To feel really bloody cheated that ds has to be home educated?

[witchesbroth]

Ds8 has HFA, sensory issues, anxiety - all of which results in exploding behaviour and exclusions from school. His self esteem and confidence is very low, he has no friends and has been made to be away from the class with a TA for so long now. We've been fighting the system for over a year for all the relevant assessments, help, EHCP but it's all come too little too late. The school placement has broken down and he's at home with no school to go to. He's under the LEA still but apart from another mainstream support (rinse and repeat) or a school for mod-severe LD (he's profoundly academically gifted).

He wants to be at school - he can't. There's none for him
He wants friends - he's got none
He wants to be part of shared experiences at school - residential, projects, discos, trips - he can't
He wanted to go to the grammar school for secondary -no idea....they don't like EHCPs apparently

Instead he's at home. Alone. Learning off websites and feeling shit about himself.

What I'm most annoyed about is how the system has let him down. If the help, support and funding went in when he first went into crisis, we wouldn't be in this mess but he was left to get worse and worse.

We're not not sending him to a SS because the other kids aren't intellectual enough??!!??

We aren't sending him because:

• all the professionals and people working with him say it's not suitable
• the SS have said they can't meet his needs
• they SS in this county are all full and are refusing admission to any further children even if we did fight this path
• the very few independent SS are ridiculously tiny and don't offer him a peer group at all or the right environment to learn the skills he needs.

I really didn't mean to offend anyone if that's what they thought.

He has a gap in functioning in school definitely but actually outside of school he doesn't come across like that. He can already do most age appropriate things for himself and certainly doesn't need 1:1 when he's at clubs and group.

You can ask the school to release the funds from the EHCP for you to source the provision detailed in the EHCP at home. It's probably quicker to get the LA to give you a PB by stating you are Electively Home Educating rather than EOTAS as that seems to be a grey area or i is in our LA at least.

Why not give the school.for learning difficulties a shot. As there is a better teacher/ pupil ratio he will be able to learn things at his pace. And probably make the friends he hasn't managed to make in mainstream. Worth a shot surely?

Sorry ignore I've just read your update.

Has your sons ECHP named a school. You could get non maintained. Trouble is Surrey has no money. Priors Court? Look at EBD which specialises in autism? Look on autism directory.com There’s a residential in Frome - Northfield, I think it is.

OP, we are also in a very similar position. My son is 12 and has barely been to school yet this year due to extreme anxiety and suicidal thoughts. To all intents and purposes we are now homeschooling him. This was going on all through year 7 as well, and he had been having counselling from CAMHS.

Although his head of year was supportive in letting him sit out of some lessons, it wasn’t until this year when he began refusing school altogether that we realised just how badly we’d been let down. All of a sudden we were getting threats of legal action from the school because we couldn’t ‘prove’ his anxiety, despite the mental health referral.

We found out they hadn’t even told us they was a learning support centre within the actual school where he could have been looked after! They were just putting him in an empty office with a book to read. They now want an early help assessment (bit late for that really) and have refused to send him work home from school on the grounds that it would condone his absence. Wtf!

We found an excellent online system (Red Balloon of the Air) who are happy to take my DS but his school are not currently willing to refer him or pay for it. It’s all so stressful and such a mess. Luckily DH and I were able to rearrange some of our work hours so we can be at home more with DS, and we are both degree educated with strengths in different areas so we are managing to cover the homeschooling ok at the moment. But if we are finding this so hard, I worry for kids whose parents are not able to negotiate the system or are not in a position to homeschool.

Local EBD here sent a lad to Oxford a few years ago.

I cross posted with you. Have you visited any of these schools? I would go, take your DS with you and see what you think. Ultimately 1hr15 mins is not too long if it's the right placement as it will make so much difference to him, it's also not miles away if a house move seems sensible.

Are the school telling you you need to home school? There's a real focus on children being "off rolled" for the benefit of the school atm and one of the ways school do this is by "suggesting" home schooling.

Contact your MP.

Where I work, we teach children who have been excluded from school and generally academic achievement levels are low. The school However, staff love it when we get a brighter child and will lay on extra subjects for them. If necessary we buy in specialists just for one child. So it's not necessarily true that the apparently low aspiration schools couldnt suit him

Have you been in touch with IPSEA.?

He needs a special school type building with Sen trained teachers, smaller classes, less sensory overload and less transitions with a very fast paced highly extended mainstream curriculum with an appropriate peer group of similar children. Just doesn't exist

These schools do exist but may not be commutable daily. I know of several and they have lots of residential students who come home every weekend if it's too far to travel daily. There are options but you'd either have to relocate or accept a residential place.

OP this is/was exactly our situation. I could have written your OP myself, 7 years ago. For some children there is NO provision in the education system. It's quite clear you're not saying a SS won't meet his intellectual needs. It was the same for us. There is a certain kind of child with HFA (quite a few of them actually) who fall between the cracks of mainstream and SS; neither will do, they're managing too well and too high functioning to go to SS but not well enough to go to mainstream. I had a discussion on this very problem with an internationally recognised expert on autism, who acknowledged it as a problem. There are some schools but unless you're lucky enough to live nearby or don't want your child to board then they're not a possibility.

One of the hardest things I found was the lack of belief that this could be possible from family and friends, after all children HAVE to be in school don't they? And the LA MUST provide a suitable place. It's astonishing how there is absolutely no support for a child with a spectrum condition, who cannot manage in the education system. When I finally decided to HE, the local authority could barely hide their delight. This is why the threads on here about home edders being monitored make me roll my eyes. Many of us are forced into doing it and the LA are only to happy to see the back of us. It's fascinating to me that there's this steadily growing group of children that cannot be catered for yet hardly anyone knows about it unless affected themselves.

