To be angry, and even a little bewildered on how to tackle this with the school?

[MaddyHatter]

DS has SN.. he has Autism, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder and Dyspraxia.... it makes for some very complex needs, a big one of which he CANNOT process emotion or self regulate and will go into a meltdown very suddenly.

One of the outcomes of him getting upset and frustrated and having a meltdown is that he lashes out during them, and can hurt the people near him. The school are aware of this, there are strategies in place to help him try to manage his feelings.

One of these strategies is the provision and freedom to go to a room called the Calm room, which is painted with calming colours and has cushions and bean bags...etc.

There was an incident today. Ds isnt having a good week and there is a piece of work he is flat refusing to do, and they keep trying to make him. Today they tried again and he began to get upset. The Learning Mentor tried to get him to go to her classroom to calm down, but his auditory processing issues meant he didn't understand and he thought she was going to try and make him do this work, and he lashed out.

He has been suspended, which i nominally support, even if i'm not happy, as in my eyes they're punishing him for part of his disability..

However, i asked DS why if he was getting angry, didn't he ask to use the Calm room (its right opposite his classroom) and he told me he wasnt allowed in there because some of the yr6 girls were using it as a PE changing room.

WTF?!?!

Now.. i appreciate at 10/11yo the girls may not wish to change in the classroom with the boys, and an alternative should be provided... but WHY THE FUCK are the school letting them use THE CALM ROOM which is there for children like my son to use as and when they need it?

I am so fucking angry... we spent AGES getting it through to him that he could remove himself from a situation and go to that room if he felt the need to help prevent him going into meltdown, and now, he has to check if its being used as a fucking changing room and isn't allowed in there if the girls belongings are... and has now ended up having a violent meltdown and hit a teacher and got suspended.

I just don't know how to tackle this or even where to start.

The OP's child has a specifically funded TA just for him. That isn't taking away from anyone because if he wasn't there the TA wouldn't be either. That TA is there so that the teacher can concentrate on the other children.

Is it not fair? Do you want a TA allocated to your NT child?

I've had 21 years of these shitty attitudes.

On the financial point: we have a choice. We can spend the money to increase massively the chance of children with SEN growing up to be self-supporting and productive, taxpaying members of society. Or we can decide not to spend the money, with the result that they don't have that chance and grow up to be adults unable to support themselves who may have to go into sheltered accommodation or, worst case scenario, end up in prison at a cost of £50K + a year.

Potatoes, what's your choice?

August - I'm not unable to take it in.

The OP said, "the Learning Mentor tried to get him to go to her classroom to calm down". So, her sons private room was unavailable but another room was. The boy didn't like it or didn't understand and assaulted the teacher.

I suspect the other classroom had a lot of windows which defeats the object of a private changing room.

Honking

m not bothered about my son needing more money spent on him than others without disabilities

I'm sure you aren't.

I'm talking about the thousands extra it will cost for every child with sen to leave mainstream

How much because if the teachers (and by extension, we can assume other pupils) are in danger of being assaulted, it seems to be for the best. Why should one child's rights or entitlements override anothers'?

cansu

Do you mean the class' TA or her own personal (volunteer) assistant? Either way, she is getting 1:1 teaching for a lot more than other students.

I also began with "correct me if I'm wrong" which clearly isn't an assertion. Why should I stay quiet? Am I not entitled to an opinion? My sons go to an independent school and no, there aren't any sen children there. It doesn't mean for a second that as an intelligent adult I can't imagine the situation and form my own ideas; different though they may be to yours, they're no less valid.

Hi Mads - apologies, the thread has been quite fast moving so I may have missed it, but what provisions would you be looking to the school to make to ensure this situation doesn't occur again (i.e. to protect your son as well as staff members and his fellow students)?

Would it be to have primary/preferential access to the Calm Room or similar space? Also, apologies again if it has been answered up thread, what is meant to happen if another in-need child is using the Calm Room when your son also requires it, have the school advised?

I personally found your description of the green / Amber / red buildup to be really helpful - I can see how all those factors contributed to an overload. As someone with limited experience of SEN inc autism it was educational (sorry if that sounds patronising!).

Having spoke to DS the girls have been using it for a while, and there isn't a plan b for when the room is in use. He apparently tried to access the room yesterday, found it in use and took himself to the cloakrooms, was followed and asked to return to do the work, refused and another teacher was fetched, asked to do the work again, and then ran away again, at which point the attempt was made to get him to the LMs room and he had a meltdown.

