Meeting with SEN Officer and Head – Advice Please.

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Meeting with SEN Officer and Head ? Advice Please.

I applied for Statutory Assessment for Henry back in June, and was refused, no great surprise, Had a meeting in July to find out why ended up with me in tears (evil nasty SEN officer). Anyway I have had advice from NAS and IPSEA and lodged my appeal. Also contacted regional mediation service, who said they would get in touch with school and LEA to see if they were open to mediation. Got a phone call Monday while I was at the hospital asking me to attend a meeting Tuesday at 11am, so phoned her and said no way to short notice, managed to put her off till tomorrow.

So Thursday I have a meeting with the SEN officer from local LEA and Sons Head teacher, so they can discuss school action and school action plus with me, and how they can help Henry without it going to Regional mediation.

Any advice would be great, really don?t know what to expect, or ask.

Is your son in primary? I don't have much experience of that, but did work in Learning Support in secondary school. What has already been done in terms of school action? To get statutory assessment you need quite a paper trail. Do you have evidence from the IEPs that what they are doing for him is not meeting his needs? Has he been assessed by any outside professionals? How far along the road are you?

Blimey - I can't see why they haven't done anything yet then. I would put them on the spot. They should have reports from all these people. You need them to state clearly:

What his needs are
How they will address these
How they will monitor that the needs are being met

He should have an IEP which is reviewed regularly - ask for more frequent than annually, especially at this early stage. You should go to the reviews. The IEP should state:

The nature of SEN
Long term aims
Short term targets to build towards the long term aims
How the school/support agencies will help him achieve them
How they will check they have been achieved (this one is really important)

You may find you need to go through several rounds of these before statutory assessment. It can be done very quickly when everyone pulls together, but usually isn't. What you need to make sure is that everything is documented, because you will need evidence that extra help is required if the school action doesn't work.

Stay calm and focused, and get them to state exactly what they are going to do, and get it in writing! Good luck!

Don't know loads about this but was advised that TOD was outside support which automatically meant school action plus and therefore half termly reviews of IEP. My son has only been in school a week so am waiting to see how he settles before getting on to them about this (I teach secondary and I my opinion he probably doesn't need a statement but will be expecting appropriate support from school and TOD)

Okay had my meeting, Ended up with the lEA witch sat next to me, so atleast I didn't have to look at her. His Class teacher was there so she went through all the things she has in place, with the head backing her up. I agreed that it was great to see that they were finally doing something. Then the LEA Witch said, "now I know you contacted regional mediation during the holidays, do we still need to go down that road?" She was smilling at this point, until I answered "Well thats up to you really, I have lodged my appeal and will not be withdrawing it as I still believe Henry needs an assessment, so that school and the lEA can really get to know what he needs" Her face was a picture. "You've lodged an appeal, actually lodged it." She said, and then sat scribbling some notes while I carried on speaking about what I wanted, then she said "Can I ask when did you lodge it, you did say you HAD lodged it." "Oh yes I responded, last Friday, have the anknoledgement slip here if you want to see it." She shut up then.