Where does law stand on how behind a child has to be to trigger Educational Phycologist

[Childlaw2014]

My dd is one of the eldest in year 2.

Didn't have her alphabet, (tutor over half term sorted that out)

Is on level 5 Oxford Reading and is a comfortable level 5. Gets between 0 and 3 in spelling test. I've not been told by the school but she goes down to year 1 for maths, has extra phonics.

The tutor I saw recommend testing for auditory processing and dyslexia. She said was /saw getting mixed up and some other signs.

The doctor said '' I don't know how to request that ask the school '' today we met with the teacher who said..

We don't test for dyslexia here.

I asked about triggering educational psychologist, and teacher said dd isn't bad enough. She said... If she was reception level but she's breaking through year 1.

So what is behind in law terms to trigger Ep who then triggers... Ap tests and dyslexia tests. Thank you

We Paid for DD to have an assessment at age 7 (went just outside to another county). The dyslexia association can give you advice and contact details. Test cost £250 (approx 7 years ago) and was comprehensive enough and will last till she is 16. The assessor was lovely absolutely brilliant and it was a positive experience for DD. I spoke to her at length before booking the appointment with her.
However, DD’s school never really gave DD very much support as many kids were doing much less badly than her.
She is bright and developed a lot of strategies we also paid for a private tutor to come to the house once a week until she left primary school.
Good luck OP.
The biggest thing is how it can affect a child’s self confidence and self esteem with nasty kids mocking them or the ignorance of some teachers and teaching assistants.

OP it does vary by area but in a nutshell your child will be awarded an EHCP if their needs can’t be met by higher needs funding (threshold is approx 6k I think) a child is awarded higher needs funding if their needs are above and beyond what the schools SEN budget can provide (approx 3k)
It is highly unlikely that the support required for a child who is only 1 year behind would cost 3k let alone 6k.

Lots of EPs are moving away from diagnosing dyslexia, believing it’s an unhelpful diagnosis and plays to the middle classes.

All children with literacy difficulties need additional support in school, not just those whose parents have pushed/paid for a ‘dyslexia’ diagnosis!

lots of EPs are moving away from diagnosing dyslexia...believe it's pandering to the middle classes

Really?
How unhelpful and thankfully not something I have come across. The DECP and Rose report would disagree.

An EP isn't there to make judgements about who "deserves" help and who doesn't and any child struggling with literacy acquisition (or indeed any issue) needs help whatever their family background.

Tbh as an EP I rarely see children where the issue is only in literacy acquisition as others are better placed than me - specialist teachers for example, who in my area specialise in this type of work - and so it's rare I am asked to clarify need with this cohort, but if someone has a difficulty and ask me to help, then it's not up to me to decide who deserves that help and who doesn't. Someone who has a problem and is stuck has a problem.

All children with literacy difficulties need additional support in school

100% agreed

It's not as simple as SEN=EHCP. Under the new Code, there is specific provision for SEN to be met with funding but without an EHCP. It's called the 'high needs block'. The intention is that access to support should be available and that there should be no financial incentive to apply for an EHCP. EHCPs are more targeted towards provision which is specialist, whether that provision comes in the form of equipment/resources/alterations or a specialist educational setting.

All children in Special Schools must have an EHCP. Children with hearing impairment or vision impairment may well need an EHCP so that access to support, equipment and resources can be secured. However, schools should be levelling access to support for children with more common SN/SEN such as ASD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, etc.

DD1 has had a Statement (now EHCP) since she was 4 years old. Special School from the beginning. DD2 has a more recent ASD dx. Her school say that they have a whole school approach to SEN, which means that all teachers should be mindful that there may be a child with speech/ language difficulties, dyslexia, ASD, etc. in their class, diagnosed or not. When a dx is declared, the SENCO creates a pupil profile that all children are given.

