Need Advice about private route for Education

[jollys]

Hi

My 2 year old daughter is developmentally delayed. Her gross motor skills are not bad - she is walking now. But her fine motor skills are delayed - not eating finger food for example.

The main concern is her speech and language delays. She did not have eye contact earlier but its better now. But her receptive and expressive speech is missing. She babbles a lot now a days.

The issue is as follows

• We live on a street which is split in 2 boroughs. So we technically live in Barking & Dagenham.
  
• She goes full time to a nursery(very close to our house and good ofsted report) which is in Redbridge
  
• Our GP is registered in Havering.
  

Because SALT comes from health, its situated in Havering and they are not ready to visit her nursery. I will now be changing her GP so that its in Barking and Dagenham

Because she goes to a full time nursery outside of the borough and Portage comes from Education, they are only giving us 10 portage sessions.

We are going private to see the OT at www.hemispheres.org.uk/

I have asked her Nursery's SENCO to raise this with their SEN representative(which will be in Redbridge). I am hoping something good will come out of it.

I am concerned about autism assessment and they wont do it since health and education from different boroughs cant talk. The ideal situation would be to move her in a (crap) Barking and dagenham nursery, move the GP and then get education and health involved.

She is so well settled at her current nursery. Her key worker is great, and works with her. DH is totally against moving her and wants to give her few more months. If she is still non-vocal he wants to do a private assessment.

My question is Is there a risk in not involving local services and going private?

Thanks
Shilpi

[IndigoBell]

Do you mean private for dx, treatment, or education?

[jollys]

I mean to say, that if I dont involve the local authorities (who arent great where I live anyways) will my daughter suffer if I then go private say in another year. I know cost is a big factor, but other than that is the private sector any worse than public?

[IndigoBell]

But private sector for what?

Private sector is the best place for therapy. (SALT, OT, and other more unusual ones)

Private sector is fine for dx (if you can work out who you need to see).

Private sector can be OK for education, but frequently isn't.

In general (but not always) private sector is better than public......

[jollys]

Thanks Indigo. I think I can get my answers if I read a few threads here (patiently!)

Thanks again

[cjn27b]

There are some private schools that specialise in things like ASD. Riverstone in SE London for example. Not sure how near that is to you. They provide OT, SLT and all sorts.