School forcing 8am start for my SEN girl?

[emmapemma91]

So I’m having quite a lot of bother with my little girls school. She’s not settling in very well and becoming very distressed when going into school and can become aggressive.
She’s waiting on assessment for possible Autism. She’s 6 and in year 2.

She’s on a reduced timetable at the minute but the school are forcibly telling me they want her in at 8am to give her time to settle before her class come in at 8.45. I’ve told them each time my sons school taxi comes sometime between 8.15 - 8.25 and I can’t get her there, chase her around while she tries to run away, then carry her into school then be back in time for my sons taxi. Yet every day they say the same thing, she hasn’t settled and needs to be in 8am. If I miss his taxi I can’t get him to school as I don’t drive and it’s quite far away.

Is there any solution? I’m sick of fighting with the school to support my daughter.

Why not ask if you can drop her off at 7.50am, then?

They'll have to ask somebody to start work 15mins earlier, but you'll be back in time for the taxi that way.

They've found something that works for her. Don't turn it down on the grounds of it shouldn't be necessary when it clearly is.

The expectation that SEN parents must be simultaneously loaded (learn to drive OP, pay for additional childcare or private taxis) and yet not work (spend all day fitting around various schools) is bizarre to me.

Yes, quite odd....I imagine things are tight with the OP as it is so the assumption that she can magic £20 plus an hour for driving lessons and £8 an hour for a babysitter from is a mystery.

My year 1 child struggles. She goes in at 9am through the school office and then they go to either her den or the sensory room. They read stories and do her sticker book until she is calm enough to enter the classroom. Some.days she is in By 9.15. Others 11am. Others not at all.

I wouldn't be happy with an (impossible in your case) 8am start

@MitziK, a 7.50 start still isn't going to be a workable solution. OP would have to leave home with both children at 7.30, and she'd have to be able to guarantee being able to drop her daughter and leaving immediately to be back in time for the taxi - and that frankly is impossible with a child with SEN.

Getting your dd in a hour early is not at zero cost to the school. Getting a teacher in at 7.50 costs a lot x5 x37 works a year.

Your dd needs to be able to access the curriculum.

The legal bar for ehcp needs assessment is "may have SEN" that could cover just about 50% of kids. Honestly is so easy to prove here. If it went to appeal you would win. Hands down with no costs, minimum effort.

OP, I would suggest that you have a conversation with the school around whether they can realistically say they are able to meet your daughter's needs without support from an EHCP. To be able to say that, they should have her in school on a full time basis making progress, and they should not have to have her in an hour early to settle her. Everything that is happening is very strong evidence that your daughter's needs can't be met within normal mainstream resources, and that's the legal criterion for issuing an EHCP. It may be that if they could get funding for 1:1 support at least first thing in the morning that would resolve the issue of giving your daughter a calm, supportive start to the day without any question of her needing to come in early.

The legal bar for ehcp needs assessment is "may have SEN" that could cover just about 50% of kids.

Not quite - it's that the child may have SEN and may need support through an EHCP. Therefore you need to demonstrate that that it is at least possible that the child will meet the criteria for needing an EHCP, i.e that her needs can't be met within normal mainstream resources. I think in OP's case she can easily prove that given the reduced timetable, but it isn't the case for 50% of children in school as suggested.

There seem to be a lot of people on this thread complaining that others, and schools, have no idea what it’s like to have a child with SEN and wanting to put pressure on the schools to make things work for the parents, but it is incredibly hypocritical and shows no understanding of the challenges faced by schools.

Schools are underfunded, that is a plain and simple fact. They are not given enough money to meet the needs of children with SEN, whether or not those children have an ehcp. They cannot just magically make someone available to settle your dd at the same time as the other children are arriving without it being detrimental to other children. That isn’t your problem obviously, but it is the schools problem and they’ve offered a solution that will work better for your child and enable them to meet her need. They aren’t being difficult, they just have more children than yours to consider. How much can reasonably be expected of them when they simply don’t have the resources?

@NoSleepInTheHeat

And as suggested above: pickup of your son from the school seems the best solution - I can't imagine why it wouldn't be possible.

The council plan the bus route on how long a child had been assessed as being able to travel, therfore the bus/taxi cannot do any other route unless pre approved as he or others may be on bus longer than allowed. Or If the school pick up would lengthen his journey it wouldn't be allowed.

I'm sure the situation is made more difficult by Covid regulations. There may not be a spare TA available to supervise your DD all the time.

The school have found a solution that seems to work by having her arrive early but you can't facilitate that. I'm not sure what else they can do if arriving at the normal time causes her distress. Maybe suggest she arrives later than the others, see what they say.

What specifically do you think it would add to her experience now? Would it help with this issue?

Having an EHCP, would ensure that the op's dd was having reasonable adjustments made that would enable her to access an education. It means professionals, parents and school would sit down and work out a plan in partnership with the child at the heart of this plan.
This would be a legal document that would grow and develop with the child and protect her interests.
(Ideally and hopefully!!)