Obviously I will be clarifying those facts.

To get it out of the way first I agree with those that say the girls need a safe and private space to get changed in for PE. Quite often school toilets are inappropriate because other DCs need to use them for the purpose for which they were intended and opening the outer door may result in the girls getting changed being "on view". That's down to the layout of many primary school toilets.

The room is for this DC and other DCs who need a space to calm down and that's what it should be used for. However, there should be something in place for when the DC cannot use it. ie it's being used by another DC with similar issues. The staff should explain that if the room is not available this is what will happen (perhaps going to learning mentor's classroom or another room).If the DCs knows that will happen then a meltdown is a lot less likely.

It's wrong to call teachers idiots for changing the routine of the class day. Sometimes it's unavoidable and teachers have to have the flexibility to change things if another method may work better for the whole class. Classrooms cannot be run according to the needs of one DC but measures must be taken to ensure the DC knows what is happening, and this doesn't seem to have happened.

OP, I admire your stance in saying that your DC should accept a punishment for assaulting a LM. Staff have a right to be safe in school and to feel supported but they also have to take on board that their actions can help avoid such situations.

Whether or not taught by a support assistant or not, a mainstream educated SEN child will take up significantly more time during the teacher's working week than a non-SEN. Not saying that's wrong before I get jumped on for that too.

Massively cross posting with the OP there.

Children with sen don't have any more rights than any other child. Just the same right to an adequate education. Things like the sen code of practice and reasonable adjustments merely exist to make sure this happens. My son gets hit and bitten etc by other children in his specialist school so he is no more privileged in that respect.

I suspect the other classroom had a lot of windows which defeats the object of a private changing room

^and you can't see how this can make the room unsuitable as a calm quiet space with minimal sensory input?

Potato - your posts are clearly showing you have an issue with extra resource being provided to allow children with SEND to access education and feel this is depriving NT children (ignoring the fact that the additional TAs and resources such as the quiet room wouldn't be in the school at all if there were not children there who needed them to access education).

What solution do you propose?

Should children with SEND not be able to access education? Because that is what it would mean for many children if the extra resources where not provided.

augusta

Why using phrases like "vaunted superiority of thinking" when I've been nothing but polite to you? Try to avoid the sly digs, eh?

No, I can't imagine what it's like to be autistic. Can anyone?

Can you stretch your imagination to think what it may be like being a headmaster or teacher, or TA and confronted with various impossible demands and be under-resourced? You are rating the OP's son's needs above others and blaming the school for his violence. I'm saying that there should be a more balanced approach, thinking of the needs of all children ; the ones who shouldn't be sidelined because they don't lash out at others.

re. finances.

To my mind, inclusion is failing. We seem to agree that prevention is better than a cure ie. spend on education to avoid problems long term. At the same time, where should all this extra funding come from and it it fair to spend so much more money on one member of society at the expense of others? Significantly more of the prison population come from working class backgrounds. Should they have more money spent on their education to keep them out of "worst case scenario" prison?

youTheCat

Do you want a TA allocated to your NT child?

You don't know anything about my children. However, do you think when another child attacking a teacher it doesn't impact on the rest of the class. Surely not.

Significantly more of the prison population come from working class backgrounds. Should they have more money spent on their education to keep them out of "worst case scenario" prison?

^ whilst not applicable to all "working class" children, children from the most economically deprived backgrounds do draw additional funding for schools, in the form of the pupil premium.

So additional money is given to try and improve the future for children from more disadvabtaged backgrounds.

I see it on a daily basis. Have you?

The attack on the teacher could have been avoided if the procedures put in place had been followed and the room had been available (as it always should be).

What it is with the posters with the a Sen child is taking something away from a child without SEN!

What is so hard to understand.

Schools recieve additional funding for children with SEN.

If there is a TA in the class, they have been put there specifically for that child and paid for with that child's funding. So the teacher is free to teach others without SEN.

If that child has a calm room it as been paid for with that funding.

Other children are not being deprived. In fact quite the opposite. TA is there so teacher can teach. Room is there so others are not disrupted.

