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.

69k per term plus the normal cost of a none disabled child not including cost of outside support - that's what one of my kids specialist placements costs (that's not even the most expensive one)

That's what specialist provision costs, that's why she'd loads of children with ASD are in main stream with not much useful support and that's why loads of them get excluded. It's cost cutting and not their fault

I'm stunned by igotwo's response, surprised it is still there. Glad to know you are such a perfect mother. SN can be dealt with by parenting - well who knew? Would you say the same about a physical need? No thought not. Go and educate yourself and then come back and apologise profusely to the OP.

The school has two problems here - one, they failed your son.

Two, they failed their employee. They failed to protect the teacher.

I'm glad I'm not the HT right now - they've got some big problems to address. Sorry I can't come up with anything more helpful than that but there has been some good advice on here.

cricketballs

I appreciate what you are saying. But it was more than clumsy. It showed a total lack of desire to understand the issue right now, as miraclebaby says

OP
Can I just say that the LA have 6 weeks to respond to a request for assessment not 20. They have 20 weeks to complete the assessment and draft the plan if agreed. Not sure if you just got a little mixed up in your post or have been told wrong information.

OP YANBU, I have had the same sorts of bewilderment with the school's treatment of DS2 - who is mildly ASD and disruptive in class, but not violent and so had no extra help at all. He became school-phobic.

I'm sorry to say I gave up in the end, and now home educate him. It's going very well, he is so much happier.

It seems I can do it better than the school. Sigh.

You cannot just remove something that a child with asd relies upon to remain calm and not expect there could be trouble ( and stress for the child).

In my school girls change in one classroom and boys in the other.

Cricket, yes.. but what his Dyspraxia does is actually provide an aspect of developmental delay.. emotionally, autism aside, he operates on the level of a 6yo.. when you throw in the Autism, and the ADHD, and the SPD, it makes for a very complex little boy with very little emotional intelligence.. because he has impulse issues and no ability to self regulate.. which is why there is stuff provided and strategies in place to try and head off the meltdown before he gets to that point.

Today, those strategies were not in place, not used and the inevitable happened.

Mayhem, its 20 here! The application went in 20 weeks ago, they agreed to assess, which we have been doing in the last 8 weeks, this week was when the decision based on the assessment was supposed to come back, but the Health side of it are dragging their heels, so a lot are being delayed.

consistency is vital. I agree that you need to just calm down a little....maybe write down the series of events.
Once you have,make an appointment to see the key person who has this responsibilty.
If there is a calm room available ....then that's it ...it should be available.
What is this work and why the objection from your son? Sounds like a real sticking point.

Op; I've purposely not commented on the rights/wrongs of the school just tried to show a different interpretation of Igottwo's post as this is our biggest concern currently with DS2 as he is nearing his 17th birthday and we have no idea what he is going to do with his life once he leaves his SN college bastard conservatives closing down Remploy

I fully understand your concerns/worries/anger I just thought as a parent of an older child about to face the world it is something to think about

Op one of my children in primary had a couple of meltdowns (NT just got very frustrated and didn't handle things well plus had health issues so often needed just to be a bit ill but not actually leave school) and they made a special Calm Corner for her and it was brilliant, enabled her to manage herself and also cope with pain and not leave school. She only needed it for that year.

I'm just pointing out that things like a Calm Room or Calm Corner aren't some special totally different type of a thing not relevant to anyone else- actually they are very much a sensible part of behavioural management for lots of children in the school for lots of different reasons- they need time out, they get overwhelmed, if they have difficulties at home/parent is very sick or whatever. Both schools my dds have attended have had either Nurture areas or a special classroom where people can go to do group-work or take time out if they need to.

One reason lots of children with sn and without don't cope well with secondary is the noise, overwhelmingness of it, lack of calm spaces, what's great about that?

Surely the school has more than one cloakroom? Can't either the boys or girls change there whilst the others use the classroom? That's what my school did for Year 4s up.

