Daughter found wandering distressed at side of main road

Hi all thankyou all for your replies.

i frankly find education to be a completley inadequate and with very little or no understanding. Teachers and sencos have little to no intention of trying to see things from the point of view of a child with ASC and frankly treat concerns from parents as an annoyance.

The secretary of state should be embarrased and should pull his finger out of the pie and get it sorted.

Just to update, i saught legal advice and the Academy recieved a very strongly worded letter, their response to which was for the Senco to immediatley aknowledge the difficulties place my daughter straight onto school action plus and offer a reduced timetable, and call off the truant officer all this when only a fortnight ago they refused to aknowledge anything, and were hell bent on seeing me in court for bad parenting.

However their forced effort is all too late, i now have a daughter who point blank refuses to return to school and is now home educated, i do fully intend on making them accept responsibility for this and will persue further legal advice

Since i last posted Camhs has finished their assessment and feel that it is acs it is highly likely we will recieve the diagnosis for her, we are just waiting on confiirmation from the consultant.

Friday 1st Feb, 12.15pm, received phone call from attendance team to say they were sending my son home from school. He had been internally truanting all morning, when approached by a teacher he kicked cupboard door. This then lead the school excluding him for the rest of the day.

My concern was that I was unable to go and collect him, due to work commitments. He was allowed out of school. I then received a text from him saying he was not coming home (this is the 2nd time in 8wks) due to school. It took us two hrs to finally get him to tell us where he was so we could bring him home. During this time I had to come out of work, I was also trying school to speak to SMT to discuss my son’s safety concerns with them. It took a member of SMT 3, 1/2hrs to ring me back.

I went through my concerns;

 Sending my son home without adult supervision (parents), while he is in a distressed state, EP report highlights his vulnerability.

 Who had safeguarded my son’s welfare in school? If we has parents sent our son in school in a distressed state give his vulnerability, school would involve social services to express their concerns.

He had spent best part of last 3 days internally truanting that week, again who is safeguarding my son then. If he is out of lessons due to not being able to cope, who is looking after him?

The pressure he must be under mentally at these points when he is walking out class and wandering the school.

I then asked for meeting with SENCO and a member of SMT, along with our parent partnership officer.

We had the meeting 5/2/13.

Discussed that since our son went to secondary school 18months ago he’s not settled and now his behaviour is deteriorating daily and their role in safeguarding him.

He did not behave like this in primary school, I had his reports to prove it.

ME-It is known that children who lack social and communication skills, that this can present for the first time in secondary school.

SENCO- there are times when he’s been settled, he is choosing to behave like this.

SMT-no, i agree with mum.

ME- I showed all current reports from secondary school past 18months. All show behaviour and homework, cause for concern but grades average. I asked how a child is likely to achieve these grades if their behaviour is cause for concern, surely a if a child is miss behaving he will not be able to take in the lesson. Our son is not receiving the education he is entitled to.

SENCO- you have expressed concerns that your son is isolating and does not have friends, I see him round school all the time with a group having fun and laughing.

ME- it is known that children, who lack social and communication skills, will do almost anything to get appetence from a group in order to have friends. Some of the reason why certain groups will not accept them is because they don’t have the social skills to fit in, so they will seek out peers who are not the most appropriate role models. These school friends never call on for him, he stays in more than he goes out.

SMT- I agree with mum.

To cut a long story short.

The SENCO in my opinion is saying that our son is choosing to behave like this, they have seen him get his head down and do work, he as at times settled in school, he does have friends they have seen him, he chooses what lessons he wants to do, he uses saying he will run away to get what he wants, he can give eye contact, he knows what’s right and wrong, these are normal childhood behaviours, I am comparing him to my other children, we are doing everything we can.

The deterioration clearly shows that it’s not working and how long are we going to keep coming back to the same points, he is 18months into this school and with nothing but bad experience to show.

It was put back to SMT to how they are going to support our son in order for him to receive his education.

Although they have been concerned enough to pay for EP report they seem to be choosing to implement or ignore when suits.  

Outcome;

If  they are going to exclude him from school, he will not be allow out until one of us have picked him up. Internally truanting he will have a teacher with him at all times.

TA will contact me each evening by e-mail with daily report.

Named TA and SMT to directly deal with him.

We now have ILP in place and on paper it look s good, I do think some the problems are down to how the teachers speak and approach him.

 All staff to updated on his IEP.      

We have become aware that he has a strong sense of injustice and the teachers are not consistent with their approach.

I also put together some info for the teachers to read on what different approaches could achieve or help with, not sure if it is in the bin but I will do anything to get the support for our son to receive his education.

He constantly text me telling me that his day is not going so well.

