24/04/2011 by lizit.

Following on from the Identity memo 1, I want to explore another area which is important to my research and which also has a long root in my life, namely my interest in disability and related areas.

I suppose my first conscious interest in disability was in 1966, when as a 16 year old I went on a working holiday to a Leonard Cheshire Home and met people who had quite severe impairments for the first time. At the time, I can remember being impressed by the ethos of the establishment - the concept of family and not referring to disabled people as residents or patients. It made enough of an impression on me, that I returned the following year and began to look at possible career options that might involve working with disabled people.

However, my awareness of health and illness goes much further back than that. Before her marriage, my mother had been a nurse and she retained an active interest in her profession, acting as secretary to the local branch of the Royal College of Nursing. She had done both mental and general nurse training, but her interest was in mental health and she would speak of her experiences and about how difficult it had been to enter her chosen profession - she encountered a lot of opposition from her family because of the low status nurses were perceived as having in the early 1930s when she commenced her training.

I would guess that my mother’s stories had quite a lot to do with me choosing to join the Junior Red Cross and undertake basic training in first aid, home nursing and child care.

I can’t claim that I thought much about disability again until about 1980 when I was working for a local authority as voluntary organisations liaison officer. I was involved in the planning of our response to 1981 - International Year of Disabled People - which led to two specific projects - developing an access guide for the borough together with the head OT and involvement in establishing a local disability association. I also got involved in setting up a parent support group. At a personal level, the spin off from this was taking a postgraduate Masters degree and doing a research project on local disability associations and the implications of them being run by and for disabled people or by able-bodied for disabled. This linked to the thinking of the Wolfenden Report on the future of voluntary organisations and the role of intermediary bodies and to the changes within the disability movement more generally that recognised that disability was not an obstacle to being able to run organisations, engage in social and political action, etc. I can remember being shocked by some of the attitudes I heard expressed by people then responsible for the voluntary/charity organisations and also being impressed by what I saw disabled people doing.

My next career move was to leading a multi-disciplinary social services team with a focus on disability and older people. As described in identity memo 1, a key element of my work there was enabling our ‘clients’ to have as much control as possible over the services made available to them.

Moves followed into voluntary organisation management and motherhood. It was as my son began to develop that disability became a much more personal concern. It was very clear that my son was exhibiting different behaviour from other children of his age, and though I put some of this down to the effect of living in Germany and being between cultures, concern was also expressed by the Kindergarten he attended. I was subjected to a very difficult discussion with the Kindergarten staff when I was effectively told that it was probable my son would never live independently and would probably not be able to attend a normal school. To say this was done clumsily and without warning is an understatement. The fact that the conversation took place in German made it all the more difficult - was I really understanding what I was being told.

Following initial assessments with a German paediatrician, we learned we were returning to the UK. My hope was that my son’s behaviour would settle once he no longer had to cope with two languages and different cultural expectations. The reality was that very soon his school were making referrals to the school nurse and we ended up with CAMHS and the start of the long journey to finding out what lay behind my son’s differences and getting appropriate support for him. That journey also led me, together with others, to set up a parent support group and convinced me that it was essential for parents to be adequately informed and supported so that they could obtain the support their children not only needed, but had a right to.

I could unpick those personal experiences a great deal more - the attitudes of the different professionals I encountered, the lack of knowledge some professionals had of the support infrastructures, the journey to getting a statement for a very able and intelligent child who just was not coping in school, the encounters with mental health services and the failures of services to address needs appropriately. Elsewhere I have documented the roller coaster of emotions I experienced and the details of that journey.

Now I am able to step back a little. My son is now an adult and is doing very well. But I am still actively involved in parent support groups and my personal experiences are very much the driver for my research. Sometimes I feel I am too close to what I am researching and too influenced by my own experience. At other times, I recognise that even when going through the worst of times with my son, I was operating both as parent and professional and maintaining a level of professionalism and objectivity which I did not feel.