DD2 is doing relatively ok right now. She has an open invitation to the SEN block at breaks, permission to see the school dog (very motivating for her) 2-3 times per day in breaks, an exit pass that allows her to leave 5 minutes early for lessons that end far away from the school entrance (she panics about missing the bus), and I can ask reception to phone across to the SEN block and they'll meet her to help her in to school (I've only used this once, and they brought the dog to meet her, emailed her teacher to say she wouldn't be in tutor time and took her for a walk around the school).

I personally think that unless there is going to be significant costly provision, then focusing on what your child needs to succeed (whatever success 'looks like' for your child) is what's important.

In primary school, DD2 had lots of provision such as pre-teaching during assembly time, so she wasn't overwhelmed in maths. Tasks broken down into little blocks. Written work scribed, then keywords scribed, then tricky words scribed, until she could write long paragraphs. None of that was even worth a diagnosis, let alone an EHCP.

Plus if you need a dyslexia diagnosis to get additional time in exams or some reasonable adjustments in college...how bloody unhelpful to say "well I don't find that a helpful concept". Ffs. Unfortunately diagnosed are still needed by schools to ease the way for adjustments.

Marking Place

Can you afford a tutor who specialises in dyslexia support? I can SCREEN for dyslexia very cheaply and if this shows a likelihood then I can recommend services to diagnose- a dyslexia specialist costs around
£500 and an Ed Psych who can diagnose
SpLD and any other conditions at the same time will cost about £1000.

Go to the British Dyslexia Association and search here by your area for support and advice.

Whether you get an EHCP does not vary by area as it's based on law, and not by whatever policy a LA has. It is also not solely dependent on having exhausted the schools notional funding budget.

I'm paraphrasing, but the threshold for requiring an assessment of needs (first stage of the process)is far lower than parents are lead to believe: has or may have a sen (learning difficulty that makes learning harder than for other children of the same age) or a disability (that makes accessing education more difficult than for others ) that may require special educational provision (education not normally available to children of the same age).

It's in the children's and families Act (but also in the SEN code of practice ). The code is not optional, as many would have parents believe. LA's and schools should have 'regard' for what it says , which means they need to have a good reason for straying from it. The code is based on the law , and although some parts have been arguably lost in translation, it is useful for parents to read and get a better feel for their rights.

You dont need to wait for the school to apply for an EHC needs assessment (you can do so yourself , take a look at IPSEAs website for template letters ).

Once the needs assessment is complete then a decision is made whether to issue a plan . Again, I'm paraphrasing but it's basically if after an assessment it is deemed 'necessary' for a plan to be issued. Again,its quite nuanced. What is 'necessary'? There is quite a bit of caselaw about it, but its not all about £. It could also be because without the legally enforceable EHCP that the school will not provide the provision. It could be due to the particular type of provision being outside of what the school can readily access. It could be because more needs have been identified than was originally thought.

A large proportion of appeals against decisions to not carry out an assessment of needs or not to issue a plan find in favour of the parent.

There is so much misinformation going on. I too find it alarming to hear a school of 450 only have 2 ehcps. Approx 3% of children have EHCPs, so on that basis a school of that size should have around 13 ehcps. You do not have to have 'severe needs ' to end up with one. I'm not saying it's an easy process , but please dont believe whatever the school (often, but not always the case ) say as they are all too often just regurgitating what the LA want them to say. The law is what matters, not what the LA policies say.

Lucinda88 - I am aware the law isn’t applied differently by area. My link was about accessing an independent EP report if the school refuses to acknowledge a problem even exists as was the case with my DD. The school also chose how to interpret the law to their own advantage and made my DD’s life hell. So the child is less likely to tell mum what’s been happening/hasn’t been happeninh at school and desperately wants mum not to make a fuss about lack of support etc.

We have 450 children in our school, many with quite severe needs, and yet only 2 have EHCPs.

There's something going badly wrong in your school or your area, @CallMeAngelina. Nationally, around 3% of children have EHCPs, so logically in a school of that size you would expect around 14 children to have them, particularly if, as you say, some have severe needs. So either you aren't putting pupils who might need an EHCP forward for assessment, or your local authority is unlawfully refusing them for children who meet the criteria and you need to support parents in appealing.

