not meeting his needs because the therapy is not being provided.

 

Here is something on IPSEA website which is the kind of thing you need to consider when getting the Statement part 2 and part 3 very specific so that it is unambiguous and is clear as to what is supposed to be provided. The example in this article by IPSEA is for a certain kind of therapy. But the principle applies to whatever it is that your child needs in terms of therapy that cannot be delivered in a mainstream school and can only be provided in an independent ASD specific school that employs therapy staff on site that deliver the kind of therapy your child needs. http://www.ipsea.org...tion/Case30.pdf

 

Also look into transport. Don't accept the LA's transport figure. Ask your choice of placement if there is another child from your area who could share a taxi with your child.

Edited February 21, 2013 by Sally44

[nicadh]

Star! Thank you Sally. The LA have thankfully looked at a shared taxi for costs though will still be questioning the figure - perhaps I am wrong but the amount seems high as an additional cost for a taxi already running with one child.

 

OT and SALT already sorted for the independent provision. One of my main arguements is about noise in the class as she had APD in addition to other needs and can not cope in a busy classroom, so that is one of our main reasons to move to independent, but other things such as the SALT and OT on site will back this up nicely.

 

I'll check out the IPSEA link thank you and keep looking into the figures to be sure what they may or not be up to!

 

n

[Sally44]

You need the SALT and OT input to be very specific as well as the APD advice. If the Statement says things like "xxxx would benefit from" "access to" "as required" "when necessary" "significantly more" etc it means nothing.

 

From an OT viewpoint you want 1:1 therapy [hours detailed per week or term] and specific what kind of therapy it is for and what qualifications the OT must have. If they are to deliver a Sensory Processing Disorder programme the OT must have completed a certain number of modules to be able to deliver that therapy. And as already said the NHS do not provide it. They also do not provide any 1:1 therapy for Dyspraxia.

 

That leaves the LA having to buy it in [and your placement should provide it as standard - but please check because time and time again parents fall at this hurdle by assuming that because the school has an OT that they can deliver the therapy]. So your argument for only your placement being able to provide the therapy is that they have an OT employed on site "who can deliver the therapy flexibly across the week". AND if your child is likely to find it difficult to engage, or has high anxiety issues, then access to off curricular [ie. more OT therapy than that specified in their daily timetable], can be achieved if the OT is on site. But cannot be achieved if the OT comes in once a week for a one hour session. That is the difference you need to point out.

 

The same for SALT ie. 1:1 hours detailed per week/term from a suitably qualified SALT. A school with a suitable peer group for group therapy sessions [as social communication and interaction skills should also be included in the SALT report and go into the Statement].

 

The LA will try to demonstrate they could/can meet all the Statement. For example in our case my son did not have any OT input at all eventhough his Statement said the OT would draft an OT programme to be delivered in school. About a month before the Tribunal the LA wrote to me and said that they had agreed funding for an OT to go into his mainstream primary school for 3 hours a week for ALL those children that needed OT input.

 

So what we did was firstly we asked "how would xxxx access OT?" The response was via the school SENCO referring him. [Well the SENCO had never referred him, and she had never ensured that the OT programme detailed in his Statement was delivered, so I bought that up because if the only way he would access OT was via school concerns, then he would never be referred because school repeatedly said they had no concerns.]

 

We also asked if those 3 hours a week were just for our son. They weren't. They were for any of the children in the school. So those 3 hours did not meet his OT needs.

 

Secondly we asked what this OT's qualifications were. The LA never replied. And on the day they said they "did not know". So our argument was that the LA have tried to demonstrate they could deliver OT, however they have not actually employed anyone because they cannot say what qualifications the OT will have and the OT MUST have completed the Sensory Integration Modules to be suitably qualified.]

 

We talked about suitable peer groups for group therapy. I knew that the school had struggled to get a peer group together for his SALT programme and that that had ceased for 6 months because of that problem - which we pointed out to the Panel.

 

But more than any of these things [and there were similar issues with SALT], was the fact that my son had been out of school for about 12 months and the efforts the LA had made to reintroduce him to school were not making any difference.

 

We also highlighted that my son was under ClinPsych and CAHMS, but that the school had not had any contact with them because again they had no concerns. That ClinPsych and CAHMS did not go into his school and although they gave advice they were an 'acute' service and would not deliver on-going therapy or any kind of programme with him. Whereas our parental choice of school had a child psychotherapist who would work with our son in school.

 

I had also been to my GP about the lack of OT therapy for my son and he wrote to the head of the OT department who wrote back saying that the reason they did not deliver OT therapy was because the PCT did not fund it. And the reason they did not fund it was because if one child received it there would be other children who would seek referals off the back of my sons OT therapy. Even he GP said that was bizarre. So he wrote back again saying that "if you are saying that there is a client group who would benefit from xxxxx therapy, then surely there is a case for providing it." To which the Head of OT replied that the PCT simply would not fund it due to costs. [same as certain medication is not provided on the grounds of cost]. But having that correspondence was fantastic for me because the GP wrote to me and said that my son was falling inbetween the cracks of provision delivered by either education or health. And that in this case there simply was no way it could be provided in school because the LA could not buy in OT provision that they did not provide.

 

Does your child need a Sensory Integration Therapy Programme?

 

Also have a look at this link because it is very helpful in getting the Statement legally binding http://www.ace-ed.or...ght Mar2011.pdf

Edited February 22, 2013 by Sally44