SEND - children’s needs to be reassessed from year 6 2029?

[missbish]

Are they taking the piss? After the struggles parents have trying to secure support for their child, they’re then going to threaten to take it away once they’re due to go to secondary? Ds goes to secondary this year so I don’t think it will effect him but I am so angry for those it does effect.

Why would they?

There’s zero evidence children with profound non verbal autism are more likely to be born to people with what used to be Asperger’s.

There’s no convincing evidence the two forms are even related.

The reading is the same actually

It isn’t the same. You might not be able to see that, which is part of the problem when staff working in education don’t understand SEN law, but it isn’t. Passing the phonics check and KS1 SATs doesn’t mean DC don’t need SEP.

There are well known issues in mainstream schools. Huge amounts of cover staff being used to teach gcse science classes for months on end, or supply teachers, try learning when you have a different teacher every week who doesn't know the class. Not enough money for basics so kids having to share resources and parents having to buy more

All of which affect DC with SEN as well. Those issues aren’t limited to DC without SEN. In fact, DC with SEN who are not in MS often face more teaching from non-subject specialists.

they have no idea of what may or may not work until she’s tries it.

They would if they assessed as they should.

the child not to like

It isn’t about not liking. It isn’t a choice. Placement breakdown like this is a result of their SEN.

I take issue with this word ‘failure’ because it implies nothing was done

No, it doesn’t. If someone failed to climb over a wall, it doesn’t mean they did nothing. Their attempt may have been with every effort. Or it may have been a weak, pathetic attempt, as is the case for the LA failing to support Lougle’s DD1.

making reasonable efforts

If they were making reasonable efforts, they wouldn’t have acted unlawfully. They would have provided the SEP in F. They wouldn’t have assessed needs properly before now. They wouldn’t have named placements that were not appropriate, which they knew would not work.

They’ll follow regardless.

Wrong. Not regardless. The right provision now saves money later. It can be the difference between expensive residential placements or not. Where residential placements are needed, it can be the difference between placement A or placement B costing twice as much.

have to remind you every child is individual

Ah, so it is just DC with SEN who you think all need the same.

You aren’t an objective bystander. You aren’t objective at all. You are ignorant. You post random links you don’t understand and don’t read. You have repeatedly blamed parents and children with SEN.

Lougle doesn’t want perfect. Like all parents of DC with SEN, Lougle understands that the law doesn’t entitle her to perfect provision or the best. What Lougle is advocating for is provision that is appropriate. Provision that isn’t harmful. Provision that isn’t going to leave her DD1 deteriorating further. Provision that doesn’t leave her DD1 at risk. For the LA and setting to act lawfully.

Whether you recognise it or not, her DD1 has been failed. She has been failed by education, failed by the NHS (with a fair dose of diagnostic overshadowing) and failed by social care (children and adult services alike).

your child was offered multiple settings and has rejected them all

Lougle’s DD1 hasn’t rejected placements. Your lack of understanding if the gift that keeps on giving. Placement breakdown due to unmet needs and the placement being inappropriate is not DD1 rejecting placements.

increase in pupils with SEN

Except, as you have been told multiple times, the data shows there hasn’t been such a large increase in SEN as you keep suggesting. You aren’t interested in the actual statistics.

For those capable of 5 gcses grade 5 or above, the school system is designed entirely around their needs in terms of curriculum and environment.

Not all. DS3 is extremely academically able. More than capable of 5 GCSEs/IGCSEs at grade 5+. He has two GCSE grade 9s already. He sat two first as a trial run to see how home invigilation would work and check other EAA would run smoothly. He will sit more this summer. Despite being capable of 5 GCSEs/IGCSEs at grade 5+, he has EOTIS because it is inappropriate for provision to be made in a school. The school system is not designed around his needs in terms of curriculum or environment.

So, what do you think LA officers, LA educational psychologists, NHS speech and language therapists (paid for by the LA), social workers, education lawyers (including the chairs at the SEND tribunal) and doctors do? They are objective bystanders and they make decisions on what children need. No child with complex needs gets a £100,000 pa placement, because it’s their parents’ choice. They get them, because the above professionals accept there is no alternative.

What makes you think you have some special insight, that none of these professionals have? You don’t even know that these kinds of placements are not just about a teacher standing in front of a class; they tend also to be about social care and medical needs 24/7, which are beyond the abilities of most parents to cope with.

For children with complex needs, teaching them how to communicate how to get what they want, rather than using challenging behaviour to communicate in a maladaptive way, that they have unmet needs, can make the difference between needing 1:1 care or 2:1 care (circa £100,000 pa for their whole adult life). It’s not something lay parents can do at home - especially when the parents end up suffering carer breakdown, which in itself costs the NHS!

As for the white paper, I can’t see how any school can know the true SEN profile of a child with multiple co morbid specific learning difficulties without a good multidisciplinary assessment? Teachers cannot know, without an assessment, that a child with ADHD or autism for instance has such a low information processing speed, that they cannot process the information coming in, at the speed at which it is being delivered in a mainstream classroom; or that their memory is so poor, they cannot remember what’s been said and cannot carry out multi step instructions? Or, that children are so overwhelmed by the sensory input among 30 children, they cannot learn. Even if the teachers do know, what can they do about it in a class of 30?

If the government plans to employ far more educational psychologists, SALTs, etc to assess and provide input for these children, how does that save any money on the current system? If posters say it cuts down on expensive placements - parents still won’t be able to cope with these children 24/7, so social services will be much busier, as will the NHS!