A further aspect of disability is now impinging on my life and consciousness. My own health and fitness has deteriorated, to some extent because of my failure to care for myself appropriately, and I am having to recognise there are things I cannot do that I might want to do, but my energy levels are inadequate.

So throughout my life, I haven’t been very distant from issues of health, illness, mental health, disability, and SEN.

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24/04/2011 by lizit.

A recent blog of eLiz Hartnett’s caught my eye. In it she reproduces a diagram that she had seen at a recent conference and uses the diagram to reflect on the focus of her thesis and where it sits within her discipline.

I have been aware that one of the things I am tussling with is just where does my research fit, and looking at eLiz’s blog helped me to realise that part of my difficulty is the interdisciplinary nature of what I am doing and not being sure who I am addressing, or, in a disciplinary sense, where my focus is. Although, I am no closer to sorting that out, my attempt at diagramming did clarify some of the reasons why I am struggling.

My research focuses on a sub-set of the SEN system and I am using that sub-set to explore the metaphor of struggle and fight which occurs frequently in the language used in academic literature, policy documents and conversation. Drawing clarified that not only is struggle prevalent in a whole range of different ways in the system, but it is also prevalent in the theoretical framework. Maybe it is no wonder that I have problems sorting out where I am looking and where I belong!

I sense this is a diagram to come back to and work with some more, though I suspect it might be one of those diagrams that becomes increasingly confusing, before it becomes clearer.

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06/04/2011 by lizit.

Another #phdchat inspired posting.

Last month the UK government published a consultation document, or green paper, outlining a number of changes they are planning on making to the special education system. There are various reasons for wanting to change the system, including saving money, but the ones that interest me are about the system being too complex and too adversarial. Both of these seem to be accepted as facts without any real explanations why. So what I am doing is drawing pictures to try to understand the system and using these to find out why the system gets described as a battlefield.

As well as drawing pictures, I am talking to people who have been involved with the Special Needs system. These include parents of children on the autistic spectrum, teachers, support workers in schools, doctors and therapists. I am asking them to tell me their stories of how they have learned about the autism and about the SEN system.

Some parents tell stories of how helpful a specific teacher or doctor has been and how well their child is doing. Others talk about problems getting help for their child and some talk about their child being excluded from school and sometimes being out of school for a long time. The education and health workers talk about children they have worked with and learned from. They also talk about needs that are not met and very often have very little idea what happens in other parts of the system.

I agree with the government that the SEN system needs to be changed, but I am concerned about changes designed to fix a system if we don’t really know why it is broken to start off. I hope my research will help explain why the system is broke and will help in understanding whether the proposed changes will fix it, or may actually lead to more problems.

Posted in SEN, ASD, research ideas | Print | 12 Comments »

22/03/2011 by lizit.

The final section of the green paper addresses the questions of reducing bureaucracy and services working together to support families and children with SEN/disability.

The local authority role will have 3 core features:

• strategic planning
• Securing a range of high quality provision
• Enabling families to make informed choices

The Department of Health is tasked with working with the new Health and Wellbeing Boards to consider how the needs of children and young people with SEN/disability are best addressed and with working with GP consortia pathfinders to explore the best ways of providing support for the commissioning of healthcare services for children and young people with SEN or who are disabled and their families.

Statutory guidance will be simplified and improved for all professionals working with children and young people with SEN/disabilities so that it is clear, accessible and helpful. The SEN Code of Practice will be retained but revised to incorporate other guidance that is considered helpful to professionals. The mention of the CoP, does not acknowledge the use made by parents of this publication in understanding how to obtain their child’s entitlements.

IEPs are retained, but advice on their use is removed and instead schools are encouraged to develop other approaches to enabling children with SEN to develop, progress and fulfil their potential (para 5.23). This seems strange given it is recognised that parents value these documents, but may reflect the fact that so many are poorly written and presented.

Fifteen paragraphs focus on joint working and how this might be best achieved. Interestingly, no mention is made of the CAF and its attempts to foster joint working between professionals.