Bluebird - could you list the schools you know of? There's 2 above I've just looked at in Surrey which look good so anymore to consider would be great. I wouldn't put him in residential schooling, I know that wouldn't be right for him but we would move if the right school is out there. I'm sick of just making do and being expected to be grateful.

Op I quite agree that there is a massive lack of provision for academically able but socially lacking children.

We are lucky that our primary school is doing their best. But their best isn't always perfect.

If you've never walked this path you have no idea how difficult it is to balance academic needs with additional needs.

Special schools are generally designed for those children who have massive physical disability in accessing education and who have intellectual disabilities as well.

Mainstream schools are by design for 'normal' - 'neurotypical' children.

There is nothing widely available for the children who sits square in between the two.

I am sure we are going to have this with my youngest daughter as academically she is hugely intelligent, but her additional needs are getting in the way of her reaching her full potential in a mainstream setting. Thankfully at present she is only 6, and isn't lashing out in school like her older brother does.

My feeling is the only way to accommodate children like ours is vertical primary classes, where children are grouped by ability rather than age. But that poses its own problems.

CarolDanvers - thank you. Yes. Exactly your post.

I'm raging at the injustice and apathy of the system. I know there is nothing suitable in the county. We know ourselves and have been told by many professionals who cover the schools in our county, that there is nothing suitable. But even then people still try and push you in to accepting a sub standard school because it might meet some of his needs (whilst creating more). There are so many of these children and they all seem to home educative day so they aren't on anyone's radar and no one is doing anything about it.

Ds went through 6 years of his life where us and everyone around him had no idea he had any additional needs. It came as a complete shock when the wheels fell off. So this nightmare could happen to anyone.

witches It does sound as though you have enough evidence that no setting can meet his needs in the education system, which is what you need to prove to get a Personal Budget with your EHCP. Please don't give up on this because it is possible, and fairly straightforward in some LAs'. Join this FB group for advice: www.facebook.com/groups/312513312123284/?ref=bookmarks - lots of people on there have succeeded in getting PBs and they can help you.

I would approach all the professionals who've said there is no suitable setting for him and get it in writing. It's all evidence for your cause.

Btw, you're right about the majority of special schools not meeting academic needs. It's kind of a given in most areas, but not many will say it out loud because it shouldn't be that way.

Have not RTFT but just want to say...

If you de-register your child and Electively Home Educate (EHE) the entire financial burden is yours.

If you do not de-register, given that you are not choosing to HE, then the burden belongs to the LA. They will need to provide (as you will be if you HE) an education suited to the child's age and abilities.

I think you need to speak to the LA about how they will ensure your child has an appropriate education. The burden will be on them to pay for tutors etc.

It’s all very well releasing the EHCP funding for the right school, but I agree with the OP. The right school, for her child, is in very short supply, if available at all.

There are schools for children with ASD, there are schools for children with SLCN, MLD, PMLD, but to find a school that suits a very able child with HFA is like finding hen’s teeth.

I spent twenty years working in SEND and becoming increasingly disillusioned about the provision for various types of need, not to mention the shrinking budget. There are some mainstream schools that manage well, there are some special schools that manage well, but I guess that trying to cater for every nuance of need is beyond most LAs. I battled to get the correct funding for my students. It did me little good.

This may be completely unhelpful, because it’s some time since I was there, but the Meath School in Surrey catered for SLCN and ASD and was very well thought of.

Make sure you keep all correspondence in writing, witches. I know it goes without saying, but worth mentioning just in case.

You need a resourced mainstream school - access to mainstream level curriculum and peer group, and to small group teaching with autism specialist teachers, organised flexibly to meet his needs.
If it were me, and I was considering moving anyway, I'd move to a LA that offers these (quite a few do).

(iirc Surrey was well known for having a very intransigent LA a few years ago. Ask on SEN board before moving there!)

Your DS sounds like a lovely bright lad. My DS6 is similar, though we haven't hit the stress wall (yet) and he is coping fine in a small mainstream school so far. I noticed that you said he liked Minecraft and wanted to point you to the Autcraft server which is a server run for autistic children. We're not quite at the point of interactive Minecraft play, but at a year older your DS might be interested. It would connect him to a world wide peer group. Here's a nice article about it.

It’s really difficult. We’ll never be able to home educate as we both have to work to pay our bills. I also wouldn’t have the temperament for it and my husband does but wouldn’t have the academic prowess. My son is slightly above average intelligence so in some ways it’s easier than if he were gifted. All we need to do is find the right environment and then he should be fine following the curriculum.

And yes about how this could happen to anyone. My son coped well for his first 4 years of school with no adjustments before it all went to shit.

Just a thought, whilst you find the right bricks and mortar school for your ds take a look at the Interhigh junior school

They now take students from year 5 onwards and if he’s bright you could put him in year 5

There are a lot of students just like your ds at inter, dd has been there nearly 4 years and it changed her life and ours

Her place is fully funded by an EHCP under the care of our local PRU

I think the local offer varies hugely. So perhaps those who feel special schools would be a good fit aren't aware that for example the one with spaces close to us doesn't do gcse curriculum. Which if your child is capable of getting 5 gcses is very frustrating. There should be schools offering all the support and an academic curriculum. Parents shouldn't have to chose. It's a huge issue.