To want dd to go on trip

[Girlwithnoname1]

Please be kind....

Dd is statemented & goes to mainstream school, school trip this year is abroad.

School will not take DD unless I go with her - at an additional cost (the trips £600 - and an additional £200 for me)

Unfortunately I'll be 36 weeks pregnant when the trip happens. So really it's not going to happen.

Is it unreasonable to be heartbroken the school don't seem to have any equal opportunities for her, there's no alternative trip. DD is desperate to go, but can't dress independently, and needs tube feeding twice during the night. School are trained to give feed even though they don't have to do it during school atm.

We took a child with severe and multiple needs on the residential a couple of years ago just after an op that meant they were wheelchair bound by making a number of 'reasonable adjustments'. These included the family providing a carer (mum came); a taxi on two occasions rather than open top bus; access to private shower room so mum could help with personal care (child was male); additional and separate two bedded room for mum and potentially for child if needed . There was an additional cost - room, meal costs for mum, taxi fares - which school paid and it all worked brilliantly.
I would agree with above posters that expecting you to find someone to go with DD to help manage her needs is reasonable but making you also pay for privilege isn't!
Go back into school and talk to SENCo and whichever staff member is organising visit about the practicalities. Fear and 'what ifs' are often worse than reality, esp when planning residential.
Good luck.

If she's only getting 400ml a day, could she go without the feeds for a couple of nights? You don't state how long the trip is.

Can you arrange to meet with school to find out what exactly their concerns are? I'd approach it very much in a 'let's work together to find the solution to this' kind of a way.

If paying for a carer is a viable option, I can't imagine school would/could refuse that. Are there any charities that might be able to help with costs or providing someone?

If you could get the right carer and could keep it quite low key, as though they're just an extra carer (who happens to be caring for your DD) that would be much less obvious than her having her mum there!

It is an utterly horrible situation to be in though. or or

I had this with my son when he was in year seven. There was a whole year camping trip from which the school were proposing to exclude him. After advice from scope on how to do it correctly I fought his corner and won. I was later thanked by the deputy head for my persistence as they had learned valuable things about his capabilities. Later he went on further residentials where he and another disabled pupil were supported by school support staff. It may have helped that his eight form entry high school had been admitting physically disabled pupils from the late sixties and hada lot of experience. Every child is a learning experience but it seems to me from reading MN that things are harder schoolwise nowadays for disabled children than they were twenty years ago.

If the trip is "educational" then school should be paying for any adaptions to make it feasible for your dd to attend. They have a SEN budget and presumably funding from her statement over and above that allocated to the other children. If they argue this is insufficient then the statement needs to be rewritten at the next annual review to give support for this kind of trip. dh did accompany the ds's on a school residential (they have AS and behavioural issues so a bit different) and was not charged (we did offer only to be told that the outdoor centre was not going to charge as he was put down as a named adult). Presumably your dd has had physical issues for a long time so the school should have had time to work out a plan to help her go on the trip.