Hello everyone,
We are currently in a crisis mode and don't know what to do so I've come on here in the hopes that someone can offer help or advice on our situation. Please excuse me if I use the wrong terminology, we only received the diagnosis 10 days ago and since that time have been battling with my son's school to try and get him the support he needs. Our son is 10 years old and attends a main stream primary school.
Towards the end of last year we started the process of an ASD diagnosis. My son's school have always maintained there are no issues they can see, he is a bright and intelligent boy and has always done well in school. We began to look into ASD as a possible explanation for the struggles we could see our son having on a daily basis. When we started the diagnosis process we informed the school of what we were doing. Around the same time we had some meetings with school to discuss some adaptations they could implement. They were slightly reluctant but appeared to be getting on board at this point. My son was able to use a sensory room in the mornings, he was able to go into the school through a different entrance being met by a teacher, he could use ear defenders as needed, he was able to leave the classroom to do his work at times, and he could stay inside at lunch time if needed.
At this point things started to improve a little at school. Then the new year arrived, our son decided to throw himself fully into school without using any adaptations, a week and a half in and he had totally crashed with what I now know is autistic burnout. Since then we have only been able to get him into school 1 or 2 days a week, each time he goes into school he has a terrible experience and comes home totally exhausted and distressed. This has often been due to badly handled events at the school.
This is around the same time we received the diagnosis, we shared this with the school and requested a meeting. It's now been 10 days since the school have received the report and during this time we have had no significant communication with the school, no meeting has been arranged, no adaptations have been put in place. And the adaptations that had been used last year have now been either taken away, discouraged or confusing rules placed around their usage to the point our son doesn't feel like he can use them.
Our last communication with the school this morning to tell them our son would not be able to attend as he is too unwell and to request an urgent meeting has been responded to with an attendance letter saying they have referred this case to the Education Welfare Officer (EWO) from the Local Authority (LA). With no acknowledgement of our requests for a meeting to start a the graded response process.
In the last few weeks we have made multiple requests for meeting with the school, we have asked for a copy of his timetable multiple times, we have requested multiple very minor adaptations (the use of a sensory box with a chew toy, fidget spinner and theraputty, as well as being able to come inside at lunch break). Non of this has been accepted, actioned or responded to other than we received his timetable for a single specific day of school.
We are all feeling extremely upset, stressed and helpless about the situation. At a time when we could really use as much support as possible we are being faced with the opposite from school.
From what I've been reading this unfortunately appears to be rather common.
We really don't really know what to do next or how to handle the situation with school and really hope that someone has some useful advice or insight on what we can do.
Thank you for reading this far and I look forward to any responses.
