There's a back story - big old thread a few months back - but basically, my son was briefly dealing cannabis. County Lines stuff. I discovered it in under a week, reached out for help via Social Services, Police and his school plus other agencies to support us through this hideousness.
I'm a single parent. 2 DS. Ex is an abusive alcoholic and utterly uninvolved. So I do this 100% all the time, on my own.
By stamping on it immediately my son stopped dealing, engaged with services and has come on in leaps and bounds. He's back to the lovely boy he was before his head was turned and I'm immensely proud of him.
BUT - despite all of the information that has come out subsequently, his school responded by excluding him permanently (nothing had taken place in school, only in the community). It was his first offence but they say they have a zero tolerance policy to drugs regardless of the backstory or mitigating factors.
So today marks the auspicious point of SIX MONTHS out of education.
The Local Authority have a duty to provide him with an alternative provision by the 6th day post exclusion... there has been zero contact from the LA.
After the first few weeks and an appeal to the school governors, I managed to get hold of email addresses for the Head and Deputy of the Education department of our LA and sent an email explaining the situation, that we'd had no contact and that my child was in danger of falling through the cracks. This elicited a response and he was given four hours per week of online tuition.
Since the end of March and today we haven't received any further positive interaction from the LA.
I've sent email after email, made call after call and all we've had is inconsistent information.
I've applied to various alternative mainstream schools, I've found him an alternative provision in the form of a construction trade school.
He's a smart boy. His tutor is predicting 7/8's at GCSE for the maths and English that she has 4 hours a week to teach him.
I cannot believe that I am in the position where after 6 months my child still is missing out on the education he is entitled to.
He made a mistake, in hindsight I wonder whether we'd all have been better off if I'd brushed it under the carpet and ignored the dealing just so he was still in school but of course that is ridiculous. He would have got dragged further and further down the path, into that underworld.
I need ideas of how to fix this situation.