Concessions - school attendance

the ewo should b there to help, mine was great, and very understanding we worked together and applied for home tutoring which is no substitute for school but better than nothing, i got my sons report this week which said he had 100% attendence clearly they have not noticed he has been absent for 2 years !!!

Thought I'd share something I found quite amusing in a weird way.  The school, ed psych and ewo had all arranged to meet, the meeting was organized by the ewo, if I couldn't attend I was required to give 24 hours notice.

T h e meeting was to discuss attendance.  

Anyway, two hours before the meeting was due I received an email, not phone call from school saying the ewo was off sick and meeting is cancelled.  I resisted the urge to say it alright for some!

The ewo was back at work on Mon.  My cynical side says that she took Friday off because of the unexpected warm weather prediction for the weekend, so wanted to take full advantage of it, or an I just bitter!

I have had one daughter out of school for almost a year and another whose attendance dips down to around 60% when her school provision is not well managed. 

I've always taken the view that the EWO is there to help my children and I've initiated contact to ask for their advice. I know they are all different but i have had nothing but support from them and they have, at times, reassured me that I know my child best and should ignore pressure from the head teacher to drag them into school kicking and screaming.

It may have helped that I've never waited for them to contact me but always been on the phone immediately I thought the school might contact them. Head teachers really don't seem to like you doing that!

Schools can choose to register your child in various ways to justify them being unable to attend through anxiety. If they won't do it they are being deliberately unhelpful. They are not backed into a corner. It is well recognised that you can't manage anxiety with punishments so any head or EWO that tries to impose sanctions for poor attendance in a child with ASC needs some training PDQ. 

It can also be helpful to ask them to request advice from the Autism Outreach Service or Educational Psychologist. 

I think there is a code that implies 'medical condition' rather than just 'sick' because I queried it when my daughter had been off for a month.  I was terrified that someone would come knocking at the door!  I was told that after a month, that I didn't need to call in every day and say she was sick and that the code they put her down for wouldn't cause the attendance officer to check up on us. Now she is dual registered, there is yet another code.

Best people to ask would be the school if you have someone there that will answer your questions.

Hi, when my daughter started high school she couldn't cope there. She was diagnosed with autism aged 11 in the summer hols before starting year 7. She was sick and sweating in the mornings, and self harming when she got home. After attending 8 times I couldn't put her through it anymore. I was called an irresponsable parent by the head of year. The school said I had to provide a medical report that specifically called her 'an anxious school refuser'. This particular phrase had to be in the letter from my daughters peadiatrician otherwise I would be reported to the education welfare officer! This letter helped get my daughter funding for alternative education provision on medical grounds (home tutor) while her statement was sorted out, she is still on roll at the high school to get this funding so she has technically been absent since september! She now has a statement with a place in a school with specialist autism provision to start in september. She would of had a year off school by then! I'm not sure if this is helpful to you but they were very specific about the 'anxious school refuser' phrase, so perhaps this ticks a certain box for them!? Just being autistic and overwhelmed by the amount of people and noise and smells in the school and telling me she would rather be dead than be there  meant nothing without this phrase being used!

As with so many things it's lack of autism awareness.  If they don't understand the reasons ASC children are off, they will have trouble recognising it as genuine and coding it.

The biggest one could be anxiety, one morning I had to take the decision to keep my 12yo off because she had such a massive meltdown she was in no state to go and I had to decide whether to cancel her transport or not.  The school claimed to have had trouble knowing what to log it as.  (And I checked the codes myself and there were 2 or 3 that would have applied).  It's pathetic.

Some autistic children get physically ill more often than normal, which can of course also be triggered by anxiety as this impacts the immune system.  My youngest was at only seventy something % attendance at one point at age 5 and the receptionist at the school told me that the EWO was about to come and see us until she assured her that we had reported everything and where applicable provided evidence (my daughter kept getting chest infections and going onto antibiotics - no surprise that this correlated with her high levels of anxiety and distress over school).

It's another one of those things where you are battling a system that doesn't understand, and as far as I know there are no concessions for autism or any other condition, because "computer says no".