Hello, can I seek your advice please?
Sorry if this is long, but trying not to drip feed.
DD is 7 and in yr2. I have always been a little concerned about her academic progress, and, more importantly about her confidence.
DD was diagnosed with epilepsy just before her second birthday. She had a pretty terrible time, with lots and lots of tonic clonic seizures before finally gaining control with Epilim.
Last year, after two years seizure free we decided to risk weaning her off her meds. This has been successful and she has not had any tonic clonic seizures or absences that we are aware of.
We, and the school had always put her lack of concentration and slow progress down to her Epilim and a big part of me was assuming that once she was drug free she would find things a little easier at school.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. At parents evening in February I expressed my concern regarding her numeracy. Teacher said she was struggling, but I had to really push him to get her expected levels and he said that he hoped she would achieve a 1c.
I asked what the school were doing to support her and he said that she was taking part in some small groups and that this had helped ?a little?.
I asked if she should be on School Action, or School Action Plus and he said ?Not at this stage?.
I?m afraid I went over his head and spoke with the head teacher the following day and she agreed that it sounded like DD needed some additional support.
SENCO called me that afternoon and said that after meeting with class teacher she was devising a 1:1 programme and DD would have daily support using ?precision maths? techniques.
I asked that sheets were sent home so that we could support her too. They were for a bit, but not for long and dd now says she has 1:1 sessions for 10 minutes twice a week.
I spoke with the SENCO again about six weeks ago and asked if she thought it might be a good idea to get an assessment from the Ed Psych. Senco said she would speak to the class teacher and get back to me.
Fast forward to today ? I spoke to the senco again who informs me that dd is on the SEN register and subject to School Action Plus (I had not been informed of this!) but is still not making real progress and so will be assessed by the Ed Psych, but probably not until Christmas time as she is in a queue.
I don?t want to wait until well into Yr3 to get some targeted support for dd. I think she has a problem with processing and memory. It is not all maths related ? give her a problem, or set of instructions with more than one, possibly two steps and she can not retain what she is supposed to do.
In real life situations she struggles with concepts ? for example we bought a set of 5 lollies, she and her brother had one each. A couple of days later she asks if we still have the 5 lollies, I say no, you both had one each didn?t you. I ask her how many they have left and she can?t tell me.
Gosh, this has been a rant, sorry. My question is (and well done if you have got this far) how do I go about getting a private Ed Psych assessment and do schools and LA?s take any notice of them?
I feel that I have failed my beautiful, wonderful dd by not picking up on her difficulties and doing something about them earlier.
TIA