Further sections focus on speech and language therapy services and educational psychology services.

Encouragement is given to local authorities to work together through joint commissioning and management of services

Attention is paid to the voluntary and  community sector in providing advice and support, services and as a strategic partner to the Department for Education.

Finally, funding is addressed with the proposal for a national banded funding framework for funding high-cost provision. This seems to be a way of evening out provision for children living in different localities. The document concludes with a discussion of alignment of pre-16 and post-16 funding arrangements.

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22/03/2011 by lizit.

This is one of the shortest chapters in the document and concludes by acknowledging :Many of the problems with the system to support young people with SEN or who are disabled are complicated and longstanding” para 4.50.

The proposed Education, Health and Care Plan will extend to age 25, which may ameliorate lack of clarity about post-18 opportunities.

The only mention I can find in the document about high achieving young people with SEN/disability is para 4.22, which recognises some of these young people will go on into HE. For some reason, this is connected to the National Scholarship Programme for supporting disadvantaged young people, but apparently one of the criteria for the progamme will be the support for disabled students.

Informal adult and community learning also gets a mention (para 4.23) and is connected with the Big Society.

Twenty per cent of the chapter focuses on employment including the role of Job Centre Plus and Disability Employment Advisers. Nothing is said about how training will be provided to ensure these personnel are equipped to support the full range of SEN/disability, something I find worrying given some of the accounts I have heard of experiences with employment services of young people on the autism spectrum.

A further area of transition is from child to adult health services and it is recognised that the transition from CAMHS to adult mental health services can be particularly difficult.

The final section of the chapter focuses on independent living and the planned change from DLA to PIP.

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22/03/2011 by lizit.

This chapter is entitled learning and achieving and focuses on the training available for teachers and others employed in school contexts, identification of SEN, achievements, special schools and BESD.

One of the issues addressed is that of over-identification of SEN as highlighted in the Ofsted review published last autumn: “We intend to tackle the practice of over-identification by replacing the current SEN identification levels of School Action and School Action Plus with a new single school-based SEN category for children whose needs exceed what is normally available in schools…” para 3.6

The first issue addressed is improving teaching by placing more emphasis on SEN in initial teacher training courses, offering more placements in special schools and specialist training resources for post-qualification CPLD. “We also propose to fund scholarships for teachers to develop their practice in supporting disabled pupils and pupils with SEN, including in specific impairments” para 3.14. This emphasis on training and skill building should extend to FE sector.

The roles of school leaders, governors and SENCOs are discussed. LSAs are identified as an important part of the support structure, but not as “substitute for teaching from a qualified teacher” 3.26 and “Children with SEN need more, not less, time with the school’s most skilled and qualified teachers.” It is unfortunate that there is no discussion of the distinction in role between support staff and teachers and of the range of activities involved in education that are not about subject learning, but for many children with SEN/disability are about social and communication skills and life skills where an LSA may well be more qualified than a teacher to address the child’s needs.

There is a strong statement of intent to move away from a culture of low expectations of children with SEN/disability by developing the Achievement for All programme which “has led to schools declassifying children previously classified at School Action, because with a culture of high expectations and provision of personalised school-based support the label itself is not longer necessary” para 3.30. The pupil premium should be used to provide targeted help, including extra one-to-one tuition or catch-up support. Emphasis is also given to literacy and numeracy through the Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts programmes.

Para 3.38 recognises that for some children and young people, their SEN may emerge once they go to school or when they move from primary to secondary school. Teachers need to be able to differentiate SEN from other barriers to learning which should be addressed in other ways, and their should be a move away from using the term SEN as an excuse for low achievement.

There does seem to be confusion in the way the document is written as to what is SEN and what is low achievement - possibly because some children with SEN are low achievers. But the plan is to develop new measures in performance tables for disadvantaged pupils and the lowest attaining 20% of pupils.

