Do I appeal or not? - SA

[farming4]

Hi - its me again

Well I'm sitting here debating whether to appeal against the fact that we have been turned down for SA - not sure if I should send it in.

Basically I have had the IEP review for ds as he is now leaving his pre-school setting for school in Sept. His last IEP was drawn up in June and set 3 quite difficult targets which it was hoped would take him through to the start of his first term at school ( school and pre-school are in the same building). Anyway at the review meeting it turns out ds has achieved all 3 targets within a month so has blown the IEP out if the water!

Problem is now I'm in two minds - do I go forward with the appeal and get turned down as ds is now making very good progress or do I wait until I see if he plateaus in reception?

Any advice welcome

[hannahsmummsy]

i have appealed , it wont hurt , ds may get better support and you could always withdraw if things get better xx

[coff33pot]

These 3 targets........when you initially had the IEP review were they the only issues that your ds had? If not then I would have a meeting at the school and put forward your other concerns and see what they have to say.

If it was just these 3 targets that were in question and you are happy with this acheivement at the moment, then yes I would bide my time as he will be starting afresh after the hols and after a settling in period if the signs are things are not improving but getting worse then request SA a second time.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Would not hurt your case at all to appeal their crass decision.

On what grounds was DS turned down for statutory assessment?.

[coff33pot]

AH! SA = statutory assesstment I was under the impression that it was School Action. I do beg your pardon. In that case no dont wait as it will only delay the statement process...sorry!

[farming4]

Hi the 3 targets were to do with ds being involved with his peers - specifically using more vocab to express his needs and wants, to follow the program set out by his SaLT i.e first and last letter sounds and specific words to learn to pronounce, and to start to move away from his "comfort adult" within the setting as he was only communicating with his 1:1 support at the time and was mute with other adults.

Well he has significantly increased his vocab (gone from about 10 recognisable words to more than 50! and is putting 2 words together quite happily). He is using the vocab in play situations and is calling his class mates by their names. He is also quite comfortable speaking to all the adults in the setting. He also knows his phonetic alphabet and can easily identify in most cases what words begin with and is progressing with what they end in.

Its like hes a different child - suddenly there is this stream of vocab and his confidence has gone through the roof! The only way I can describe it is as if something has been blocked and the pressure has built up and forced the blockage through! He has managed to make up 6 mths development in less than a month. Basically he is now about 18mths behind rather than the 2 years he was at Easter. I would be concerned that as he no longer is so far behind they will be even more loath to assess him.

Attila - he was turned down as they stated that the school he is going to is considered to be a "large" primary therefore he will get 15 hours 1:1 from their sn budget and that as his only learning difficulty is speech and language, this will be more than enough to support his needs at school.

Quick update - have spoken to the HT at his primary and he has suggested we wait and see how he gets on next term - his opinion was that the IEP has demonstrated that ds makes very good progress with intensive 1:1 support and that it will give us evidence should he "go backwards" without the same level of support and that will only be good should we re-apply in the future. I have also been told in writing that ds will have 12 hrs 1:1 with a trained sn TA next year with another 3 hrs 1:1 with a SaLT trained TA.

I really don't know if I should appeal or will it actually give ds anything extra than what has already been put in place?