Is there “zero evidence” or is that just your take on what you see? Certainly that isn’t what I was told. My understanding was/is that Asperger’s and PDD(nos) and Kanner Autism were merged into a single diagnosis because they were considered to be different presentations of the same condition cloud. Further to that that there was/is a heavy weighting towards family history of maths/science/music based occupations.

There is more the ASD than either non-verbal and incontinent or having a presentation that would have been diagnosed as Asperger Syndrome.

DS2&3 have ASD. They are both verbal and continent (although DS3 has SM, which isn’t the same as non-verbal, a language disorder and needs support with toileting/uses a wash and dry toilet). Neither would have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome under the old system because they had a language delay as a young child. I am also autistic. I wouldn’t have been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome either because I also had a language delay as a young child.

There's masses of evidence @Playingvideogames. Here's just one paper.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8477228/

I’m happy to introduce you to Temple Grandin and her well documented, international career.

’the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Grandin is a consultant to the livestock industry, specializing in animal welfare’

DS1 is autistic but extremely bright and earning hundreds of thousands per year in tech in a foreign country and not yet 25 years old. At primary, he was bored out of his mind but because he was always intense and quirky they let him get on with his own work quietly, with ear defenders on.

No such look for my other 3 NT DC. They were positively expected to help others and the teachers out, especially the girls. Always sat next to the boys with focus and behaviour issues to “set an example”. I can only assume that that is even more widespread now. The most troubling part was always that the state primary teachers who seemed the best at bringing out the lower achievers and milder SEND were always the worst culprits at sitting my DDs next to these kids. Thankfully we have access to grammar schools where they eventually got to learn at their own pace.

Meet Jason Arday, Cambridge University's youngest ever Black professor, who didn't speak until he was 11. - CBS News

Sigh.

Every word of this.

How typical is this would you say? Not impossible of course but there’s a reason it made the news

Typical? That ASD is very well represented in the highly academic and professional engineering, science, IT, design and maths sectors, yes it is.

Anecdotal, but I have a friend of many years in HR at several prominent engineering firms. They are extremely adept at adjustments to help staff with ASD work and thrive, right up to most senior levels. For very good reason, because their international success in the sector depends on those people.

And to be clear I mean adjustments that go way beyond what most companies could provide, and for staff with high needs.

Edited as posted accidentally too soon!

My brother has his own tech company. He claims 4 out of 5 of his employees are ASD. As a group, they do extremely well earnings wise, but a lot of them struggle with relationships - so most are divorced, multiple partners etc. - and often SEND children with difficulties.
It really would be better to train all people with ASD in social skills from an early age, I would like to believe it is possible. I know these are cliches, but for personal happiness, humans are not just economic numbers to pump, they get one life and need to have personal fulfilment. There is something about our education system that fails to let most kids flourish and I find that extremely depressing. I think the idea of mental health, self fulfilment, happiness is more common in some other countries in the education system.

Absolutely!

My son is non verbal for huge amounts of time when anxious. He’s doing a degree and on target for a first.

I am unsure why you're upset by this. My daughters needs from early primary to secondary changed dramatically. In early years she was able to mask. Pre-puberty changed that and her emotional outbursts were more severe so required adjusted support.
She's older now, so again, the school has changed support required.

Surely its a good thing for needs to be reassessed rather than sticking a label on for life and thinking 'Job Done'

Yes that is why EHCP is helpful as hopefully it is regularly reviewed

Presumably it’s because the process is arduous and parents have been through it and the thought of losing that and having to go through it again is not welcome.

It’s understandable.

EHCPs are already reviewed annually.

Yes they should be but I’m not convinced they always are

Thinking logically, good assessments are hard to come by in the first place. Many applications are turned down and have to be appealed. Then, if provision is put in place and is effective, the child's needs can appear lower simply because their needs are being met. If the EHCP is removed, and therefore the provision that goes with it, that means that the whole process has to start again when the child deteriorates, as they are likely to. This time, however, there will be no route for EHCP unless the child is deemed 'complex'.

Now, if schools were effective at identifying who was complex, the system which is moving to a school led model might be useful. But most schools are fed a narrative that almost nobody qualifies for support, and they pass that on to parents. For example, in DD2's case, the SENDCO completely refused to assist me with a request for assessment. Bear in mind that the current criteria is 'has or may have SEN, and may need provision from a plan.' She has a diagnosis of ASD, so definitely did have SEN. She was working at level 1 in GCSE English in year 10, so definitely needed something and the criteria for assessment is 'may need provision from an EHC plan.' When I said that I would do a SAR and submit my own request, and did so, not only was my application accepted immediately by the LA, but they decided that only an independent special school, then EOTAS, then another independent special school, could meet needs. There was no question that she should be in mainstream education.

That is the problem. SENDCOs don't actually have to start working towards the qualification until year 3 of being in the job, and most have jacked it in by then because they are expected to also hold down teaching responsibilities. DD2's SENDCO had a 50% teaching timetable, was expected to support other schools with their SEN workload and was expected to run the SEN hub in our school as well as managing all the SEN plans at SA and SA+, plus EHCPs. We can't trust a system where people with very little training to hold responsibility for assessing whether our children need support, especially when that support will increase their workload.

Is he in the group who are NT with no disabilities or SEN though which was the group under discussion? This was the context in which that point was made - that children who arent sen, arent in inadequate schools and arent low attainers are generally getting a good education which is more or less designed around them.

Ive never heard of a child without sen or disability getting eotis?

Apologies, your post didn’t clarify you were only discussing those without SEN when you wrote the paragraph I quoted, so I didn’t know you were excluding DC with SEN from that paragraph. DS3 does have SEN.

I've started to notice this too. op claims there's no beef with those with asd/adhd but it drips from every post they dislike those who are likely falling into the invisible disabilities category.