Need help with school refusal

[Ros25]

I have a 14 yr old son who has had problems with school since the age of 6. I have battled over the years he has been dragged and manhandled into school until the age of 10. When i had had enough. He has run away from school and self harmed. He is also severley Dyslexic but very bright. He has also been bullyed. I am a single parent of 4 children he is the youngest. The other 3 have been fine. He can also get very abusive but also be lovely. I have been everywhere for help and tried alsorts. I always feel i am the one being blamed for it my job has been blamed so have tried various ones and hours. I am told that it is my legal resonsibility to get him to school so have to be at home in the mornings so does not help work. I have now been threatened with court. A CAF form has been filled in which is supposed to get extra help. However apparently only my son can say what goes on the form and when they saisd he needed to talk to someone and he didnt want to he did not have to. I really do not know what to do am at the end of my teher and would be grateful if anyone has any advice. Thankyou

They told you that he got to say what went on the CAF form? That wasn't my experience, in fact we deliberately didn't include dd when we filled it out as I needed to say some things that would certainly have had her kicking off.

Does your area have a hospital education service? There must be a reason for his refusal (such as anxiety/depression if not physically medical) which if you're seeing CAMHS they can refer you to. They deal with school refusers all the time, I think I would have lost my mind long ago if it weren't for them.

I would agree with sposh re the need to get a referral to CAMHS to assess the reasons for his unwillingness to go to school. It may be difficult to get him to engage if he is unwilling to talk to them or perhaps anyone but it is worth trying. We found a course of cognitive behavioural therapy very helpful for my ds when he was unable to go to school because of anxiety.

My other suggestion would be to post this on the special needs children board as there are a number of regular posters there who have experience of school refusal and it gets a lot more traffic than here.

Thankyou for your help i will try CAMHS.

hi ros 25 you are not alone,i found the school refusal forum a big help i also have a 14 yr old ,he started refusing about 6 too due to migraines.at the time i didnt know it was stress and he was bullied too.since then we changed his school that helped but then he had to go to secondary school that sept then he started refusing again,anyway he now attends areferral centre for vunerable children and is getting on really well.you could contact your parent partnership they may help.camhs were pretty crap for us!!!!!!!but there are thousands of people who are in your situation so please dont listen to them about who is to blame!!!!!my ds suffers with anxiety now he was assessed and also had traits of asd and adhd.