Permanent exclusion - autistic child

[Mayalamadingdong]

Hi,
I'm hoping for some advice from SEND mums in a similar position.
My son, 9, has just been permanently excluded from primary school, 2 weeks before the summer holidays.
He is autistic and has ADHD. He is very clever, amongst top 1% in SATS, but has severe behavioural, communication and sensory issues which means he's been struggling a lot at his mainstream school.
He's been studying in isolation with a 1 to 1 for 2 years now. Mostly he's been doing OK, but occasionally he has violent outbursts and he would hurt staff or damage property. He's been excluded for a few days at a time frequently for years now, and now they've decided to permanently exclude after he's attacked a teacher.
I understand where they're coming from and I know they've been trying to support him.
He is in the process of getting an EHCP (we've been in the queue for 2 years, our council is shocking). The Local Authority now says they'll rush it through given his circumstances.
However, we are now stuck without a school, and we were told it's unlikely he'll have a school place for at least a few months of the next academic year.
My questions are, to those who have gone through similar issues:

1. What are you meant to do while waiting for a place? Just educating them at home yourself? We are nowhere near qualified to meet his educational needs, and work full time. How are we meant to do this?
2. What kind of school would accept a child that isn't behind academically but has a history of violence and erratic behaviour?
3. How do we keep him 'socialising' while he's at home? He has no friends and our friends' kids don't really spend much time around us as it can be risky.

Is there a way to seek out other families in similar situations? I don't want him staring at 4 walls on his own for 6 hours a day :(

Any advice would be much appreciated.

(PS in the 5 minutes it took me to write this, he's managed to threaten a stranger he would kill her, and try to choke his brother... it's endless 🫩)

Sadly education authorities are reluctant to provide appropriate settings for kids who need them. It might be cheaper for them to keep kids in mainstream school but we all know ms isn't suitable for a lot of kids.
A friend of mine had to go through the process of taking our EA to court for her autistic son with learning difficulties - they wanted him to go to the ms high school his siblings went to. They were a couple of weeks away from the hearing and the EA suddenly realised there was a place at a local SEND school after all 🤔

@JasmineIndigo it isn’t naive to say parents don’t have to accept unlawful behaviour. I do this day in, day out. Sadly, DC whose parents know the system, can advocate for their DC and enforce their DC’s rights get better support. It shouldn’t be like that and fails many vulnerable DC, but it isn’t going to change in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is important parents know the system and are supported to enforce their DC’s rights.

It doesn’t take years to enforce provision from OP’s position.

For s19 provision, if the LA has refused provision, ignored them or delayed, they can threaten JR. Sometimes the threat is enough. If it isn’t, they should look at a pre-action letter. That mostly works. In the minority of cases where it doesn’t work, JR proceedings will resolve the situation.

For provision via the EHCP, the timescales can be enforced like s19 provision can. Then, for an appeal to SENDIST, for those out of school, parents can request an expedited hearing.

We did put in a formal complaint for discrimination and it was rejected, we appealed and it was rejected again.
They did advise on EHCP etc but they couldn't make it happen any quicker. They were consulting many different stakeholders about my son but couldn't get the right support and advice.
We made our case at the Pex hearing but we know it's not going to go our way.

Thanks for your perspective. I did look at a couple of residential places. My son overheard me mention this and went ballistics. He's very afraid of being away from home and I don't blame him. I can see him hating every minute of it!
We will definitely consider moving anywhere commutable to London if it means we can find the right school. My problem is how are we meant to know what school is right? There's no advice out there and school sites are so vague...

Glad you found the right solution for your girl x

Thanks for your perspective. I did look at a couple of residential places. My son overheard me mention this and went ballistics. He's very afraid of being away from home and I don't blame him. I can see him hating every minute of it!
We will definitely consider moving anywhere commutable to London if it means we can find the right school. My problem is how are we meant to know what school is right? There's no advice out there and school sites are so vague...

Glad you found the right solution for your girl x

He was actually at an alternative provision within a mainstream school, they're the best one around for SEN, but they couldn't cope with his aggression, even though it wasn't a regular issue, but maybe because of this- he was acting very unpredictably and could have calm days then suddenly attack.
We're really unsure of what's the right environment for him. We think they could have been more tolerant given his issues but it's a health and safety issue.
We're trying him on higher meds dosage and it seems to be working so hoping perhaps he could tolerate school better if given a chance somewhere else.

My (complex PDA) daughter attended Jasmine House School in Derby which I found to be excellent and incredibly nurturing. The care manager is very good there and that’s the crux of how good a placement is. I think they have several different homes / schools now.

You really do have to visit places to know if they are any good.

I would advise anyone to avoid Orbis placements - we had a dreadful experience with them.

Also, I’d advise you to look on Facebook for groups which are for parents of autistic / ND children in your town. People often talk about local placements there.

You don’t need to reply here but I’m wondering how well off you are financially?

My gut feeling reading your post is that ds would benefit from a year or two out of school with a lot of focus on strategy to manage pda before considering potential partial reintegration.

Would you be in a position to afford a private tutor for a couple of hours a day. This, plus the LA out-of-school tutoring plus some sort of online school or local home Ed groups could maybe work better than school?

It doesn’t sound like it would deal with the worries about you both trying to manage working and supporting him, but might be an angle to consider…

They did advise on EHCP etc but they couldn't make it happen any quicker.

They could have advised you on how to force the LA to act once they were in breach of the timescales.

If school is inappropriate for OP’s DS, either for now or long term, she doesn’t have to fund it, EOTAS/EOTIS is possible.

You are right. It is very hard and there is very little support.

We had to tap into our network and speak to other parents with kids with similar needs and the Headteacher of the existing school. Then visit and look at a school, if not quite suitable talk to the Head at that school and explain what we are looking for and ask for their recommendations for alternatives and rinse and repeat. Then once we found some potential options, they came to assess my child to see if she was suitable for them and some said no. Once we had whittled it down to the only 2 possibles then it was working with the LEA to get the funding.