Hi
We have a son who has had communication problems since he was small, had help from the speech and language unit in primary to deal with his SLI but is left with what appears to be undiagnosed ASD. An early ADOS test stated that he was not on the spectrum as he was only 5 at the time we feel that cannot be that reliable. We have an appointment at CAMHS in March and are hoping to make progress on that front then. His speech therapist who has known him for years has always thought that he had mild ASD.
He is now in Y8 at Secondary ( mainstream) and we are finding the school's approach to his issues very disappointing. They have stopped the person centred use of teaching assistants and insist he has 8 TAs, most of whom he now ignores. He is generally very well behaved and works hard and so is not considered a 'problem' at school. However he does not have opportunities to practice his social skills - they have made him comfortable in the learning resource base at lunchtime where he plays on the computer, and he goes to the base at breaktime too - and have ignored our requests a year ago for proper buddy systems. We suspect that it really is too difficult for them to do the necessary things.
We are approaching this by making it clear to school and LA where there is a breach of his Statement and asking for amendments. But we are also thinking of changing his school, either to a small independent school, where our elder son went (no ASD diagnosis for him although elder son had some milder 'tendencies' that way which appear to have gone away) or to another mainstream. The school we are thinking of has a 'family feel' with teachers who have been there for a long time and small classes. It has some pupils who have special needs eg dyslexia, dyspraxia and ASD. He will probably hate the change, if we do this, so this may be more issues. An alternative would be a mainstream school with a specific autism expertise but the nearest that is any good is some distance from home and he would need transporting so lose independence. We also want him to learn to socialise with people without ASD if at all possible, as he is always desperate to make friends with others. He has become more anxious since starting Secondary, we think, although he insists he is 'fine'. In particular he has a bad stammer now when dealing with peer group conversations.
We are wondering if anyone else out there has had experiences, positive or negative, of a small independent school approach.
