My Non verbal autistic child attacked multiple times by another special need child.

[Glitzypiggy90]

Hi all,

I have come on here to vent/in the hope someone can offer some advice. My son (Autistic, non verbal and has sensory needs) aged 4, recently started school 3 weeks ago at a resource base setting within a primary school. The second week in Incident 1) my son was shoved to the ground causing a graze to the elbow and cut above his eyebrow (needing gluing in A&E). This week incident 2) my son was attacked caused a cut to the nose and under the eye. Incident 3) The day after Incident 2) My son was bitten on his back leaving teeth marks behind. This is all from the same child. I've spoke with the class teacher and head senco and nothing seems to be changing. They just seem to think because the child has additonal needs this is OK. Most days my son comes out with a new mark and the staff have no idea how it happened. I just at a loss at what to do now?! I feel sorry for the other child but what about my son, I'm starting to worry about his safety daily. Sorry for the rant. I'm just at a loss now.

I would write to the head teacher and copy in the senco and ask what they are doing to safeguard your son. They can’t tell you what is being done with the other child but they do need to have a risk assessment to keep others in the setting as safe as possible.

make sure you document every injury that your son has had and send copies of the photos to the school so EVERYTHING is on record.

it sounds like this may not be the right setting for the other child so in a lot of ways you pushing back will help in the long run as it builds a picture of what is happening.

Why has the other child not got a 1 to 1? This is not acceptable or fair on your son. I would be so angry that the school had failed to protect him :(

In a mainstream setting it takes a massive amount of fighting to get a funded 1-1. In a specialist setting it’s even harder.

even with a funded 1-1 you can’t stop a child lashing out. Im a 1-1 and covered in bruises and bites as sadly we aren’t the right setting for the child.

Put your concerns in writing. I appreciate the current circumstances are awful for both you and your child, but behind the scenes I'm sure the school are doing everything they can to support both children, and all the others in their care. They will be building a file of evidence to support their need for funding to support this child, or to support their claims that they unable to meet their needs. A written complaint from you will actually support this, as further evidence of impact on others.

Sadly it's very easy to jump to the conclusion that school are failing these children, as someone has done so above, but schools are so badly underfunded right now they need all the support they can get.

I really hope they're able to reassure you in response your your complaints with what they plan to do to safeguard, going forward.

Funding for 1-1s only comes with diagnosis. You are assuming this child has a diagnosis because OP refers to them as 'SEN'. Just because their behaviour indicates SEN, does not automatically mean there is funding in place. That would have relied on the child's parents and nursery working together to put this in place with CDC referrals etc before they started school.

Sadly, there are so many children up and down the country starting mainstream Reception who quite clearly have some quite severe needs, but have never been referred and are therefore not in the system yet (could be because they never went to nursery, could be because nursery didn't identify needs to make referrals, could be because parents refused referrals etc). Without this in place, there is no funding for them at the start of Reception. Schools cannot simply provide a 1-1 because they have identified an SEN need. There simply isn't the funding for that. Please don't automatically jump to the conclusion that the school have failed because this child doesn't have 1-1 support. They can't magic additional staff and the funds to pay them from thin air.