Help for 13 year old DD

[indecisiveninny]

We have a 13 year old daughter who we believe is ND and we are trying to get referred due to ongoing behavioural and emotional issues both at school and at home.

School life especially has been awful and we are in an ongoing cycle of reactive behaviour stemmed from minor events, leading to time spent in isolation and into school avoidance

School has agreed that a ILP should be in place, GP has agreed that she will refer with report from school but we are 6 months on from an initial GP visit and start of email/meeting trail with school and have been no further forward.

Daughter is now completely disconnected from school and asks to be home educated on a daily basis.

After months of badgering we have finally had a report through from the school, written by the the schools SEND lead, who has never met my child and certainly from the report has not taken much time to understand her from involved staff, very much a copy and paste job.

Most information is there (apart from the huge amounts of time spent in isolation) and it does largely support a referral but the way it’s written is poor with the opening page giving a generalised positive view of DD and her 1st few years as the school, which she was until hormones hit and she stopped being bald to mask.

I just worry that while all the information is there someone is going to take one look at that and stick her right to the bottom of the pile.

The school were very unaware of what format the report should take and what should be included, which as a very large comprehensive school I was surprised at and that seemed to have been the problem with the hold up as we had them coming back to us twice completely clueless as to what we wanted.

DH thinks we should make an appointment with the GP and submit as is but I worry that while all the information is there someone is going to take one look at that cover letter and stick her right to the bottom of the pile.

Firstly can I ask how other peoples schools have handled this part of the process? Is there a format that we are unaware off that they should be following. Am I over thinking how it’s written and someone will consider the whole part rather than make judgment from initial cover letter.

Is there anything else we should be asking the school for?

Any other advice would be really appreciated as we are learning as we go and really don’t want to make a mistake that delays support for DD.

Learning Plans tend to be a balanced assessment of a child’s needs, with both positive attributes and areas for improvement. The GP can use this as the basis for referral.

Having a good Y7/8 and then falling apart is classic ND girl trajectory; an autism assessor will use that as evidence that she is autistic (when they take into account her history).

Trust the school to tick the boxes. I write lots of these and it is in the school’s interests that your DD gets the help she needs.

schools deal with requests for reports in myriads of forms and formats. And the Senco will be copy and pasting from teacher reports, that is how it is done

Learning plans and indeed DDs autism report start with a paragraph outlining positive things about her and then go into the deficits.

You can go private, I bypassed the GPs altogether, just sent an email with the completed report and diagnosis and her details and NHS number and it was added to her profile. I mentioned my concerns to school, persued private diagnosis, the questionnaires from school suggested there were no issues as I expected, she is a quiet, well behaved, academically gifted child, until they got the report through and learnt how to recognise those behaviours that she actually did exhibit and were able to put things in place to support her in the school environment.

Ime look at alternatives option for her education.. Ds 15 attends Skills College for 14-18 year olds... Educational psychologist gave a statement he needs to be taught as if he has an asd diagnosis..
Please please op take action to keep your dd out of isolation.. It is extremely damaging. We took ds out of mainstream after the school were adamant the 18 hours in an isolation booth was appropriate for a lad who apparently refused to make eye contact with a teacher.... One example of his unwillingness to 'engage in learning' which is the school mantra...