To be furious at ds school?

[weneednopants]

This is going to be a long post. Sorry
So backstory is ds (6) has sn. With various extra conditions. One of which is bowel issues. He either can't go or is very much the other way (sorry tmi). Anyway just before Christmas he was going through a lets say loose episode. Not contagious just his normal movements. Now he struggles with coordination and finds cleaning himself after toileting very difficult. Added to this he has asd and will have a complete meltdown if he gets poo on his hands. So in light of this I rang school to advise that he may need assistance when he uses the toilet just while he was going through this episode. His allocated 1:1 ta phones back to say in no uncertain terms she wasn't willing to help him and because he was likely to have a meltdown she didn't want him to come in until his bowel movements had firmed up.
So to the aibu part.
Today I received from the school an attendance warning letter. Telling me we are on a monitored 6 week period. If attendance doesn't improve we will be put before the attendance panel and face possible prosecution. His attendance dropped because the school wouldn't allow him to attend and now I'm put on warning!! I wanted him to go to school during that period not be at home perfectly well and bored but because his ta wouldn't wipe his arse when it needed it he had to stay home. Am I wrong in thinking this is totally unfair and in fact the school should be taking responsibility for his absence. Sorry for the long post

I think some people on here need to realise that mainstream school is for ALL children not just the ones who don't have any extra needs. Perhaps those who don't want to deal with extra needs should find a different job.

Perhaps those who don't want to deal with extra needs should find a different job.

That is simply unreasonable. The correct support needs to be given to children who have extra needs, providing reasonable adjustments can be made. That does not mean people's employment rights go out of the window. A person might be uncomfortable with intimate care or administering medicine and has every right to say they don't wish to do it unless they were hired to do it. These are not reasonable things to add to someone's job without their agreement.

The school knew he had bowel issues so surely they should have employed a 1 to 1 TA who was prepared to deal with it, it should have been explained to her before she took the job and she shouldn't have taken the job if she wasn't willing to help with personal care. If this TA won't they should replace her with someone else who will do the job properly.

of course yanbu op.

No it's perfectly reasonable trifle. Lots of people want to be TAs. Fine to only employ those who are up for the whole job when you employ a 1 :1

halcyondays: Okay, but they didn't. That means it wasn't her expectation that she would need to perform intimate care.

BarbarianMum: Of course, but not fine to fire someone because you failed to do this to start with. It isn't a standard part of the job and is in fact a fairly major adjustment without agreement. I could see a dismissal going to tribunal if the TA refused to do it and was dismissed so they could hire someone else.

Then the school should find someone else asap, and not send op school attendance letters in the meantime

If you choose to work 1:1 with children with sn then you should expect to at some time with some children to give intimate care or deal with medical needs.

halcyondays: But you are talking utter bollocks. You can't just fire someone because they don't agree to unreasonable changes to their job description.

Spikeyball: But it isn't a standard part of the job. It has already been established up thread that the school should have hired someone who could deal with these needs. Not all 1:1 TAs will expect or agree to do this. This is wishful thinking.

Maybe they did explain to her what the job involved, we don't know

halcyondays: I am not going to make that assumption, considering that the OP says this is a temporary need. Her DS usually toilets himself.

These letters are often generated automatically ad sent out by reception team who pribably have no idea what I going on. Just call yo to talk ti someone

Trifle, a 1:1 TA that doesn't want to do this, is in the wrong type of work.

Spikeyball: That is your opinion.

I don't think it's an excuse that the letters may be generated automatically: the system must allow for a different response for authorised absences or those imposed by the school, so the details must have been entered incorrectly.

Ooh op I would get down there and raise bloody hell. How dare they?! I don't know what to say, it's so obvious that the school denied his attendance and to challenge you on attendance is ridiculous. If he has acknowledged additional needs then the school has a duty to provide what he needs and if that is toileting assistance then so be it. Best of luck, I would challenge this immediately before they get even more unreasonable.

Spikeyball is correct. It is the nature of a TA's work that they will be dealing with children with special needs, and therefore it is likely that from time to time they will need to deal with intimate care. It would be highly unusual if it isn't included in the job description and therefore part of their contractual duties. Even without the SEN element, TAs dealing with younger children in particular often have to deal with toileting accidents.

Trifleorbust, what do you suggest should have happened in relation to this child? Should he have been illegally excluded purely because the TA didn't want to deal with his care?

Well, I have given my opinion anyway. No point going on about it any more.

I don't think TA's have to do personal care. I know I wouldn't want to. (Unless working in a special needs school and it was part of the job description that personal care was expected of me).

However, if the school have told you to keep him off they really shouldn't have sent you that letter!

Megatherium: We have to make a far distinction between the responsibilities of the Head and of the TA.

The TA is perfectly within her rights to say that personal care isn't part of her job. So let's leave that there.

The child should definitely not have been asked to not attend school until other options had been exhausted (which is the test of reasonable adjustments). Could they ask another TA to do it? Could they hire a temporary member of staff to do it? Could a parent or relative come in and help? All possible options.

The only point at which 'excluding' him (asking him not to come to school, not actually excluding) would be reasonable would be if he couldn't be accommodated and the result of him being at school would be that he would be having distressing accidents with no-one to help clean him up.

Asking him not to come into school is an unlawful exclusion Trifle and should be raised with the school and the Local Authority.
Ds's TA was recruited specifically for his needs, she had to agree to provide the care he needed in order to be appointed. Of course it is a TAs choice not to do intimate care but then it is also the school's choice not to recruit someone unwilling to fulfil the full obligations of the role they have applied for.
Tbh TAs wanting posts are ten a penny nowadays so I'd imagine schools would find it incredibly easy to source those willing to provide intimate care.

They are plenty of people that could have been employed to do this work so excluding him would never have been reasonable.
Op, if this situation happened again, I would tell them in writing that he is going to school and if they wish to exclude him they will have to do an official exclusion, with a paper trail, that goes to the LA. Similarly if you want him to go full time.

I'm going to bow out now because, although I clearly disagree with some posters' interpretation of 'reasonable', we are not getting anywhere here.

Just to be clear, I am not saying it is okay to exclude him. The final decision about whether he should attend school without someone to attend to his personal care would rest with his mum.