ammending SEN statment

[jollypig]

My dd attends a special school since the statment was put in place she has been diagnosed with autism school are failing big time although they dont seem to think so.

she plans to leave school in July, is it worth me going through the process to have suitable autism provision put into her statment ?

 

Her annual review is on Monday

[bed32]

You mean she is intending to leave education in July - in that case I would say it is not worth it. A diagnosis of Autism doesn't bring with it any particular provision or therapy that would automatically help your daughter, so there would need to be a proper multi-disciplinary assessment - it would be highly unlikely that that could be completed in time to have a statement in place before July.

 

However if you think they are failing you can go into the annual review and ask for changes in the statement or provision to reflect those failings, but again hardly time now before July

[jollypig]

thanks for the reply thats what i thought

[Sally44]

SEN legislation is going to change. They are saying that a Statement could cover a young person up to age 24. I would get advice from either the national autistic society or IPSEA. IPSEA now have a telephone booking appointment system.

 

The Statementing process takes 26 weeks from start to finish, and you may need to appeal to SEND about the contents in part 2, 3 or 4.

 

How old is your daughter. Many independent schools now go up to age 19 and then there maybe college after that. So it may be worth doing.

[jollypig]

She is almost 16 and wants to go to residential college although i suspect i will have a fight on my hands with the LEA.

[bed32]

In that case I would say it is well worth trying to get the statement amended as soon as possible.

 

I am not sure how the system works at that age, but if she is thinking of changing school/college this year shouldn't the LA already have proposed the new placement? They certainly do for the primary-secondary transition.

 

Given that you have got to this stage, the formal diagnosis of autism may not give you much more in the way of understanding her needs.

 

Unfortunately if the school is failing, but doesn't acknowledge the fact, then you will need some outside expert to support you and recommend changes - will there be an EP or similar at the review on Monday? If not you are going to need an independent EP to assess and make recommendations otherwise the LA will go with the school's opinion

[Sally44]

And you can also find evidence that she has not made progress, or has fallen further behind etc via her KS results, IEP targets not being met etc. What you need professionals to carry out are standardised assessments which give a baseline reading of strengths and weaknesses. It will also tell you what her cognitive ability is. As an example, my son scores average for cognitive ability, with some strong areas of ability and some specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia/dyscalculia, poor short term and working memory. So although he is around average cognitive ability at age 10 he had a reading age of 4.6 years. Ie. a child in receptiton class who has not learnt to read yet. So we could prove he had not made progress. We could prove he had lost skills. We could prove that he had potential but that his current school could not meet his needs. That, along with the therapy needs he had for Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy and Psychotherapy and specialist teaching meant that the only placement that could meet his needs was our parental choice, which was an independent ASD specific school [which had to buy in the specialist teaching on top of their fees for them to prove they could meet all his needs].

 

Remember that a Statement does not have a monetary limit. It is about identifying needs for part 2 and quantifying and specifying provision to meet each of those needs in part 3, and it must be so specific that there is no ambiguity at all. If you achieve that it becomes very clear what school can meet the childs needs.