Meeting with SENDco this afternoon

[JS711]

Hi,

I am due to speak to the school SENDco today about my son.

He has been under 3 weeks supervision in lessons to see if a referral can be made to the child mental health team or whoever is appropriate.

I feel he either has ADHD or is on the spectrum.

DH (his Dad) has autism and they are very similar. I asked for help back in November but was told they had no concerns. Then we had lockdown again and homeschooling. Things became worse ten fold. So I contacted the GP in April. I was told I need to ask school for a report first. They did not want to see us or speak to me about it. This was all done via eConsult as they would not even allow me to have a telephone appointment.

School agreed to do a report but she wanted to see what he is like in lessons, lunchtime and playtimes. Today is the day I get to see what she has reported.

Has anyone else had to take this route and had any outcome? I am worried she is going to say there is nothing wrong and basically its my parenting.

If that is the case I will be seeking parenting advice as I cannot understand what I have done wrong.

Hi,

I would recommend going to a private paediatric clinical psychologist if you have the money. That really helped us. They will be able to give you and assessment of what is going wrong and parenting advice either way. You can get a recommendation of someone good by asking on mumsnet local. That's what I did.

Good luck there.

My school were similar and I ended up self referring ds for asd without their questionnaire as I was not prepared to wait for their observations.

In my application I stated that school report no concerns however ds frequently reports he is upset and frustrated by class noise, ds has huge separation anxiety and a few other things that I had observed.

That was enough to get the screening accepted and get onto a waiting list for assessment.

In summary, don't let school put you off by saying your DC is fine.

I'm flummoxed as to why a doctor would by pass the parent and ask the school when perhaps they don't have any experience in diagnosing or recognised sen?? Esp if in large class??

I would ring CAMHS and see if you can self-refer onto the ADHD or ASD pathway. Explain that school are not forthcoming and the GP will only act if School provide GP with a report. Ask where that leaves you? You could also try asking advice from the school nurse team.

Oh I think this was yesterday actually- how did it go?