The reclassification of SEN “will mean fewer children are identified as having SEN, while deterring a low expectations culture and allowing teachers and schools to focus on providing the help that every child needs” para 3.44

Four pages of this chapter are devoted to difficult behaviour, behaviour support and BESD.

26% of pupils at School Action Plus and 14% with statements have BESD identified as their primary need.

Attention is drawn to the needs of other pupils with SEN/disability who may be bullied and the greater likelihood of children with SEN/disability being excluded - why these two different aspects are dealt with in a single paragraph is unclear para 3.50.

Para 3.53 recognises that it can be difficult to identify the root causes of behavioural problems and mentions some children may have underlying communication difficulties, but nothing is said about contested diagnoses and the possibility that some of these children may have underlying and undiagnosed SEN/disability such as dyslexia or autism spectrum conditions. It is recognised though that without appropriate support, these children are more likely to be excluded, achieve less well at school and are less likely to proceed to employment or training leading to wider social and financial costs. The emphasis should be on identifying root causes of behaviour difficulties rather than focusing on symptoms.

It is suggested exclusions will be reduced by making the excluding school responsible for the placement and progress of excluded pupils.

A multi-agency assessment is recommended for children that are subject to multiple exclusions without the cause having been ascertained.

At present, 72% of all permanently excluded pupils have an SEN and pupils on SA+ are 20 times more likely to be excluded than pupils with no SEN. Young people with SEN also over-represented in the offender population. Para 3.56.

Over 40% of children with statements (about 1% of school population) attend special schools of one type or another. Document suggests there is scope for increasing the options for special schooling through flexible placements between a mainstream and special school and the development of special free schools.

The final section of the chapter returns to achievement levels.

My concerns

One of the things that worries me most in this chapter is the apparent focus on academic attainment without seeing the child holistically. One would hope that the move to a Health, Education and Care Plan might lead to a more holistic perspective, but there is little sense of the child other than in a school context except where respite care or special resources are needed.

A further concern is the section on BESD, where there is almost a suggestion that the children with BESD are bullying other children with SEN/disability. The strongest part of this section is the acknowledgment of the need to identify the root causes of BESD rather than just responding to the symptoms.

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22/03/2011 by lizit.

The focus of this chapter is on giving parents control. It starts from the premise that parents know their child best (but elsewhere in the document, it is recognised that parents may have a different agenda from their children.)

Para 2.5 “Parents should feel well supported through the system with clear information on how it works and who does what, and what the funding is. Parents know their children best and should receive support that works flexibly with their family circumstances. They should have more influence over support for their child through personalised funding, be able to participate in local decisions, have a clear choice of school and access to short breaks from caring. When parents and professionals disagree on the right approach for a child, they should use mediation to resolve disagreements over their support.”

The idea of key workers introduced again - this was first mooted in Warnock and was present more recently in CAF, but not really implemented effectively yet.

There is some recognition of costs, especially unexpected, and role of Family Fund Trust in making direct grants. There is a lengthy section in this chapter relating to personal budgets.

Information is seen as central - parents “need to be clear about their options and understand how decisions are made that affect their child’s support” para 2.14. The implication is that if parents knew more about what was available, there would be a financial saving to parents and public authorities in avoiding costs of appeals. Not only should local authority provide clearer information, but individual schools should provide information on what additional or different provision they make:

• Curriculum - and how tailored to meet individual children’s needs
• Teaching -  adaptation to meet SEN and access to specialist expertise
• Assessment - teacher assessment and assessment of barriers to learning for children with SEN
• Pastoral support - involvement of parents, how school supports education and well being of children with SEN/disabilities

Identifies problem of low expectations of children with SEN - need to raise expectations/achievements.

Para 2.43 Funding for parent forums and involvement of parents in planning and developing local services.

Section on school choice expresses a commitment to removing any bias to inclusion and offering a real choice to parents - basically local authority has to agree to placement in any state-funded school as long as this does not compromise education of other children. “A local authority must consider the parent’s preference and cannot simply place the child in a school irrespective of the parents’ wishes” para 2.52.

