Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
Im the Dad of a fantastic wee four-year boy that has been diagnosed with Autism. He has social interaction, communication and other self-help issues. He is currently in nursery receiving one to one support from a classroom assistant following release of emergency funding as he was deemed a risk to himself and others, plus he wasn’t accessing the curriculum.
We are currently going through the process of getting a Special Educational Needs statement and we now have a proposed statement. The problem with the proposed statement is that our sons special education needs and corresponding provisions are so vague and without detail it feels like it isn’t fit for purpose.
For instance, advice from his Speech and Language therapist, Occupational Therapist, Community Paediatric, Nursey staff and others outlines the need for our son to have one to one adult support for example yet this is not reflected in his special educational needs and the corresponding provision in any detail.
There is a provision that our son would have “access to additional adult assistance determined by the local authority to support the school in meeting his special educational needs and to facilitate progress …”. This provision seems very vague as it is impossible to know who is providing the adult supervision, in what frequency, duration and nature.
I suppose im trying to understand is it normal and appropriate? It would be also helpful if anyone had a list of special educational needs provisions as example?
Thanks in advance for any help.
APLRNK said:“access to additional adult assistance determined by the local authority to support the school in meeting his special educational needs and to facilitate progress …”
By law the EHCP must be very specific about what type of help and how much of it. This is a well established legal principle and the statements you quote are typical example of EHCP that fall short of being specific enough.
In practice you need to appeal to SEND tribunal to have your son's provisions specified.
Are you at the stage of proposed EHCP? At this stage you need to reply to the local authority with the edited version of EHCP where you add all the specific provisions you want added and remove the vague words like access to etc. and certainly nothing that will be specified by the LA in the future. Time is now. . For this you need to take advice.
NAS tribunal helpline is really good at helping you to bring the proposed EHCP to a good specified format, you send all you documents and a volunteer will review them and advise some changes.
Alternatively you can seek advice from SOSSEN, they have a telephone helpline and walk in centres where they could talk to you 1:1/
IPSEA advice lines and resources are also good.
Book advice sessions with all of them ASAP as you don't have much time after the LA would issue the final EHCP.
Good luck
As an example, in your case:
"Johnny will have 25 hours per week of 1:1 support from a Teaching Assistant trained in autism"...
Thank you for your help, its incredibly helpful and much appreciated.
I took your advice and called a couple of the above today - lots to do now and on the right track.
Thanks again, A