Ok please don't flame me.. question about statement for reception child

[sagacious]

Child is in reception (started in January)From the start its clear he has behavioural issues (eg punching other children in the face regularly)I help out in the class there isn't an hour that goes by where something doesn't happen.

Teacher is lovely but ineffective (she seems to think because he will sit still for timeout .. albeit it crying uncontrollably, there is no problem)

Mother has been told the school is sorting out a statement (shes unsure what exactly this is) but this CANNOT be started until year 2.

Surely this cannot be right. The child clearly needs help now.

I wondered how long it would be before someone would express the enlightened suggestion that the child's parenting is in fact to blame

A teacher's training does not stop when they leave college, but it is well beyond a class teacher's port of call to expect them to run an entire days lessons and planning for 30+ children, as well as acting as a child's LSA support. There isn't much you could say to convince me otherwise.... I'm glad to hear that within the capacity of your work, cat64 you have a system which in many cases works very well all the time without the need for a statement. Unfortunately, though this is not always the case. In many cases there is no such system. Let's not forget that children who have challenging behaviour are usually excluded from school if there is no support in place to address it, causing them to become even more isolated.

I stand by my view that no child will ever end up with provision in their statement that they are not legally and reasonably entitled to......but there are plenty who are not getting what they are entitled to.

I have responded to the OP with the hypothetical assumption that he has some kind of SN, in a 'this is what I would do' way. I agree with MrsTurnip that contacting IPSEA would be the most sensible way forward for his mother to do at this time.

wasuup - it is worth bearing in mind that LEAs are not supposed to have their own criteria for SEN policy. They are all required to make decisions with regard to the Education Act and the guidelines set out in the Code of Practice.

Yes worth finding out the LEA's position, but they vary and some will happily break the law (mine told me all sorts of nonsense such as SALT belongs in part 5- not for a non-verbal child it doesn't, and that they never provide full time 1:1 - yes they do- if a child needs it they have no choice).

Agree with electra- they should be following the education act and ime the best place to get free independent advice on what LEA's should be doing is IPSEA.

i disagree.
the first port of call for any parent concerned about their child is the school. teacher, senco, head. if a parent is unable to set up decent communication with the setting in the first term of a child's attendance, then there really is an awful lot more to the issue than the OP is aware of. what on earth is the point of contacting ipsea when you haven't spoken at length to the school about what they are, and are not, able to put in place, other than a throwaway comment about not statementing until yr 2? ipsea will advise the parent (the parent, mind, not the parent of another child who happens to spend a period of the school week in the classroom as unpaid help) to speak with the school, and come back if they still have concerns.
to be running after a statement after a few weeks of school is way out of line, unless these issues have been addressed at length via nursery and nursery/ school transition meetings - in which case it is highly likely if the nursery were doing their job that the child is known to the area incco and ep in any case. if that is so, it is highly likely that they are monitoring the situation to determine the outcome of the change of setting.

the parent needs to discuss this at length woith the school, not with another parent. after discussion with the school and determining what they are actually doing about the problem (i refuse to believe that a school who are intending to statement in two years time would be doing nothing at the moment - as i said befire, it makes no sense to wait) and then getting independent advice if she deems it necessary.
really sceptical about the 'statementing in yr 2' thing. it is equally possible that the school made a comment like 'it is not necessary at this point - we would look at it again. if this behaviour continued into yr 2, for example, we would need to look at something like a statment' ie it is within the bounds of normal behaviour for a very young yr r child, and as such, not an immediate concern whilst we help the child adapt to the new routine. the mother may have misunderstood the context of the comment, not the school were refusing to put help in place for a needy child....

there's an awful lot of knickers getting twisted here, over what seems to be a very common situation.

yes, OP, teacher or senco is the first port of call. (and remind the parent you are not allowed to discuss anything that happens in the classroom with her)

no, the statementing system is not perfect, but an awful lot of angst can be avoided by very simple communication between the parents and the school, involving others when it becomes necessary. imvho, it has not reached that point in this instance, as the parent involved appears to be choosing to discuss the issue with the wrong people (ie a parent helper.... who is not allowed to discuss it in any case)

You need to talk to IPSEA to know what is reasonable for the school/LEA to be offering.

