To ask you to sum up your council’s SEN provision in a sentence?

[Starwomanwaiting]

Hello all,
Some very brief background: I have an autistic child, referred at 18 months, saw consultant before age 2, diagnosed age 3, extra funding at nursery for at least a year now. Nursery is applying for EHCP which will take 12 weeks. Have seen educational psychologist and looking to defer reception for a year.

My question: it seems like we have been very lucky with our experience so far (except for speech therapy provision, which has had to be private). However we can’t stay in the city forever and need to buy a house/want a garden. So we need to find somewhere that isn’t going to be total shite for SEND.

If you are outside London and have had a good experience please tell me! I know each case is unique but it would help me do more research. Equally if your experience has been awful and you’d like to warn me off please do so.

I want to do right by my kid, but in a SEND crisis it’s hard to know where to start.

Thanks x

I am so sorry to hear this. We have heard similar about Warwickshire

Health is the biggest issue in our area, not the LA. CAMHs, SALT and paediatrics are absolutely diabolical

Leicestershire here, absolutely terrible.
Gaslighted, ableist bullshit.

Primary and secondary school both said, dont apply for an EHCP as it will get refused, etc. More gaslighting from school.

Did it myself. Refused an assessment for an EHCP from County. Their response to the appeal was denying autism (in a diagnostic report confirming autism) and saying absolutely nonsense.

Scottish Borders. No such thing as an EHCP here, one special school which could be filled 3 times over and out of area placements cancelled at the start of this academic year.

Someone from nursery would normally attend the meeting to discuss the draft plan, or don't they hold those any more? They did when I was working on ehc plans.

Not in my county when I have applied for them (in a school). Perhaps it is different elsewhere.

Incredible - to be fair - we are lucky !

Where are you? X

All parents have the right to request a meeting if they want one. Sometimes the current setting attends, sometimes not.

Some nurseries/settings offer to ‘help’ the parents with drafts. How helpful this ‘help’ is varies. Not all understand SEN law and the importance of wording.

Surrey have moved beyond negligent into actively harmful.

This is a really good point. It's a different landscape completely post pandemic

Where is this magical LA that completes ehcna in 12 weeks? Asking for a few thousand parents

I wouldn't have too much faith in an LA that are clearly clueless about send law op

I think I made a mistake and they said 20 weeks but they usually do it in 12!

I know lots of you have had appalling experiences. Maybe our family’s will be, too. But this thread isn’t about my local authority’s way of doing ECHPs, the nursery’s involvement, or any of that other stuff. I’m not worried about that and if I’m deluded then that’s on me to sort it out. I will be watching them like a hawk btw. Just because I’m not leading the process doesn’t mean I am not involved. Our children’s services here have an outstanding rating and just today I had several phone conversations with people (having contacted them only today) so I’m feeling positive.

This thread is more about where we can go once we have an ECHP in place! Though I have to say we don’t seem to have many options 😢 it seems we have already been very lucky in our experience

I’m so sorry to hear this

My council has gone into debt because of the amount of cash it’s costing. Mainly transportation reasons taking kids out of the area.

We had numerous SEND schools and even units attached to main scream schools but they were all closed under Blair’s Labour apart from one. I have no idea why.

So now numerous children are without education in my area. My friend has 5 SEND kids and she has managed to get 4 of them into different schools but one is left at home. It’s a sad situation.

This is the Northwest area

We have a specialist school in the London borough that I live in for autistic kids with an EHCP. When speaking to the school they said not a single child that goes there lives in the borough and that thus borough deliberately avoids giving out an ehcp which was the issue I had and caused me to contact the school in the first place. My child has seriously been let down by the mainstream school he attended, the council and so called professionals.

You can have one word... Inadequate.

Kingston and Richmond AFC
EhCp within 20 weeks
Draft "lost" some of our private reports so not included
Did nothing between granting NA and issuing EHCP.. we did it all for them privately
Incompetent at best
We are appealing wordingmore cost and time for us.

There is no suitable SEN schools in borough

If you have a good experience with your LA I would be tempted to stay, to be honest. London has better educational outcomes in general than non-London areas and so many places nationally have a really terrible reputation.

A few years back I worked with a kid who’d moved in the June of Y6 from Bracknell to Gloucestershire with a statement (as it was then) of 15 hours TA support a week. On the basis of a single meeting with this kid at the primary school he attended for less than a month, Gloucestershire LA saw fit to downgrade his statement to five hours a week, just as he went into secondary school. I don’t believe that things have improved since then in terms of funding and support for SEND in the county.

South west London - our borough has been amazing with my DC.

primary - they hired a 1-1 by the la instead of from school dedicated to her who attended school with her but also come home to tutor when couldn’t go to school for the day.
funded her laptop / her chair etc
then secondary school we got a place offer at an independent Sen school and they agreed funding with in 24 hours and funded her a av1 robot the same week for when she started.
no appeals or tribunals

@Starwomanwaiting it would be interesting to know where you are now which has good provision.
It has also become very apparent on this thread thar generally provision in London is better than outside. Which is interesting as council taxes are generally lower in London than outside, so councils have less funding per person, but seem to know how to use it better? Or it's easier as more densely populated makes school transport and other provision more economical.
I was definitely suprised to move to a much wealthier area (Beaconsfield), pay much more council tax and find that pretty much all council services were worse, from school funding, to parks, rubbish collections, libraries etc. Shows that good services are not just about funding!

I don't think it's about funding either. New Head of SEND emailed me after 11pm apologising that I had had to chase something he had directed to be done last week. Ethos at our LA is delay, deny and apologise rather than actually do anything. Suspect new Head of SEND is on a steep learning curve having moved from a seemingly decent LA.

I am so happy for you and for your kid. This is why I don’t want to leave London really, even if it means renting forever. The contrast is so stark when you talk to parents from outside the city