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Statements !!

valley girl

I am sure that many of you out there have been through the nightmare of refusals to assess,refusals to issue statements and trying to deal with Sendist. We took 3 years to get my nine year old sons statement and we were over the moon when it arrived in July. Great we thought - things will be much easier now. Not so !! Even though he has a statement for 23 hours a week I am still having to chase up everything, go and see the teacher everyweek and generally check everything is being provided. My relationship with the school is getting worse rather than better.

My son is in Year 5 now and we need to start considering secondary schools. We try to be positive but I cant see him surviving there let alone making progress.

Is anyone else feeling this way or had the same problems  or have any advice !!

Are Statements worth the paper they are printed on !!

xxx

 

Parents

  • Kitty - correct, and quite surprising, a schools responsibility goes way beyond the academic and all areas can be supported by a statement. Our eldest is academically bright and we had assumed we'd never get a statement but on reading the SENCOP that all changed. This week the LA confirmed they are going to issue a statement, and not one jot of it will be directly to do with academic support. Sending you back to CAHMS is a disgrace, a tactic to throw you off. Ask for a statutory assessment (but get lots of advice on what to write), request a tribunal when it is refused and see how fast they turn around.

    A statement is a legally binding document and you can sue the LA if it is not implemented to the letter, whether that will achieve anything is another matter! But it *can* be the most powerful document your child will ever have.

    The trick is getting a statement that does what needs to be done rather than what the LA and their monkeys think they can get away with. For this part you may well need to go private (research your choice very carefully and check the LA will consider private evidence, the tribunal will if nothing else) and you have no hope of recovering your costs from the LA (but there are a lot of sources of charitable funding and check you are receiving all the benefits you are entitled to, DLA opens a lot of doors and a rebate can help pay for a private report).

    Don't give up at the first, second or third hurdle, that's what they want you to do. Wear them down, not the other way around!

Reply

  • Kitty - correct, and quite surprising, a schools responsibility goes way beyond the academic and all areas can be supported by a statement. Our eldest is academically bright and we had assumed we'd never get a statement but on reading the SENCOP that all changed. This week the LA confirmed they are going to issue a statement, and not one jot of it will be directly to do with academic support. Sending you back to CAHMS is a disgrace, a tactic to throw you off. Ask for a statutory assessment (but get lots of advice on what to write), request a tribunal when it is refused and see how fast they turn around.

    A statement is a legally binding document and you can sue the LA if it is not implemented to the letter, whether that will achieve anything is another matter! But it *can* be the most powerful document your child will ever have.

    The trick is getting a statement that does what needs to be done rather than what the LA and their monkeys think they can get away with. For this part you may well need to go private (research your choice very carefully and check the LA will consider private evidence, the tribunal will if nothing else) and you have no hope of recovering your costs from the LA (but there are a lot of sources of charitable funding and check you are receiving all the benefits you are entitled to, DLA opens a lot of doors and a rebate can help pay for a private report).

    Don't give up at the first, second or third hurdle, that's what they want you to do. Wear them down, not the other way around!

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