Can someone explain to me why it is offensive to suggest the OP learns to drive? Surely it is a sensible suggestion if relying on Taxi's and walking everywhere is causing logistical issues? I honestly don't understand what is wrong with the suggestion, wouldn't it make life a lot easier in general?

@loopylou3030

Can someone explain to me why it is offensive to suggest the OP learns to drive? Surely it is a sensible suggestion if relying on Taxi's and walking everywhere is causing logistical issues? I honestly don't understand what is wrong with the suggestion, wouldn't it make life a lot easier in general?

It’s the assumption everyone can afford to drive (and subsequently) run a car!

Or that everyone is able to drive.

Now as a mum of a child with complex needs I would be lost without being able to drive but I’m not daft enough to assume that everyone else is going to be in the fortunate position to be able to.

I can't foresee any positive outcome unless one of the 08:45 start or the collection of the brother as late as 08:25 is changed. Autistic children need to relaxed at the start of the day and if they have anxieties around school attendance need to be able to be occupied so that they are left to think about whatever it is that makes them uncomfortable about school. A sibling being collected at the last possible moment before having to set off to be on time for school would essentially make relaxing mornings impossible and is likely to mean that she is left to her own devices for at least a short period in the morning so that the OP is ready to set off as soon as the brother is collected and is therefore likely to be a major contributing factor towards the issues she is experiencing.

Nailsneeddoing - the thing is, the more you ignore SEN in juniors, the bigger, more expensive problems you create further down the line. In my county most of the SEN budget goes into private SEN schools. Why? Because my LA are incredibly tight at providing any support, so we have a lot of mainstream kids placements brake down. Where do they go? Into private SEN places as the state schools are more than full.

In this case all the child might need is to be taken to a side room, check she has her reading book in her bag, to sit calmly for five minutes then join the class when the others are seated. Cost is maybe 15 minutes of TA time x5 x37. Or do nothing, wait for complete refusal, then what? PRU? Dedicated 1:1? Move to a SEN school? Not sure what the cost is in reality but state school is about 4k ish pa to teach a child. Local sen school is 17k. There is one LA pot for SEN so that diverts the cash out of mainstream support

Or they can make her stick out more by coming in early or say I'm sorry we just cant cope we have 29 other kids.

Fine, whatever. But if it was your child you wouldnt say, that poor school. I should take her in 8-12 to work around them.

Or would you? I wouldnt. That's not my job as a mum. Meh - lifes hard kid, suck it up. Most parents want a little bit better than that.

Later starts also don't work for a lot of Autistic children who need more time to settle at the start of the day unless they can be kept away from the rest of the class for the first lesson and who therefore never really feel settled if they are thrown into active learning the second they get to school.

A person cannot be in 2 places at once that is a fact.
The OP has agreed to a part time timetable which she is not obliged to do.

Expecting the OP to mess around her other child with SEN, potentially missing his Transport and his day at school would also be a waste of public funds too. There's also an assumption he would cope with the change to routine of walking to his sister's school and back.

Whatever the solution is, it has to be one the OP can logistically manage. It's not unreasonable to expect school to meet needs during the normal school day.

It will result in an unpalatable change in your lifestyle

Because everything the OP has posted indicates that they're living it up at the moment .

Get there for 7.50 ready to drop her off at 8. Then you have 15 mins to walk back home with your son to get his taxi

stop telling the OP to learn to drive!!

For fucks sake!

You have no idea how hard it is driving children with additional needs, it is stressful to the max, even for confident drivers, let alone a learner/new driver.

Plus it does nothing to help the situation right now.

OP I second contacting IPSEA as well, they are very supportive and very helpful.

If school are saying it’s too early to apply for an EHCP then I think you should still apply (and appeal) even if you are told re apply in a a few years after school have used higher needs funding to support and still can’t meet their needs (this happened to us) it still helps get the ball rolling and shows your child’s needs.

Ignore the clueless posters OP they have no idea what it’s like having a child with Autism, it can be relentless and exhausting and there are some of us here who do understand!

@NikeDeLaSwoosh, your post sounds really ridiculous.

Suggesting that someone can just magic up the money to fund driving lessons, a car, insurance and all the upkeep a car requires, and that she can do all that within a timescale able to help her child when she needs it - which is now - shows a total disregard of economic and practical reality. Likewise the suggestion that her partner can change jobs at will.

The suggestion that the taxpayer is funding OP's lifestyle because her son receives his statutory entitlement to school transport is equally absurd. This is not some sort of special concession to OP but something to which all children with SEN are entitled as of right and regardless of their parents' means.

The plain fact is that her daughter's school needs to admit that it is unable to meet her child's needs so that they can be properly met within school hours, and that is not something that is going to be remedied by any of the solutions you suggest.

NikeDeLaSwoosh

Your post is one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever seen on here. You seriously need to have a word with yourself.

That's how SEN parents identify each other, it's the sack cloth and ashes.

My LA paid for a fancy barrister to represent them at tribunal. We self-represented. I don't care about public funds any more