ASD in mainstream secondary

Verbena

The support my dd has is second to none, I can't fault it.
You are right, much is down to pastoral care.
The SENCO is terrific and keeps all staff up to date about issues with any child. They don't need to be statemented to gain support.
However it's the house staff and pastoral care. Teachers are informed of any problems/ issues before the lesson, sometimes a week prior if something has happened during that time.
My dd has done some proper daft stuff and been helped rather than punished.
I'm not sure my dd would cope with a state secondary school in our area. Not sure about levels of support generally.
There is no money for staff in the state sector, everything has been cut.

Cross post Verbena

insan1ty as I've already said; some of these teachers will be meeting the child in question for the first or second time (OP clearly stated two weeks into term so not sure how that's halfway through ).

Based on the OPs example of what had been recommended there was NOTHING that would have suggested to me a requirement to be allowed to the bathroom straight after lunch. If the child had a toilet pass or it had clearly been indicated that this was an issue then yes, even two weeks in I'd expect that all staff should be aware. You cannot however assume that we will automatically assume that because a child is ASD that there will be a toilet pass which is what seems to be happening here.

Nothing the OP has said has made me think that the SenCo hasn't distributed the information, and there is nothing to make me think that the teachers in turn haven't read it.

Margots is half way through the first half term they should have been distributed long before now. I wouldn't be relying on the SENCo having distributed them if there seems to be no indication of that in the child's school day. I'd be emailing SENCo for confirmation that they had been received and distributed copying in the email to each subject teacher if it were me. Because IME unless you push and shove very little gets done.

manumission I couldn't have put it better myself. It's ridiculous how people believe that support hinders independence, good support fosters independence IME.It's also ridiculous how people believe that our children with ASD will just get over their difficulties if they ignore them, don't pander to them or refuse to believe they exist. No wonder there are thousands upon thousands of young people with ASD suffering with mental health issues particularly when the attitudes displayed here are probably rife in schools everywhere.

The watch was an example of the type of graded progression you refer to.
Nobody is saying nanny pambied 🙄

I hope op had success asking for the toilet card

As in; give them the opportunity to do things before sending copies yourself etc.

You can't expect 11, 12, 13 year olds with Autism to develop independence by throwing them into a large environment that doesn't meet their (very real) needs and just insisting that they need to develop independence though mouldy.

The way to promote independence skills acquisition in DC with ASCs is by slow, incremental, graded progression in a workable environment with lots of support. Instead we have 1000s of teens struggling just to get appropriate access to toilet facilities etc.

I sometimes read posts on MN and get the impression that many people think the real issue with ASC DC is that they are being namby-pambied by the few people who are providing the actual support.

The support id needed because of the Autism. You do realise that?

A watch won't solve much if the whole educational setting is leaving a child to sink or swim.

Verbena that's the whole point. I feel you need to give the school and the SenCo the opportunity to get things right first - it's coming across that you're trying to do their jobs for them. Equally; other posters and myself have tried to explain to you in numerous posts the reality of secondary classrooms and the hectic nature of the first few weeks - you've not really acknowledged thisthat I've seen (I may have missed and apologies if so) but I'm not sensing that you have any real appreciation or understanding of the role we are trying to play. Sadly your expectation that every single one of your child's teachers are completely au fait with his very specific needs so early in the term is unrealistic.

Like mouldy says - perhaps this is an opportunity to help develop some life skills and independence.

Things is, one day he will leave school and will at some point probably need to get a job and there won't be a TA or a senco or a parent involved. So th more life skills and independence tools he can develop at secondary school the better even if it's small things like the vibrating watch

I don't think mainstream secondaries are set up to help a child with ASD succeed. There are so many challenges each and every day because of the vast number of staff and pupils the child comes into contact with who all have their own rules and methods.

Too true.

We desperately need state specialist secondary schools for academically able DC with HF-ASD and associated conditions. ATM a lot of money is going to pay for equivalent private placements via Statements/ECHPs, but they are expensive places (£70k-£120k pa) and hard to get (usually won via tribunal).

It's a crazy system.

But children like mine don't learn unless the autism, the sensory,the social and communication needs aren't met. Funnily enough in dd's full time statement I think about five hours (I'd have to tally it up to be accurate) relates directly to learning or is academics based. So TA's do the vast majority of homework in school with her, there is provision to relearn some aspects of subjects when needed (generally in fast paced lessons because she is top set but has processing difficulties) and there is provision for preparation for topics to come as dd requires an overview so that areas where alternative work needs to be provided can be identified in advance. The vast majority centres around communication, sensory, social needs and the requirement for the TA's to provide clerical support and emotional support as required.
Schools should consider the whole child, dd's statement considers the full picture not just the academic, with the support dd has she will achieve the high grades across the board as predicted without the support or poor support dd would not achieve her potential.

