NHS refusing treatment to child who attends private school.

I’ve asked MN to edit the title, OP. It’s so misleading as to amount to misinformation. Nobody is being denied NHS treatment, as your linked article clearly says, but people are still joining the thread thinking they are.

They need to go through the NHS such as a referral from their GP as they have opted out of their LA providing anything for their child and they can't have it both ways.

https://www.nhs.uk/tests-and-treatments/occupational-therapy/

Yiu should have gone to a different GP

`they are but only via NHS provided services, not through LEA provided services

Which they can access via their GP

This is not a new thing. My DD was able to access clinic based help for dyspraxia but the OT wouldn't do a school visit as she was at a private school and this was about 15 years ago.

Yabu for only reading the headline and not the article and then spreading misinformation online

I think it's outrageous. Presumably the parents pay tax, contribute to the NHS so the family is entitled to treatment the same as anyone else.

When my son got tutored at home, he received OT and physio at home too. This was because he wasn't quite well enough to be in school after a hospital stay though, not because he was home educated.

OT services are not all the same. You can access OT through CAHMS if it would be useful. But you'd only get this if you were open to CAHMS and it was felt to be beneficial. If you needed OT for a different reason, you'd get it via a different route and it would address different issues.

Commissioned services can feel very unfair. A mental health charity could be commissioned to provide targeted support. So if you live in a particular post-code area, you might get fast-tracked over someone with equal need but a different post-code. The agreements are very specific about what services are being delivered and who to.

Oh dear - that was supposed to quote the poster who said we could have gone to our GP (not quote my own post!)

No, we could not go to our GP. Or rather we did, and they said nothing to do with them - all the responsibility of the council’s children’s services department who arranged specialist services via the councils schools.

We’re solicitors and checked the regs - they were right, completely stitched up. Thought of retraining as a specialist education lawyer but I think I’d find it too frustrating.

Such a non story! She can’t access a commissioned school service for state schools but she can access it via GP referral!

I work for a virtual school and we commission lots of services from our budget including mentoring, tuition, ed psych assessments, art/play therapy and more - it’s only for OUR kids even though they will be in state schools.

I think that's going to vary from place to place.... LA's do not have to provide funding for home schooling BUT NHS OT services can be provided on NHS premises or in the child's own home where the NHS has got a community service in place.

You could have gone to your GP. My dd never had her SALT or OT in school it was always outside of school and via the GP.

We are being taxed to the hilt, but the services are still not fit for purpose.

What about those who have to Home Educate because otherwise the children would receive no education

I’m glad the issue is getting publicity. It’s not a new thing - 10 years ago my dd no longer could get her teacher of the deaf (a council post for children with a variety of forms of deafness) visits once she turned 5 because she was at a private school. Nor could her OT or SALT visit her in school. We had to pay privately for OT and SALT but teacher of the deaf is not something you can access privately; I took it to my (Labour) MP who couldn’t care less.

We could have got the visits if we had an EHCP but the wait list for our borough was 2 years and they rejected 90%. We didn’t have the mental capacity to cope with that and spent what we would have spent on an education lawyer on paying for the private intervention.

Occupational therapy services for children in state schools is funded by local authorities. It was been like this since 2014 and became law as part of the Children and Families Act.
Local authorities do not fund private schools so obviously they won't pay for therapeutic services in private schools. Either the private school should commission and pay for it or the parent should go to the GP and get a referral to the GP that way.
The story is so misleading it would be unbelievable if it wasn't the Daily Mail .

People should have to take a critical thinking test before accessing newspaper articles. Or starting Mumsnet threads.

The story is more complex that the headline suggests, it is always worth looking at a variety of news sources and doing a bit of fact checking

The saying ''you can't have your cake and eat it'' comes to mind here. You can't opt out of state funded school and then demand the LA to still provide services for the child.

Nothing is wrong here.

Schools fund and buy into different things. If you want this particular service you go to a school that buys into it. If not you go to your GP. PhilippaGeorgiou explains it well. It’s a total non story with woeful journalism.

i know. BUT NHS funded therapists only see children in their own homes/home environment or on NHS premises. Therapists who go into schools are either employed by the LA or their services are purchased by the LA for use on LA educational premises ie Local Authority schools.

Let me help you out here, and then I am finished with this. It is a Local Education Authority. The LEA is responsible for funding services to state funded schools. It does not have any responsibility for funding services in private schools. Everyone is entitled to access an LEA funded service - they can send their children to an LEA funded school. If you want access to an NHS service - which this is not, it is a school service - then you speak to your GP and if they consider it appropriate they will make a referral, and the NHS will then decide whether to provide that service or not.

I dispute this is not an educational service. Occupational health is similarly not an "employment service" yet lots of employers have OT services. Many of them bought in from the NHS exactly as this has been. If your employer provides OH services for employees, they aren't going to squeeze your husband, who works for an entirely different employer, in because you think it isn't fair his employer hasn't got one. It is exactly the same.