To wonder how a £36k a year education can meet DS’s needs if a £250k one can’t?

[GoneBatty]

Private residential SEND college (out of area) costs £250k a year. They are saying DS’s needs are too high for them to manage.

Council are saying a £36k a year local outreach provision can meet his needs.

It’s all very fishy as SEND college at first said they felt they could meet DS’s needs so we visited, all was OK. As as soon as the council (who will have to fund it) got involved, college backtracked and said they couldn’t meet his needs.

They have given nonsensical reasons which I have mitigated numerous times. Both the college and council have told blatant lies and I’ve caught them out in two big ones!

Now we have reached Tribunal the college is suddenly full which was not an issue a few months ago so know they’re lying again as they would know numbers of students months in advance due to Tribunals and the time it take to get funding. Also most Tribunals due to take place over the summer were postponed for this age group.

AIBU to suspect the council has given the college a backhander to say they can’t meet his needs? It would cost council £750k for a 3 year program. They could have given a £100k ‘investment’ per se? Still saves a lot of money!

There is literally no other provision like this in the country. I have approached 21 other colleges, local and out of area. DS has had no proper provision for over a year and he is running out of time as age 20 - EHCP is to 25.

Do I sound nuts (I feel it)? Can this actually be possible?

But the OP could have pursued this

The 2 aren’t mutually exclusive.

We could stop providing a free education to you kids and funnel the savings to those who need it more.

They won’t be paying them off but I could well believe they are incentivised in some other way

@Endlesslysurprised84 see my last post - there's every chance the OP did pursue this. But without a supportive school its unlikely to have even gotten to the assessment stage. Plus it isn't widely publicised that parents can make EHCNA requests themselves.

The OP lost me at think the council was accepting backhanders

so I’ll bow out

My teen DD is very polite at school etc. She is also blind. That is classified as a serious disability.

Yes, and no moderation from MNHQ against it either.

I have seen the words 'disgusting' and 'obscene' used by some pps on this thread about the money sometimes needing to be spent on education, health and care provision for some disabled children and young adults. Sometimes and some because this level of funding is received by a tiny minority. The majority receive provision costing much less or receive no provision at all.

You should probably have bowed out before the posts detailing your ignorance and disablist comments tbf.

But the OP's son is in his 20s. I don't think anyone has advocated for the removal of education from SEN children, but £750k for 3 years is astronomical in the current economic climate unfortunately..

My DD - who is blind - has only recently been diagnosed with ADHD and autism. She is described as ‘good as gold’ by her school, a selective state grammar. It has taken me three years to battle for an EHCP. I am giving the toe rags of MN a year’s notice that I will be applying for my DD to attend a specialist residential college for her sixth form years because her mainstream school has consistently failed to meet its legal obligations under the Equality Act of 2010. I will happily pop back next year to inform you when I have submitted my application for the Royal National College for the Blind so you can all reveal yourself in your sickening and disablist glory all over again!

The SEND reforms that came In ,in 2014 stated that an EHCP can last untill a disabled person is 25 ,.

Young people up to 25, or 26 depending on circumstances, are legally entitled to provision in their EHCP that meets their needs in the same way any younger disabled child is. Just because OP’s DS is 20 and not a child doesn’t mean it isn’t disability discrimination.

So it's okay for disabled children and children with SEN to get the support but not young adults?
EHCPs can run until 25, so it makes no difference that the OP's son is older.

Was that really meant for me?

I think we both know that the key to a tribunal lies in the definition of ‘appropriate’ and ‘reasonable’, and a good lawyer can argue anything.

Are you an education lawyer? I had a very experienced education lawyer; and he certainly didn’t think he could argue anything! If a parent contacted him, to ask him to do a tribunal, he would always ask to see all the papers on the child first. He wouldn’t take a case, when he thought the child’s needs didn’t justify what the parents wanted.

NHS and LA professional reports are often rubbish, but hopefully you can read between the lines and determine that the child does have severe problems, not being met where they are.

Then, he might tell the parents the reports were rubbish with no concrete recommendations; and he’d advise them to get independent reports. My last tribunal, he advised me to get independent reports from an education psychologist, speech therapist, OT, consultant psychiatrist and social worker. Had those professionals recommended DD’s needs could be met in the local provision, he wouldn’t have taken her case; because the tribunal looks at the professional reports. They are not swayed by an eloquent lawyer’s legal arguments for a placement, if there is no professional evidence saying that’s what the child needs! It would do his reputation no good, to take cases he couldn’t win!

As a high rate taxpayer, I hope her application is accepted. Good luck

@Luana1 EHCPs can be maintained up until a young person's 26th birthday. OP's son may have missed years of education already. His disability may mean that it takes longer for him to achieve what a child without SEN would achieve.
So for dd who has an IQ of 162 she missed two years of school following autistic burnout. Then she sat GCSEs at 18 and 19 at her independent specialist school. Now LA are funding bespoke provision, her needs mean that she can't deal with pressure and stress so will do 1 A level at a time alongside therapies and independent living skills so yes the LA may well be funding dd until she is 25 because her disabilities mean she can achieve but needs a lot of provision around her to enable that.

@EmmatheStageRat Good luck! I hope you are successful in securing the provision your dd needs. Definitely come back and post about it I will give you a cheer.

Good luck to you and DD, i hope she gets and loves it!

It does make sense. The human brain isnt fully developed until aged 25 so anyone with a delay or disorder needs the full 25 years support as they are still developing and in some cases can even 'catch up' enough to make a real difference to their quality of life.

@BounceBackBoris Much of the learning will be about teaching independent living skills, social skills etc. Do you not understand that many of the students will usually have limited learning capacity and multiple other issues, possibly physical ( eg epilepsy, brain injury, physical impairment re mobility) or related to mh or behavioural issues which means they learn at a much slower rate and have in addition probably missed huge chunks of conventional learning time either through hospitalisation, illness, or suitable provision not being available, so extending their education beyond 18 makes sense. Qualifications? Academic progress? Care to expand on your expectations?

This. Obviously its your role to fight for your DS, but as a professional it's my job to fight for all the young people with similar needs to him. His needs are not greater than theirs from an outside perspective. Even a small council has lots of extremely disabled dangerous and needy young people to accommodate with finite resources. You may win at tribunal but his needs still won't be greater. And others will suffer. No more resources are coming and this will only get worse.

Hunt has promised swingeing cuts.

This will happen more and more often as LEAs are squeezed. For them it's an "easy" save.

Our council is now tory and people struggle to get out of county placements that were much easier under Labour.