Privately funding a TA for one to one support

[Chocchip88]

I’m going to be fairly scant on details so I don’t out myself.
My DS is 5 and is a handful to say the least. After being called into school for the umpteenth time this week to discuss his behaviour we’ve come to the conclusion he needs one on one support. He’s probably not ‘bad enough’ to get any kind of funding and if he does this will be a while down the line before all the assessments are completed.
Is there anyway we as parents can fund someone to spend a couple of hours a day with him? Or is this a complete no no in the state sector?
Thanks for any advice.

Speak to the school. If he needs 1-1 support the school should provide the first 6k anyway, which is about 15h per week. If he needs full time 1-1 to be able to exist at school then he needs an ehcp. A TA will cost you about £18k pa (salary plus NI plus pension plus recruiting costs) and won’t happen overnight unlike option 1 above. I can’t imagine a school would want a member of staff that the do not fully control so can see this getting messy. Follow the SEN route.

I agree with Kanga completely. Even if you could afford to pay he cost of a 1-1 support, what about DBS, who will manage the 1-1, to whom will s/he be answerable during the school day and what will happen for the rest of the school day?

That's if you could find someone who could take on a role that couldn't have a contract, no job security whatsoever. If, for example, your DS was excluded from school, she'd be out of a job.

It is the school's responsibility to make arrangements to support your child and to pay the first six thousand, as has been said. They should be gathering evidence to show what works, if anything, and how he can be further supported, through advice from outside agencies and showing how acting on that advice has made a difference. Then, if things aren't improving in the way you all want, they should be applying for an EHCP, based on the detailed evidence they show, what has worked, what hasn't, advice acted upon and what additional support is required.

If he's not severe enough to warrant an EHCP, then the school has the funding within their budget to provide additional support. There is a timescale for granting an EHCP, but the LA is not going to do that without evidence of what the school has done to try to ameliorate the difficulties, what advice has been sought and the outcomes for the child of acting on that advice. Yes it does take time, butduring that time, there should be some active intervention.

SEN funding works as follows:
First £6000 of support to be paid for by the school
School can apply for top-up funding for additional funds to pay for support
Then they can apply for an EHCP.

You don't need a diagnosis of anything to apply for top up funding or an EHCP - just evidence of need which the school should be able to provide.

Thank you so much for your advice. You've made good points about the practicality of a privately funded one to one.

I've not heard of this £6000 of support, we're in Wales, does anyone know if this is the same?

In theory the answer is yes it is the same. However as in all schools budgets are under real pressure. The £6K is not real money that is available for each pupil, it is what the LAs have decided is the level of funding that schools should in theory find to support pupils with SEN before they will be any chance of getting any funding out of the LA. Clearly the more pupils a school has with SEN then the greater pressure on the available funds and different LAs have different views on how much help they will offer.
I agree with others that privately funding a TA is a nightmare for the school. I saw it operate at one school and it just disintegrated into a shambles as other parents demanded the same 1 to 1 support without realising that it was being supplied privately. It was a bad decision in the first place by the school which caused lots of problems with parents.
You need to be pushing the school more to get to the bottom of why behaviour is so poor. Is it that bad at home? If not,there is a reason why it is happening and the school need to work out what that is. If he is as bad at home as school, then it would suggest that you and the school need to work on a firm set of guidelines for your son that are reinforced at all times.

It doesn't quite work like that. The government has recommended schools use the notional SEN budget to pay for up to £6,000 worth of special educational provision to meet a child's SEN. In reality some schools have notional SEN budgets of much less than £6000 for the whole school so the school can't possibly meet this recommendation. Some LAs are also asking schools to prove they've spent £6000 or more before they consider top up or EHCP (incorrectly) so it's a viscous circle for the school and more importantly the child.

What sort of behaviour? What suggestions did the school have?

I'm not clear if the school have suggested he needs support or they are just keeping you informed about his behaviour while dealing with it in school?

Thanks all for the help. We have ruled out the private TA, I think I was just grasping at straws and looking for answers.

His behaviour is pretty much constant low level disruption. The teacher wrote a report of exactly what he did throughout the day before our meeting last week. Things like putting his book bag on his head, filling his mouth with pencils and spitting them out, pinching other children, going to the toilet and coming back with wet hair, it went on and on and was pretty much every 3 mintues throughout the day.
He has always been hard work but at home he has lots of attention which means he's not misbehaving so much that he's causing chaos. I think I will push for assessment for an EHCP which the school has been considering for the last year or so but haven't yet made that step.

How do you know how the £6000 is being spent? If it is?

What £6000? As others have said, this is a notional amount. The school doesn't receive an extra £6000 if a child with SEN joins the school!

I think parents don’t realise that, going back decades, Local Authorities held these SEN support budgets. I was responsible for allocating the budgets for TA support for non statemented pupils. I had a team of SEN peripatetic teachers who offered teaching advice and we had an accurate picture of which children needed support and I allocated funds which went into the school budget. They employed the TA. Either on a temp contract or additional hours for existing staff.

What changed was the funds are distributed to schools via the funding formula. I’m not sure this is better for children. There is no set sum of money available in schools because the money isn’t ring fenced. My budget, all those years ago, was ring fenced. As far as possible, children who deserved help, got it. Now it’s a lottery.

That wasn't the case in all LAs. In mine schools were allocated a SEN teacher in school depending upon numbers on the school budget. This was paid for by the LA and the teachers were employed in a central hub not by the schools and the schools didn't receive additional monies.
Children with a statement were allocated a LSA from the SEN hub and paid by the LA not employed directly by the school.

Well we were more advanced!? I thought it worked well and gave schools flexibility whilst we were pretty good at meeting need when it arose. The reason we didn’t have SSN teachers attached to schools was to aid flexibility. What we did have were Sen teacher run units where DCs went for extra help, eg with dyspraxia, play therapy for children with socialisation issues and so on. All centrally paid for with transport laid on. We also had great outreach from our special schools to unlock the expertise in them.

Schools now have these budgets delegated to them. I really do feel it’s not improved the service to Sen children. I also feel there are more of them so that’s a big issue for schools.

We also had SEN teacher led units for different needs and outreach. It worked and children were well supported.
Now...
I know at least one school in my LA with a notional SEN budget of only a few hundred pound under the new system yet still expected to contribute the first £6k from a every shrinking school budgets.

"Expected" is a moot point though. No one actually polices this budget in schools and it is not ring fenced. Goivernors perhaps need to be more proactive in ensuring SEN funding is spent on SEN. It will be in delegatged school budgets under SEN. The fact they ignore this is perhaps of greater concern and parents have no idea how the mon ey is spent. Governors too one suspects.

You can apply for an EHCNA yourself as his parent.

The SEN budget is ring fenced and closely monitored

It's the notional part of the budget

Sorry that should read that the notional funding isn't ring fenced but may only be a few hundred pounds shared between all the pupils on the SEN register. It is based on a formula derived by your local authority. The basic formula is the same across the country, but local authorities decide what percentage of each specified element they take into consideration when calculating it. It is never enough for a school to provide the £6k per child before being awarded SEN funding linked to an EHCP

Hi, I’m the OP. This post was from 4 years ago. He got diagnosed with ASD last year. Nothing support wise from school has changed but he is a lot less disruptive these days.

I would speak to the GP and a hook SENDCo and ask for him to be referred for an ADHD assessment. His behaviour sounds very impulsive, and the need for constant attention is a flag too.

I have a 16 year old who was only diagnosed a year ago. Don't let yourself be fobbed off with 'he's just being a boy' or 'he's only little'.

Sorry - just seen that this was an older thread.