How to stop child hitting at school

[SENparent12]

After a couple of reasonably calm years with a brilliant TA, autistic DD's school have given her a new teacher (as expected) and new TA this year. I get the reason for this, but the TA is someone she hasn't worked with before and she has not had a great start to year 5 and has hit other children 3 times in the week she's been back. Now the headteacher want to have a meeting to discuss how we can best support X to stop these physical behaviours when she is dysregulated.

Obviously I get that she can't keep hitting people, but I always thought that there was nothing you could do once they got to that stage and the trick was to stop the child getting dysregulated. Am I missing something? If it's possible I'm happy to work on this, as she hits us too when in meltdown, though I'm generally pretty good at spotting the signs and helping her calm down before we get to that stage. She has an ehcp and a TA for 6 hours a day (just half an hour without when she takes her lunch, which I think adds up as the ehcp is funded for 30 hours).

On the whole it is easier to prevent escalation than deescalate once DD has reached the point of no return. Has the school looked at the triggers? Have they looked at what they are doing when things start to escalate but haven’t yet reached the point of no return? What support for emotional regulation is in the EHCP? Is DD receiving any therapies?

Is the TA following the EHCP? Has the TA had any training (including anything in the EHCP)? How experienced are they?

One of the incidents happened when the TA went to the toilet (which I will bring up but I guess they have to go sometime). She seems reasonably experienced, and I know she worked with another autistic child last year, but I do think a big part of it is she hasn't yet learnt DD's triggers and signs she's struggling. her previous TA was very good at picking up on them, but they switch the TAs around every year so children don't get too attached, as that creates issues when TAs leave or the child goes to high school.

I would ask what transition happened? What information was passed on? I would also look at the wording in the EHCP e.g. does it say it needs to be a consistent 1:1 - handled correctly a consistent 1 or 2 or even 3 people delivering support doesn’t have to create an issue.

I would ask what exactly happened when the 1:1 was away from DD. Was it something said by another child? Was it a demand placed on DD? Could the teacher have better supported DD during that time?

If one incident happened when the TA was away from DD, I would also look at if that is the case for other times. Unfortunately, some schools use 1:1s to support other pupils. They shouldn’t if it is detailed, specified and quantified in the EHCP though. So if that is happening look at the wording in the EHCP.