WIBU to request this of the school? SEN child

[Crazyhouse123]

DS2(15) was diagnosed with ASD and ADHD last summer. He has been struggling in secondary for the last couple of years, socially he has a lovely group of friends but struggles academically and with focus, with dyslexia too. His attendance is now hovering around the 50% mark for this academic year.

I had a meeting with the SLT the other day in the hope of getting a plan to get him back in. The school has an amazing place for students with SEN where they can go and work on things in a non-classroom environment. School have put into place DS being able to use this as a safe place when he feels an emotional crisis coming on.

The trouble is at the moment every lesson means DS feels like this. Before half term he was turned away from this unit as he expressed anxiety as "feeling achey" ...he has autism and struggles to describe the way he feels... and he now feels like he is just a hopeless PITA and I have not been able to get him back in because he believes that he won't be able to go to this unit if he needs to.

In the meeting the other day I suggested that maybe we need to work from the bottom up rather than the top down...in other words, instead of using the unit as an escape, using it as a base for all lessons with the aim of gently encouraging him to go to some lessons when he feels confident enough. He will not be getting full learning in the unit but he will be in school and he will be learning something and most importantly, he will be learning how to cope with being in school. The EP can work with him and hopefully over the next few weeks we can gradually build up his coping mechanism and get him back into most, if not all, lessons.

School however have said they cant support this as he needs to be in lessons. They have said we can do it for a week and get him back into school but then he needs to be in lessons. They explained that the unit is a last resort.

My arguing is that this IS a last resort. This is what the unit is there for. They do have other students doing this so it's not a unique request. My child has diagnosed SEN. If DS feels that this is time restricted then it will just cause more stress and anxiety. The school has not applied for an ECP and SENDIASS have advised that I can so I am looking into that.

I have another meeting with them today with DS. WIBU to push for this unit as full time? I get that DS will not get full learning in the unit but at the moment he is getting no learning. Once I can get DS used to being at school and coping with it I fully intend to encourage him to get back into lessons. I will work with him and the school to help him catch up. I will do what I can to help. But I can't help if he isn't in school.

Thank you for any advise and apologies that this is so long!

Well schools don't do anything about the awful SEN provison do they? As they are the ones responsible for it in their school. So if its poor, its THEIR fault. And maybe teachers do know how SLT behave towards vulnerable pupils and their parents, bit to be honest lola thay makes it even worse. By saying they possibly didn't realise, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt!!

My ds has ASD & I have had the same problems with school, ds already had a diagnosis when he moved up & the SENCO made all kinds of promises that he could go in the unit whenever he needed when we looked around, come him starting there & he wasnt allowed near. His attendance dropped to as low as 40% & I had the attendance officer on my case, I tried to explain to her that ds had effectively been barred from the unit & got told he was too bright to need it despite him suffering from severe anxiety, depression & self harming. No matter how I argued ds case they refused to allow him up there & the only place he was allowed when overwhelmed was the punishment desk outside the Head of year's office in the corridor which was totally unsuitable for him. It took MAST getting involved & a member of the Autism team from the education authority to get them to even allow him up at breaks & lunchtimes so he could have some quiet time. Having an SEN child is a constant battle with school, they say one thing & do something totally different, you have to be on their case all the time & shout up every time they fail to do the right thing.

Well schools don't do anything about the awful SEN provison do they? As they are the ones responsible for it in their school. So if its poor, its THEIR fault.
It's quite a bit more complicated than that, which given you've since said it's systemic issues and not school staff I'd have thought you'd be well aware of before saying it's our fault.
It involves looking at government policy, what's left of LEA support, the nature of EOTAS provision to tap into, the variable access to relevant allied services, changes to funding and funding being slashed as well as decisions about how to fund and structure provision in their schools.

I'd hate to be a headteacher right now.

Some examples I'm aware of:
Making some teaching staff redundant (increasing class sizes and having fewer options for some students) at the same time as employing internal non-teaching staff to deal with the fact they couldn't get students with SEMH issue and anxiety referred to CAMHS.
Reduce TA support in classes for those with a SEND support code because those teaching assistants are needed to be trained in dyslexia intervention to do work that would previously have been part of a lead practitioner job description, but there's not the money. The intervention isnt as effective, but better than nothing.
Getting rid of a non-teaching Assistant SENDco to support with the required paperwork and intervention, that work is picked up by the SENDCo who ends up signed off work for months with stress.

Cutting staff PPA time back to the bare minimum whilst piling work onto classroom teachers that wasn't there 5 years ago (eg. I've had to spend a PPA not planning appropriately differentiated lessons, but filling in paperwork that would previously have been collated by an assistant SENDco). This has implications on workload and stress at a time when it's hard to recruit and retain good staff.

Looking at EOTAS placements for vulnerable students and those with anxiety affecting their ability to attend school, but can't get students in because one school known for poor inclusion keeps trying to use EOTAS as a way to nudge parents into withdrawing their child.

Huge waits on accessing the home tuition service so having to send emails to staff asking if anyone would be willing to have a separate tutor arrangement on top of the school day.

Those sorts of decisions are being made up and down the country.

Some senior leaders are awful, that's why many teachers won't touch certain schools. They're also awful to their staff too. They bully and intimidate their staff, and crush staff mental health.

Some schools are a hot mess. You'll not find anyone saying otherwise in education.

I thought when we'd got to discussing systemic issues being the major problem we'd found some common ground, but as you've just said it's all schools' fault.

Our LA makes SEN support pretty much impossible to implement in mainstream schools tbf. They don't order the required assessments to inform the EHCPs they issue. They don't allow the ed psych's that they do send in to schools to specify and quantify the support needed in their reports. They issue EHCPs that aren't specified or quantified or well informed by current assessments and so unenforceable and also unable to be sufficiently costed.
Parents then have a child with a worthless EHCP but because they have an EHCP they have an expectation of support and so starts the battle. Schools get children with EHCPs that aren't based on current and thorough assessments that don't have specified and quantified provision and don't bring sufficient if any funding so schools don't have a hope of making the provision that's required.
This is the reason why our LA loses 99% of appeals to Tribunal which is obviously good news for the parents who can navigate the system but there are many parents who have no idea what an EHCP should look like and no idea how to alter what they appear to be stuck with.
I have some sympathy with schools as they bear the brunt of parents' frustrations but mostly I have sympathy for the children who are being failed left right and centre by the shambolic system in place.

Yes I was getting a bit bored of you repeatedly accusing me of blaming individual staff, when I repeatedly said I'm not.

I do think it's systemic, but that still doesn't give schools care blanche to treat pupils and parents appallingly and illegally when they fail them due to those systemic problems.

And I'm not saying you personally do that lola

I do think it's systemic, but that still doesn't give schools care blanche to treat pupils and parents appallingly and illegally when they fail them due to those systemic problems.

And I'm not saying you personally do that lola

Sen sos
Ipsea
National autistic society (nas)

All great and have good advice. How bad is his dyslexia? Would he benefit from a reading aid such as one that scans the text and reads it to him with headphones? Does he have a specific trigger in the classroom? I'm guessing they dont have the staffing in the unit for him full time unless he has an echp that provides funding for a member of staff