Even TAs have their main priority of getting students to achieve academic success and everything is pretty much geared to learning.

lets not lose sight of the fact that this is the ONLY reason for the existance of schools.....

Verbena that's great that you do trust the SenCo - I think I maybe worded badly though; my point was that to the SenCo it may appear that you don't trust them because rather than give them the opportunity to do their job and arrange for pertinent information to be copied and distributed you've done that for them by getting it copied and handing in. It may be that paper copies are not useful anyway - certainly in my school there are no paper copies of student info circulated for confidentiality reasons - everything is securely stored on the server.

I 100% understand that you are your son's best advocate and that you want to do everything you can to ensure that he is suitably supported; believe me when I say I wish every parent had the same focus. You DID say that you wanted mainstream secondary input here though and it really is coming across that every time a poster tries to offer that (or possible suggestions) you are dismissive or unhappy with the reality that is a busy secondary school. I completely get that your son is possibly not seen to be struggling but the reality is that even if teachers know that he is ASD it will depend how often they see him as to how well they will interpret signs of distress. Some teachers (if on a fortnightly timetable) may realistically only have taught him once or twice. Do you genuinely think it reasonable that they can in that space of time have worked out that your DS may have asked out to the toilet just after lunch because of that ASD? I can honestly say it's not something that has been an issue for the ASD students I have taught but as others have said each child is individual. I probably would have said no as well.

I will teach some students over the course of a year for the equivalent of just over 1.5 weeks of class time in primary school. The reality of that is that I am only really getting to know the students towards the end of the year. Yes; I will be aware that your son is flagged as an ASD student and will have read his profile - but I will in the first instance be more aware of the student who has a life threatening condition (or whom I teach several) or who has severe behavioural problems with the potential to cause serious issues in the classroom.

There isn't a perfect solution. Not for students, not for teachers and not for parents. Instead we need to try and work together the best we can to make the best of an imperfect arrangement.

In my DCs school the Heads of year are all High level TAs, there is a different system of monitoring the Academic side which uses teachers. As high level TAs they have experience and training in dealing with a range of SN and other issues, they also can be allowed the luxury of more time to have to concentrate on their HOY responsibilities (so only spend a little time working as a TA, and that with their year group). The school also has a Counsellor and two part-time youth workers, as well as the SN team.
But it has 2000 pupils, and does other activities to maximise revenue (running courses to train school support staff, letting of facilities etc. etc.).

She of course knows nothing about the condition of the other child, or any other children with SEND in the classroom, and is under the impression the class is run with her specific child's needs as a central priority. She doesn't understand they clash with the needs of other children.

This is the crux of the problem when the ideal of inclusion cannot be met because of insufficient staff and funding. Parents have high expectations which sometime just cannot be met because children and classrooms are unpredictable. The staff can only do their best with what they have and parents have to accept that other children also have needs and sometimes the other child will be the priority.

I'm just using this incident to highlight some of the difficulties in managing a class room with many special needs in it. Ie, most class rooms. The actions taken by the teacher are to be applauded, but the mother of the child with ADHD cannot see beyond her child was physically tackled. She of course knows nothing about the condition of the other child, or any other children with SEND in the classroom, and is under the impression the class is run with her specific child's needs as a central priority. She doesn't understand they clash with the needs of other children.

She is pushing for the full weight of the law against the teacher, she won't get it obviously, but she will then most likely carry the grievance for years, or even decades, without ever understanding the ins and outs of the situation

Longlost10 - the problem with the situation of the child being restrained is: they will have been demonstrating behaviours before the incident which would have indicated that they were not coping. In an good situation they would be being monitored by a TA who would remove them, and give them space to refocus and calm.
In the worst case situation the other child/children should have been removed. That is the child in the wheelchair removed from the situation, rather than a child being pinned down.

no, that was absolutely not the situation at all, I have seen all the witnesses and read all the statements. It wasn't anything like you are imagining, and it certainly wasn't manageable or foreseeable in any way. The whole suggestion that there was any time at all to remove the disabled child is a long way wide of the mark. I'm not going to go into details, but all your assumptions about this incident are completely wrong, including the TA.

And the child is NOT in a wheel chair, he is perfectly able bodied. However, he has brittle bones, and the force of the collision he was less than 2 seconds away from experiencing would very likely have snapped his spine, and he would most likely have never recovered from that.