Specialist expertise should be provided in local schools - suggestion that this is more cost-effective than independent school placements.

Short breaks mentioned again, but doesn’t really add anything significant to chapter 1.

Mediation to precede appeal to First-tier Tribunal (SEN and Disability) - “It can be better for parents and a better use of public funds if disputes about assessments and statements are resolved earlier and through non-judicial means” para 2.60. Does not take away right of appeal, or right to use NHS or local authority complaints processes. However there are changes to legal aid - no legal help or advice preparing appeals in SEN cases (I thought that had already gone) but legal aid available for disability discrimination cases. A right for secondary school-aged children to appeal to Tribunal on both SEN and disability grounds is introduced.

Para 2.64 is one of the very few references to independent schools in the whole document: “Although the Tribunal must take into account the efficient use of resources when consideration decisions on school placements, some decisions by the Tribunal can have significant financial implications for the local authority. For example, when the Tribunal rules that a child needs an expensive school place, this can represent a new large share of the local authority budget. Given the potential impact on the local authority budget, we would like to ensure that the Tribunal continues to give both priority to ensuring that children’s SEN are met and full weight to the efficient use of resources when considering the best way to meet their needs.”

My concerns

This section covers a lot of different areas.

The provision of better quality information is to be welcomed, but experience has shown that sometimes schools will claim what they cannot deliver, or what they can deliver may be appropriate to some children but not to others with apparently similar SEN.

Appeal to Tribunal could become more daunting if it can only follow failed mediation - this is potentially more of a battle-zone.

It’s probably inevitable, but the emphasis on cost is worrying. There is no doubt that some redistribution of resources could be potentially cost-saving, but again there is a need to recognise that meeting needs of children with SEN/disability can be very expensive sometimes.

There is no mention of the needs of some children for a 24 hour curriculum. The implicit assumptions seems to be that a mix of choice of school and short break will do the job, when this is not always the case.

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22/03/2011 by lizit.

This chapter focuses on early identification and assessment.

Para 1.2 “Too often, the particular support that children and their families require is put in place needlessly late. Although some impairments are normally identified at birth or soon after, other types of need emerge as children grow up. Not knowing why children are developing differently can be tremendously stressful for the child and for their parents. And even when needs have been identified, parents tell us that it can feel like a struggle to get the right support for their family from education, health and social care services. It can be slow and complicated, with different services working in isolation and each having its own approach.”

Features of new system:

• assessment of development by health professionals (HVs) and early years professionals - identify where additional support is needed
• Early years education and child care available and accessible to all
• Replace Statement of SEN with Education, Health and Care Plan - single assessment process - same statutory protection as statement

Plan is to reduce over-assessment, but unclear exactly how this will be achieved. Presumably some assessments that effectively duplicate each other can be removed. A common Plan that can be used as basis for the different types of input would be useful, but difficult to envisage various agencies accepting each others conclusions, especially if costs involved. Currently with more complex situations, health, education and social care have to plan together - and can take months to come to a conclusion - how will this be improved in practice?

Note mention of efficient use of public funds in para 1.48 - how much of the think is about saving money and how much about providing a quality service to needy children and their families?

Voluntary and community sector role placed in context of finances - I find that worrying as perpetuates myth that voluntary sector is cheap or free. Specific roles identified for voluntary and community sector:

• providing information on assessment process - preparing parents on what to expect
• Advocacy for families
• Supporting families through the assessment process
• Putting support package together that reflects family needs, circumstances and ambitions

So a mixture of support, advocacy and direct services, but no indication of who is paying.

Quite a lot about short breaks which seems to be a variation on respite care. Given this was one of our initial requests that was never fulfilled, I do wonder how likely this is to happen, especially if aim continues to be to provide this through a pseudo-fostering arrangement rather than in specialist facilities.