Under the new Code, there is specific provision for SEN to be met with funding but without an EHCP. It's called the 'high needs block'. The intention is that access to support should be available and that there should be no financial incentive to apply for an EHCP.

That isn't in the Code of Practice, it's simply something that some local authorities do. It sounds good, but in practice it's really quite dangerous. Schools have to apply to local panels, usually once a year, for the funding, which means it can disappear after a year for quite arbitrary reasons - in particular, some LAs have tightened up their criteria so that children who previously qualified can suddenly be left high and dry. Indeed, as there's nothing enforceable about it all, funding could be pulled at any time. It's also awarded without any assessment, so there are no checks whether the money is actually being targeted sensibly: there's not much point in the school being given money to employ, say, an untrained TA when the reality is that the child has hidden sensory problems and the money would be much more effectively spent on occupational therapy and proper training for staff working with the child.

If a child qualifies for High Needs Funding, they meet the criteria for an EHCP, as it must by definition have been accepted that their needs can't be met within normal mainstream resources. From the child's point of view it is always better in that situation to go with the EHCP because of the security of provision that it offers if it is properly drawn up.

I wasn't referring to your comment @Daddylonglegs1965.

Its also worth knowing that schools often do not ring fence notional funding (extra money intended for children on the SEN register/support). This means that children on SEN support (without an EHCP) often cannot get the support they need because the money is not there. Times are hard for schools which I'm sympathetic too, but SEN kids (particularly those without EHCPs) are unfairly hit by lack of funds. Many schools have to supplement the 'real' costs of children on EHCPs as needs are not adequately identified in the first place and the real cost of provision is higher than the value of the EHCP. My DCs primary school used the notional funding to pay for TAs across the school. That meant when he needed more help and moved to SEN support that the £ was not there and we had to pay for it until the EHCP was put I'm place. We spent £5k in a year on private OT , reports and specialist teaching. What about the many children where this is not an option? The whole system is broken.

@MbwaKidogo hello fellow EP!

Agree with everything you said :)

What do you mean by "didn't have her alphabet"? Clearly if she can read she knows all her letters.

Schools don't "ring fence" notional SEN funding because it is just that, notional. It bears no relationship to the number of children within the school with special needs so a school with 200 children and 20 with special needs will have the same notional funding as a school with 200 children and 50 with special needs. If a child joins the school with special needs, they don't bring £6000 with them, the school simply has to absorb the costs. Even if a child with an EHCP joins a school, the associated funding doesn't begin until the next April. So, even in schools with the best SEN provision, funding is an issue even though it shouldn't be!

So, roughly, an echp isn't essential.

Something is stopping my dd learning so the best thing is trying to establish what that is and that's an Ep. However once we get some sort of diagnosis, at best we will get tips that are passed onto teachers and tas...

It may give us more clout, be heard if we can get some sort of diagnoses whether it's auditory processing or dyslexia.... Or something else..

Dr, when tutor did the alphabet she didn't know the sequence. Few were in order the rest not.
Can she read? Level 5 at age 7?

If schools don't get proper funding or there is an issue with funding support for sen children, why would schools openly and honestly high light potential issues?

Also as an aside, a school that has high number of parents getting tutors in, is that a good sign?.
School is supposed to be outstanding... But many parents have had to plug the gap... With extra tutoring...

@spanieleyes. Element 2 funding is based on a number of factors, which in our case includes the number of children on the SEN register in the previous year. When I say it's not ring fenced , I mean it's not just spent on children requiring sen support. The money gets used elsewhere and is not enough in the first place, which results in the mysterious £6000 not being available in reality. Hence why we and other parents end up supplementing the school before the EHCP is issued.

Extra tutoring is likely a result of the demographic.
If she can decode the words in level 5, she can read all the letters. I'm not sure learning the order of the alphabet helps much with that. So she DOES know all her letters, but her reading is slow/behind for her age.
I'm afraid you have the choice of a) fund a dyslexia assessment privately or b) try and get the school to apply for an EHCP.

Drspouse you can apply for EHCP as a parent, it doesn’t have to come from the school.