Is this an illegal exclusion? Nursery

[MumTeach88]

My 3.5 year old son was kicked out his nursery. We have been working closely with the nursery throughout and he has additional needs. We have a SEND support arrangement in place as well.

We were called in for a meeting and they informed me they don't feel they can meet his needs and that he isnt coping and is "impacting the other children". My hand was metaphorically twisted and I said "is this you saying I need to find another setting?" Long story short, yes, this was what they were doing. I agreed i would and they agreed they were happy to have him until I found one.

2 weeks later (him having only been back a day and a half as we were on holiday), they called me. They were beating around the busy and I said "so you're kicking him out?" They tried to say words around it and that it wasn't they were kicking him out, I asked "So he can come in next week then?" They said no. My husband then called them later and they confirmed they were terminating his place immediately.

I have documents with that they have done (or not as the case was) against the Support Plan. Their main issue is he was impulsive and where he has SAL issues, he can grab and hit. Now, I totally understand that's difficult, but having received rhe behaviour logs under an SAR and shared with someone working in another nursery, they feel that it is actually fairly standard 3 year old behaviour to snatch a toy or hit a child when you can't communicate. Obviously I understand this is an issue, and would never want to have my son hurt someone, but we were working with them (so we thought) on this with social stories, support plan etc. Among other things, they have issues that he cant sit still for 20mins, can't use cutlery proficiently and needs his suncream applied 1st due to allergies. They also take issue that he is not potty trained (despite us trying twice and working with them on this).

The long and short of it, is this a legal exclusion? As far as I am aware they have not submitted to LA. The nursery is independent but under OFSTED. Thanks

OP, I'm sure the nursery staff would have implemented the support they wanted to put in place if they could have. It's beyond stressful to know that a child needs more than you are able to give them.
The staff do a difficult and very responsible job for very little money because they love working with children and want the best for them.

I think if you saw him regularly bashing younger siblings and making their day to day less pleasant - you would understand why many of us appreciate your struggles but the moment it begins to impact my child’s enjoyment of their childcare setting, then I’d be up to the nursery asking whether this child can at the very least be kept away from mine. We are talking about very here young children here.

Well you snowballed fast didn't you. And sounds like youre one of those people who has no empathy for children with SEN and feels they should just be shoved away in an institution for the "benefit of society". We should probably leave it there shouldn't we...

He has been there for more than 2 years

they gave it a damn good go op

and they have finally admitted defeat

Amongst all those other children, there will be others with SEN that will be remaining at the nursery because the nursery feels that they are the right environment for them

I agree to an extent. Unfortunately there are settings who do not want to and they do not have to. But again, this has always just been about legality.

Again, the wellbeing of the majority of the children in a setting is more important than an individual to be in that setting

Don't post if you don't want criticism

Yes, I'm sure there will be. Unfortunately the SAR shows they tried far less than they implied but there we go. As I state, this was alway simply a post around legality of terminating a place for a child with additional needs without notice and nothing following the situation. That's all I was interested in.

But then you made it very clear that you think there should be a law

I wanted to know legality. As a parent of a child with additional needs, criticism is constant so it seems to just be part and parcel of asking anything

I know you mentioned private schools, and yes of course they tend to be selective for behaviour or academic ability or both, as that is the environment parents are paying for.
But ordinary nurseries and childminders do the best they can with very limited resources. Every nursery I have ever worked in has a seriously stressed SENCo and staff managing all kinds of behaviour to the best of their ability with little to no support from the local authority.

Yeah not doing this again. Done this a few pages back. Thanks for responding

But you found that out hours ago

you have returned dozens of times to tell us what you think should be the case and it is to that which posters are responding

Do you mean what they planned/hoped to deliver wasn't realistic?
What kind of things did they say they would do and didn't?

I like to hope this is the case. But then I guess we never really know about all settings. However, again I just wanted clarification on legality as there is mixed messages by trying to research online

You've been told from the start of the thread that it's legal.

But that's clearly not all you wanted because you keep on. You aren't listening to anyone who tries to explain the justification.

And I expect as he gets older and his behaviours become more serious you'll just make excuses and justify it all just like you're doing here

As a parent posted earlier, "they should just give 1:1, feed lunch early, let them do a different activity while everyone else is on the carpet/outside, none of that costs anything!"
Yet the reality is, it's incredibly hard to actually do in practice on the ratios you have and with multiple children with additional needs.

Sensory circuits
Social stories
Sensory breaks
Emotional regulation work
His small beanbag to sit on at circle time (hypermobile) as it confused other children

How do you know they didn’t do this?

Did they say… we are going to do xyz

and then say “actually, nah we aren’t”

Only reason I have continued to respond is to thank people for their support or to explain my reasoning when asked. I have throughout continued to maintain I have never seen it as an excuse, but it is the reason.

And, well now, to defend myself against someone being just unkind. Which I'm not going to do again since we don't know each other and it is adding nothing to what I wanted to find out... so you are right, I will not reply to you again to you.

Yes. I have a document with what was planned to be implemented with a list down the side of reviews which include: this wouldn't work in a nursery setting, this confused other children etc.

Obviously I don't know why the beanbag didn't work out as that seems the easiest thing to achieve, but everything else sounds quite time intensive in terms of preparation and needing 1:1 adult to time to carry out, so difficult to do regularly without either an extra member of staff or no other children with any behaviour/Sen needs in the group.

Ok so they agreed a plan

tried to implement
concluded wasn’t appropriate

Well the 1st we found out this wasnt being done was after he left. This was planned to be implemented May. Anyway, there we go.

It can't be an illegal exclusion. The entire basis of an Illegal exclusion is that the authority have a legal duty to provide an education for your child, and excluding them without a place lined up with an alternative provider is therefore failing to provide them with the place they have a legal duty to provide. There is no legal requirement for the LA to provide a nursery place, therefore taking away a place and not providing another is perfectly legal.

It sounds like the nursery have tried to support, but grabbing and hitting are really not normal behaviour for a 3 year old. Maybe very rarely if they are really distressed, but this behaviour would mean that they would need one-to-one to keep other kids safe and the nursery won't have funding for that. I would accept the exclusion for now, and focus on taking him to plenty of groups with other children where you can provide support and help him work on his behaviours. I would also contact the LA about starting at EHCP as this will be much harder if there is no funding for support when he gets to school