Advice 4 yr old with ASD and statementing.

Also...forgot to say. Ive been waiting since February for Earlybirds plus and it looks like ill be in by next September. Its really bad :(

Louisa, ive just been through the statementing pocess and come out of the other side. from what your saying everything is on the right track. Ive been waiting what feels like forever, I hear a different abbreviation for something new every week and its only when you get the statement you see how it all links back. Ill try to do this without all the jargon they used though.

Think of the statement as the last part of the long process, and yes it will feel like the school are failing you child, dont think that the services arent watching, if the school dont follow through on what theyve been told to do, they will get pulled up. Mine did! Actuall they lost my son for a few hours (but thats another story)! 

Youve obviously had the specialist teaching service come in and set some independent education plans or IEP, youve probably had other services come in as well and give the school their two pennies worth like speech therapists and educational psychologists...if this doesnt happen straight away it will in time. The educational psychologist will come in if she sees evidence that the child is not meeting the plan or the school is failing to adhere to the plan (for cost or staff reasons, who knows) this means that the plan has to run its course before it is re-assessed to see if its working. 

You may see a paediatrician and other health professionals who will also give you alot of jargon, a diagnosis and perhaps medication depending on the diagnosis. Everyones situations different.

After the IEP has proven not to work and your child has fallen even further behind, the educational psychologist comes in to do an assessment. mine sat down with me after the assessment and talked me through what she had seen, it all sounded really positive untill she said "this is how your son could perform without his learning difficulties" I found it all a bit confusing and ended up almost in tears asking her if it would go against his statement, she advised me that her recopmmendation would be that he needed the statement. 

After that the school requested the statement, this request is sent with some evidence (not all of it) and the local authority decide wether the case gets furthered or not depending on its merits and the evidence provided. If its not furthered you and the school are notified and you can begin to appeal.

NOW THIS IS THE REASON WERE PATIENT...because if theres little to no evidence it gets rejected straight away. As frustrated as I was with everyone at the school and in the services it is just a huge waiting game.

If the local authority feel that its necessary they will then further the case where more in depth evidence is required to back up the claim for a statement. Both you and the school will be made aware that the process is moving forward.

I had to write my own notes about oscars behaviour and how we cope with him. These went to the local authority, they also requested information from all the services, the educational psychologists reports, paediatrician, speech therapists, specialist teaching services, social services and a report from the current educational facility. You should recieve copies of everything that they recieve except the schools report & they can be ruthlessand sneaky i.e. miss an appointment and your names mud in the report. I only know this because I have the statement, all reports and covering letter sat in front of me.

So heres the time scale, this all started when my child @ 4 years old was in reception class and was doing an hour of school a day (and yes you miss appointments when their in your only hour to clean up after a child thats home 24/7, possibly the only quiet hour i had all day long) hes now 5 and were two terms into the school year, hes spent more time in school this year than he did his whole last year so things have improved but too little too late for me I think. 

I consider my son very lucky to have his statement agreed and get a choice of school as the one he is at isnt appropriate. I know others that have had to fight, I know people who have bad SENCOS at their school who are lazy and dont do the paperwork  (had one of those myself, the one that told me that my son would never be a rocket scientist, my reply was "neither are you") she left and we got a new SENCO. 

I think having a good SENCO behind you can be a huge help, if you think shes not doing her job, subtly push the situation on her but try not to force the statementing process otherwise you will end up in appeal, it wont take any longer but it wont go any quicker either.

I hope this helps.

Thank you Lou31 for your response. I agree with you I think I should wait and allow time for school to prove to Educational Phycologist that extra help is needed. So frustrating that we are made to wait for help. 

Statements are a tricky business!  To give yourself the best possible chance, it would be ideal for the school to have built up plenty of evidence that the 20 hours your daughter is receiving isn't enough.  If they apply too early, it may be rejected due to lack of evidence and I then believe you have to wait a further 6 months to reapply.  It is a really REALLY slow process but I think you have to bide your time.  We waited quite a while before submitting our application and had mountains of evidence and it was very straight forward.  That said, we only waited for so long as our EP was completely unsupportive and didn't encourage us applying at all. My son was at the very end of year 1 when he got his even though it had been discussed since before he started school.  As long as you feel supported by SENCO and EP I would continue to make decisions as a team.

Hope that helps. 

PS we're still waiting for our place on Early Bird plus and it's been ages