The emphasis in this section is really on those children with most complex needs, effectively the 2% who currently are statemented. It is unclear whether this helps in any way those children who are currently on school action or school action plus and who would be subject to a single level of school SEN assessment.

My concerns

• Position of those children whose needs are not complex enough to be dealt with under new assessment arrangements, but at the same time are not trivial.
• The practicality of  an assessment by Health, Education and Social Care - and getting all to agree - but good if can be made to work and can include DLA/PIP
• The implicit and explicit expectation that this will reduce duplication and therefore save money
• Lack of realism about true costs of voluntary and community sector involvement
• The practicality of short breaks - desirable but how achievable?

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15/03/2011 by lizit.

The long-awaited government consultation document “Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability” was published last Tuesday. I have now had time to read it and and some of the early responses to it. My initial response last week was to question whether my research is still of any relevance given that the green paper addresses many of the areas I am interested in and that some of the discussion is underpinned by government commissioned research. I also had a sense that what I am doing might be anachronistic, even before it sees the light of day.

During the past few days, I have been able to reflect on the document and to begin to look at it more objectively. The fact that the green paper acknowledges problems in the existing system and suggests ways of addressing these does not mean that my work is irrelevant. In fact, in some ways it may be that some of the areas I am exploring are of even greater relevance as they are areas which receive scanty attention in the green paper.

The potential strength of the  recommendations is a move to a single assessment of SEN and disability culminating in an ‘Education, Health and Care Plan’ which will replace the Statement of SEN. The advantage of this is the potential reduction in the number of separate assessments a child or young person with complex SEN/disability might have to face and the shared responsibility and accountability of Health, Education and Social Care. However, it is unclear from the green paper which children and young people will have the opportunity of this single assessment and at what stage in their development. Clearly, it is applicable to those children with complex needs recognised very early in their life - and the green paper does lay emphasis on early identification of needs - but what of those children and young people who are apparently developing normally, but are a bit quirky and whose differences become evident at a later developmental stage. In particular, at present it is known that many children with Aspergers or HFA do not receive a diagnosis until they are into their primary education years - and some later still.

This leads to a further question. Many of these children with Aspergers or HFA (and others with neurological differences) have a record of behaviour difficulties and possibly exclusions prior to diagnosis. The green paper draws attention to the much higher risk of children and young people with SEN of both fixed term and permanent exclusion from school, but says nothing about the contested diagnoses which lead to some of these young people receiving a diagnosis of an autistic spectrum disorder and others being labelled as BESD. The section of the document discussing BESD is in my opinion the weakest in the whole document.

Although the green paper does focus on raising expectations of the potential achievement level of children and young people with SEN/disability, it is unclear to me how realistic some of the implicit, if not explicit, assumptions are. Yes, children with SEN/disability frequently leave school with lower qualifications than other young people and no doubt some could achieve more given the right support structure, but it is unlikely, I would have thought, that the achievement curve for school leavers with SEN/disability would ever mirror completely that for those with no SEN/disability. However, for high functioning young people, it is crucial that they are enabled to reach their potential rather than under-achieving as a result of missed education through exclusion or inappropriate or insufficient learning support.

Another area addressed in the green paper is that of the role of parents. It is acknowledged that parents frequently have insufficient information in the current system and recommendations are made to remedy this. It is also suggested parental choice will be increased, especially in relation to choice of school. Although there is no doubt parents have strong views about what is best for their children, it is disappointing that the voice of the child and their own aspirations has not been similarly strengthened, except when it comes to appeals where children will be able to enter their own appeals to the First Tier Tribunal. Parents are not necessarily always the best advocates for their children, though this is an area fraught with difficulty. Returning to choice of school, little is said about the continuing role of independent and non-maintained special schools…

There are very clear political themes underlying the green paper. Reducing expenditure is clear through reductions in bureaucracy and in multiple assessments. It is also there, so not so evident in other financial arrangements - who will be eligible for the new personal budgets and what restrictions will there be on their use. Free schools receive a mention - it is suggested that part of the increased school choice will include the establishment of new free schools and academies. The Big society is writ large with suggestions that the local community and voluntary sector might facilitate the new assessment system.