IME unless parents are fully informed then children are not given the support they need.

Had I believed everything the LEA told me then I would have had a non-verbal, severely autistic child with severe learning difficulties running around a mainstream school with no support for 0.2 of the time, and he would have had no SALT at all for 18 months (actually with the no support for 0.2 of the time he would have been dead, so I suppose the lack of support wouldn't have mattered). As it was having knowledge about the code of practice and the education act meant we were able to negotiate successfully with the LEA for ds1 to get the support he needed to be safe.

IPSEA aren't going to go in and take on the school, but they are able to explain to parents what should happen (by law) in their child's case.

Once armed with information and an understanding of the system it becomes much easier for all to negotiate.

yes - if the child has sn. not yet decided on that point tbh. not enough info avail from OP to know if this is a longstanding issue or a short term one.
ipsea are difficult enough to get hold of when you are dealing with a longstanding sn issue - i would hate for the service to get bunged up further by every yr r child's parent who has difficulties settling in.

No they're not that difficult to get hold of with a longstanding issue because you get given a caseworker and a direct number to them. They're hard to get hold of for one bits of advice. Actually they're not hard to get hold of you just have to leave a message and wait a bit.

And they give advice on EBD issues, so should be find to talk to about behaviours.

longstanding as in the behaviour/ sn has been an issue for a long period, rather than you've been dealing with ipsea for a long period. apols for not making myself clear.

Well tbh, the waits are a reflection of the total cock ups that LEAs and schools make with ensuring additional needs are met. And really its not that hard- you just leave a message then wait a few days. Its not like you have to repeatedly try and phone. Anyway the IPSEA website itself is a very useful resource. Parents need to get independent advice from somewhere.

I'd like to thank all of you for a very helpful thread. (OP here)I only really wanted to find out about the year 2 question but its been an eye opener. Childs mother doesn't have internet access so I've printed it off for her.

Thanks again

Well I am going to have to contact IPSEA myself about something now! Glad you have found it useful sagacious

I've just been on IPSEA's site and it has been modified considerably and looks much better since we went through the statementing process. There are now quite a few downloads for parents here hth

Did you last see it when it was pink electra?

It is really helpful now.

mrsturnip - yes! It's great now and very accessible. I am going to need their advice myself.

oh dear that sounds ominous. Hope everything is ok...

Is there not another argument here, in that many UK primary classrooms are very big and noisy compared to other parts of Europe, and young children have trouble coping in these relatively impersonal learning environments? And that statements are needed to compensate for what is probably quite an alien learning culture for them? (How many of us habitually sit on carpets for half an hour or more at a time in groups of 30, for example? Yet we expect our kids to do this without question).

I don't think it's that easy to get a statement BoffinMum! Statements are tightly guarded and only really given where the need goes far beyond being unable to sit on a carpet easily.

mrsturnip - I have sent you a message on FB but yes, we are having a few difficulties!

I meant to post that there is also another information service, similar to IPSEA called SOSSEN - there website is here

I have been to one of their workshops and they gave me good advice in the time leading up to our tribunal. On their site is also a telephone number which you can call to get a free copy of the SEN Code of Practice, which is certainly worth having.

I know that MrsT, having spent two years getting them for two of my offspring even though the process was started by their schools not me, and we had bags of support from professionals. But I still think they shouldn't be needed so much in an ideal world where all children got proper bespoke attention, and where TAs and teachers got better training in SEN - on my PGCE we got half a day, for example.

BTW in our area they pulled a fast one by saying children had to wait four years for a statement, which is ridiculous. IPSEA soon disabused them of that. Funnily enough the LEA are our best friends now and have bent over backwards for the kids recently. Parent Partnership Service on the other hand told us a bunch of out and out lies about secondary transfer and got short shrift from me.