Igottwo Wed 20-Apr-16 17:17:47

"There is no value in agreeing with everything. It may make you feel good to agree, but you really do need to see a bigger picture sometimes. Looking from the point of view of the school who issued the suspension, they would not have taken this decision lightly. The OP felt this was wrong. I don't.

By not agreeing with the OP it may open up other avenues other than her being determined to find ways to challenge the school and the Head Teacher."

Could you perhaps give any constructive suggestions? Have you ever known a child on the autistic spectrum who stopped having meltdowns because his mum told him he mustn't. Have you ever known a child on the autistic spectrum who when a meltdown was beginning was able to find another child and explain to him what was going on and then go off and find an alternative solution? Or to put it briefly, HAVE YOU EVER KNOWN A CHILD ON THE AUTUSTIC SPECTRUM?

The school ought to be ashamed of itself!

They take away a room for your to calm down in, then suspend him because he couldn't use the room! What idiots!

To clarify.

i agree that as per the school policy, violence towards a teacher has to be dealt with, and the schools policy it a fixed term exclusion. As such, as a responsible parent, i support the schools discipline methods outwardly.

That doesn't undo my feelings that as my DS can't help having a meltdown, and that the hitting out at people in his immediate vicinity is part and parcel of those meltdowns, that he is actually being punished for his disability.

I have argued it before, and last time actually got the exclusion overturned because i refused to have him home as even the HT agreed the meltdown and subsequent violent outburst were due to a MAJOR failure on his staffs part.

This time, i have allowed it to go ahead as DS is having a difficult week and feel for his safety and his teachers, its better to keep him home and do his work here (im a qualified TA so i can do that with him)

That doesn't mean i dont feel the need to tackle the failures of implementing the strategies that are supposed to be in place to prevent this.

Truffle, the SEN budget is provided to make adjustments like this for DS and other children with SN is separate from the one they buy the general equipment and stationary.

And the only money 'spent' on this room was for a couple of pots of paint and some cushions, rugs and beanbags as it was a re-appropriated storage cupboard!

DS isn't the only child which benefits from it either.

I presume the room can be used by any child that needs somewhere to calm down so not just for one child. Schools have budgets specifically for children with sen and they can request extra funding if needed. Would you be objecting to an accessible toilet?

Well interestingly I just saw that someone who stabbed her abuser has escaped a jail sentence (if escape is the right word, given what she's been through). So the courts can look at cause and effect and apply a proportionate sentence. So should the school - and my understanding was that exclusions leading from disabilities were unlawful. And punishing a child for your own shortcomings goes against natural justice for me in any event.

As for worrying about older children, I think a lot of kids with SEN do a lot better once they're out of the artificial environment of a school. There are lots of petty rules which are really about crowd control. And kids really provoke each other, even when they don't have SN. In a way that simply doesn't happen in the workplace. Imagine for example being in the office and asking someone for the key to the stationery cupboard. Can you imagine the staff member refusing to give it to you and laughing in your face. it just wouldn't happen. Yet when something like that happens in school, the kids are just supposed to shrug their shoulders. It doesn't surprise me that some overreact to provocation and particularly if they have issues to begin with. Fortunately kids grow up. Both the provokers and the ones who overreact. And everyone tends to learn a little tolerance.

Even if the Ops ds is the only child who needs the calm room, surely that will mean all the children in his class benefit from him having access to it?

Mumsnet, I am ashamed of you. Why did you delete my post? Is the OP a friend of yours? Any post on this thread that has a different opinion is deleted. So much for free speech. And I am seriously concerned about Year 6 girls having no changing room but there is a room which is empty most of the time.

purplevase

Good post

Some of the posts on this thread are heartbreaking. You people have children?! Are you teaching them this bigoted ignorance, too?

purplevase I was at an exclusions workshop run by the NAS a few weeks ago and they said that if violence is involved, it isn't covered by disability discrimination so an exclusion is permitted and an appeal would probably fail.

Yes they need to make reasonable adjustments including to policies but the rub for asd children is that the school could fail entirely to support a child correctly, they melt down and lash out, they can be excluded.