In terms of the recommendations in the green paper being enacted, some things are already being trialled such as short breaks; some things will begin to be trialled later this year, such as single assessments; but implementation of the whole will be over the next few years. Inevitably there will be considerable interest in the SEN community in both the discussion of the green paper, its implications and implementation and the effects of that implementation on the life chances of children and young people. My task is two-fold - to ensure that I complete my research and write a thesis which meets the academic criteria and to find ways of contributing to the debate and analysis of the change over the coming years.

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22/11/2010 by lizit.

Last Thursday I was sitting, talking to a woman at the drop-in centre I facilitate for parents with children with SENs. Her son, aged 14 and currently out of school, was playing with duplo on the floor nearby. He hasn’t been labelled as a school refuser, but hasn’t been in school this term, and previously he was refusing to co-operate with teachers or absconding from the school site. He has diagnoses of Aspergers and Dyslexia and currently has a reading age of 6 according to the psychological assessment done recently as part of his statutory assessment of SEN.

I first met this woman, I’ll call her Pam, a couple of months ago. She arrived at the drop-in very concerned about her son and adamant that he was not going to go to the school she understood the local authority were going to recommend for him. She knew he was being assessed for a statement, but she had very little understanding of the process, or what actions she could take to help him get an appropriate placement. Over the weeks, we have seen Pam become less angry and defensive and more prepared to listen to suggestions as to how she can build a case for placement at a school she thinks would be appropriate for her son. She has visited a number of schools and seen the range of options - and also found a school which her son would be happy to attend.

On Thursday, Pam arrived at the drop-in with the proposed statement. It could have been better written, but she had spoken to the SENCO at her son’s school and they had agreed it was probably OK. She had also spoken to the two schools, she did not want her son to attend, but she felt the local authority would be recommending. One had been very clear that it was not a good idea to admit a new pupil to an established group of students with special needs in the middle of Year 9. The other was clear that they could not offer the boy anything more than his current school had been able to. Both schools agreed to email the local authority saying they would not be an appropriate placement. She had also obtained a letter from her son’s psychiatrist to say that he needed to be in a specialist setting with staff who understood his conditions and his needs.

I suggested to Pam that she phone the local authority to check if they had received the emails. They said they had had no communication, but there was a panel meeting that afternoon when the boy’s placement would be discussed.

There was little else we could practically do, but Pam agreed to email me on Friday when she heard the results of the panel meeting. We also agreed that it would be appropriate for her to ask for a meeting to discuss school placement, if the local authority were still adamant about which school the boy should attend. It was while talking about the possible meeting, that Pam showed her concern. “I’m only a parent. They are all officials and I don’t know how to talk to them.” Pam had articulated the very reason why the drop-in had been set up. As another parent, and as somebody who has been through the whole SEN process, I understand how she feels and how much she needs support, and how much she feels wrong decisions are being made for her son. I want to step in and accompany her to meetings and tell the local authority how ridiculous they are being. At the same time, I want to enable and equip her to make her own case to the officials and realise that she can do it and that she is far more than “only a parent”, but a woman who can use newly developing skills to present her son’s needs.

In the end, I assisted her to write a letter - she is perfectly capable of writing letters, but needed the right turn of phrase to address the officials. At least she is using email now - when I asked her to email something to me a couple of weeks ago, she looked terrified. On Friday, Pam emailed me to say the local authority are still wanting to send her son to the school she regards as totally inappropriate. She had asked for a meeting and was waiting to hear when that might be.Next Thursday, I will see her again and we will talk about her preparation for the meeting and who she might take with her, either to help her to present her case or simply to take notes and support her. How much more than “only a parent” Pam is having to be as she learns knew skills and sets about supporting her son to get the education he needs and deserves.

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