I am worried what this is doing to his mental health and feel this behaviour cannot continue until we receive input from CAMHS. I do believe he will be excluded from that school by then.

We have another meeting planned 1/3/13.

It must have been dreardfull for you both. Hope our daughter feels better soon.

Do you know who actually is in charge of your daughters school? Can you contact mathematically directly and tell them whats happened? Surely they must have some policy on SEN, school should be able to provide their code of Practice!

I would definitely contact all professional and Mp quickly, even if sent on the weekend it'there're ready for them regardless, and some MP's work weekends 

Oh I feel for you so very much.  You have already been given loads of good advice.  I also recommend going to your GP to talk about your daughters distressed state and tell him you are concerned about her mental health, he should give you a referral straight to camhs (although you mention you are aleady in touch with them?)

We were in a similar situation waiting for referrals for our son last year (he is 13 now and could not/can still not cope with school).  Eventually after a year of suffering the school though he might be depressed so we contacted the GP to get the ball rolling.  What we also did was contact MIND a mental health charity who gave us the name of a private counsellor because we really felt we could not wait for camhs to book us in.  He went along and after two sessions the counsellor thought that he had ASD (after a year of a school with a supposed ASD special Unit not noticing!!!)  We then got our GP to get the ball rolling to get him diagnosed properly.  This is still ongoing and is taking AGES! (that is another long long story).

It took a very bad experience at school with a teacher for our son to come out (on his doctors recommendations) and it does seem now to be what has got things moving on for us.  So perhaps what has happend will be the catalyst for you to now make things better for your daughter.

We had our son at home for 8 weeks without any educational provision despite our best efforts to get them to do something!  We now have home tuition but my goodness we had to fight for it!

If you can get your doctor to recommend that your daughter does not attend school for the sake of her mental health then you will get the welfare people etc off your back and the onus will be on the Education Authority to provide your daughter with the education to which she is entitled.

Good luck, I wish there was more I could say to help you but at least you know that on this forum there are lots of us who can really appreaciate and understand how it is for you and be here with advice and comfort where we can.

take care

MARY

thanks for your replies,

this afternoon i contacted the education authority who wanted nothing to do with is as it is an academy.

Both the education welfare officer and the educational psychologist are employed directly by the academy, the education welfare officer had already been contacted by the academy after my phone call to them asking what the hell was happening earlier in the day their first response was to cause yet more problems for me, by reporting her for truanting. i have now been warned.

i have asked the school many times to get an educational pschologist involved but have had no joy, i have contacted my other daughters psychologist now in the hope she can help me contact him directly or give some advice.

we are actually at camhs this week so i will be taking this issue up with them, and i intend on contacting the mp tommorow. in the mean time she now is refusing school and im under pressure from the welfare officer, who frankly didnt care.

im seriously considering home education again i dont know how much longer we can deal with the apalling attitude of this school

hi Happy Days - how awful for both of you.  This is so shocking.  MeMyselfandI gives loads of good advice - flag it up with everyone who matters, inc. your MP, who can be contacted by phone or email.  If he/she is a supporter of academies then they won't be happy about what's happened + will hopefully take some action.  If he/she is against academies then they'll take action also.  Sometimes a crisis forces professionals/organisations to act, if that's any consolation.   I hope you're both start to feel a bit better soon + also get some positive outcome from this dreadful experience.  bw

There are a few things you need to do to help get this sorted now.  One is to contact the county and let them know what has happened.  If you do not, there is a danger that you could get in trouble for not sending your child to school.  Another thing you need to do is to contact the school governers and let them be aware that your child disappeared off school grounds, without any staff knowing and was in a distressed state.  The school has a duty of care, which they have clearly breeched. 

It is possible that they will try to turn it around and be your child's fault.  However, because your child was off school grounds for I am assuming an extended period of time, and they were unaware, they are clearly at fault over that and no matter how much they try to turn it around they can not get out of that.

Another thing I would do is to contact the educational psychology department directly.  Parental referalls are usually allowed, and given what has just happened, it is possible that they will allow your refferal.  

Assuming that she is suffering from anxiety, and anger/depression, you can also go to your GP to at least get it on the record.  It would be even more helpful if you have documented incidents and episodes to show it is not a new one off thing, but a long term problem.

You may also want to directly contact CAHMS explaining to incident that occured.

In the long run, it could be that the really horrid experiance your daughter went through could be what it took to get the professionals to screen her for ASD, so some good can come out of it.  

But the main thing is to contact as many appropriate agencies as possible as soon as possible as what you have described in terms of your daughter's reaction and the schools breech of duty of care, reagrdless of what the school says actually took place or not (in that having an ASD child myself I am aware that their perception is not always in line with the school's), are serious enough to get the attention of many professionals.