Whether or not taught by a support assistant or not, a mainstream educated SEN child will take up significantly more time during the teacher's working week than a non-SEN. Not saying that's wrong before I get jumped on for that too

What is the relevance of this comment to the OP? I took up significantly more midwife and doctor time when I was pregnant than I do now. I may sail through old age and die peacefully at 90 in my sleep, or I might need significant medical or social care. Many things could happen between now and then which will mean that I or my family need support. We don't all need the same services so we don't all receive the same services.

Also SEN covers a massive variety of needs and some children won't need much more support than that provided by their LA.

(LA as in learning/teaching support assistant, not Local Authority).

The way I understood the OP was that her son wasn't allowed to access the calm room because the yr 6 girls belongings were in the room, so the girls had got changed and left their belongings there and went to the PE lesson so therefore the calm room was inaccessible to a child who needed it for the whole duration of the PE lesson not just for 5 minutes while the girls got changed.

The school is obliged by law to make reasonable adjustments for any child with SEND, they shouldn't then knowingly make that reasonable adjustment inaccessible.

The school could argue that they made a reasonable adjustment by telling the child to go to another classroom but the nature of this child's SEN indicate that the unexpected change of rooms is precisely the reason why he reacted badly and the meltdown occurred as a direct result of that.

Nowhere on this thread has the OP said that the calm room is for only her son's use, in fact she states that the calm room is there for children like her son as and when they need it.

I don't suppose it occurred to anyone that insisting he do the work was like poking a bear with a stick and expecting not to get mauled?

Of course children should be expected to do what is reasonably asked of them (SN or not), but there are some circumstances where the value of the task is not high enough to justify the cost of achieving it. Surely they could have used a different task to assess the skills that the task in question was assessing?

Violence is never acceptable but it would be foolish of them to overlook the lessons they can learn from this event. There must have been clear warnings that the OP's DS was heading for meltdown. They must have seen it coming and if they didn't, they urgently need some help to identify the precursors to a meltdown. Meltdowns very rarely happen in a moment. If a situation is analysed effectively, there will usually be key factors that were red flags.

It's a shame that so much ignorance prevails.

It wasn't his class teacher he hit. It was a specialist member of the school pastoral team who are employed to help with children like my DS and those with emotional difficulties. They are essentially 'on call' to help with situations like yesterday and have a lot of specialist training, but by the time she was called yesterday, the window of oppotunity to de escalate the impending meldown had passed and he had hit the point of no return.

Merry..I was responding to another poster.

City why does an SEN child take up more time than a child without SEN?

To my mind, inclusion is failing.

And who are you going to include and exclude? children don't fall on either side of a neat line - suitable for mainstream on one side and suitable for specialist school on the other. What about children with emotional and mental health difficulties or those who have suffered trauma? What about children whose educational needs can't be met in a specialist school?

The number of specialist schools is limited and they are not designed to be suitable for all children who currently require additional classroom support. Given the range of additional and educational needs that children have it is unrealistic to suppose that this would ever be the case.

From how I read it the OP's DS did try and take himself to an alternative 'calm space', the cloakrooms, but the school staff involved were more focused on forcing him to do the 'work' than realizing he was on his way to a meltdown.

"Fetching" another teacher - so now we have 2 adults crowding round an ASD child, never a good idea when a meltdown is brewing.

"An attempt was made to get him to the LMs room" - and how did they do that?
Probably by some sort of physical intervention - again not a good idea when ASD anxiety is high - the DS lashes out, a human reaction which even NT adults do if being physically forced into a space they don't want to go to. A member of staff got in the way of the 'lashing out' and it's called assault. The child didn't go up to a teacher and hit them, which IS assault.

At least the exclusion is a formal one and can be used as evidence to underline the necessity for an EHCP and continuing, if not increasing, the child's SEN provision.

Maddy you are heroic in keeping your cool on this thread

This is ridiculous. Either the girls need a changing room or they don't. PE is presumably weekly/daily(?) so it's not like it's a need the school can't anticipate. They need to make provision for this very obvious eventuality. And it shouldn't be at your son's expense. What I'm hearing here is that OP suspects the school is paying lip service to the idea of supporting children with SEN, marvellous ideas, paperwork, 'plan in place' etc, but in every day reality they are pretty much ignoring his needs.
OP what was the work they were trying to make your son do? Was it definitely 100% necessary (I find it hard to imagine so). If it was, they should surely have spoken to you to get you on board with coming up with the best way to make it happen in an environment that would give your son the maximum reassurancd and space.
for you OP, this must be so difficult for you.