Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello, I'm the mum of a 12 year old boy, just been recommended a diagnosis of ASD by CAMHS in our initial appointment and currently waiting for our next appointment to come through. My son's school has been excellent in its SEN provision since he started there 15 months ago. He has good support, but is struggling in a secondary school setting. We have known from nursery that our son exhibited ADS traits, as it was flagged to us several times, but his father (who himself exhibits these traits and will now admit this) was reluctant to get our son seen and, since he works in a school, I trusted his judgement on this and accepted it, as he didn't want our son labelled. It's become apparent over time that in order to help our son, we had to follow the school's recommendation and get him properly assessed. He did so well coping at primary school, it was a small, gentle village school. He is now at a mixed secondary school and really struggles with social behaviour, has some OCD which distresses him, has had a couple of serious incidents where he's become obsessed with another child and followed them around and behaved inappropriately towards them. He is a good, kind, sweet, intelligent boy and I will be relieved, for him, and for our family, to receive the diagnosis. I'm posting here as am extremely new to all this, this is the first Forum I've posted on, and wondered what the best first steps are in terms of building a community of support for my son and for the family. Thanks for any help/replies.
Hi,
As the Father of a severely autistic son now aged 36 When he was diagnosed at 3.5 years he had to go to a special school. These have today been incorporated into Mainstream schools. So I am not up to date with how they work. But if your son is being disadvantaged by not getting an examination in order to tick a box for funding.
It used to be that the local authority education department had to issue a statement of needs, it may be that if this was done years ago it may need to be revised and updated.
So I suggest start with your GP. to intercede to request the local authority update this certificate of needs if he has one, as you indicate he needs and should get some more help.
They will not like to have to pay for this increase in costs to their budget, and will try to fob you off. This was common certainly 20 years ago. Our local authority sat on decisions for 18 months until the decision was worthless, and you could not appeal to the local government Ombudsman until a decision had been made to appeal against.( as They informed me (A nondecision). However at least one Court Case later I can recall ( Too late for me ) Stated that the L.A had to make their decision possibly within a week or similar, so it could go to appeal, because of its importance.
Your son (Not You) may be able to obtain the service of a specialist solicitor to assist Him on legal aid.. (Obviously with your help on his behalf) Your Local Council social services department should know of similar solicitors who they are dealing in "Community Care, Mental Health and Special Education Needs Law".
You also have an M.P. who will pleased to help you ease a problem off his desk if you put it there.
You can also get advice from your Citizens Advice Bureau, who may have had a similar problem to solve.
I hope this helps.