Proposed statement

[gravelchops]

Well at long last we have finally received a proposed statement for my son (yr 2, aspergers).
Have started the long task of analysing it. Many (but not all) of his needs are defined but amazingly they have not quantified a single item in the document - they have not specified any hours for any activity, they have not specified who will be providing the support/strategies, no hours of support, no funding, NOTHING.

My question is how do I handle requesting the changes?

1. I have requested a meeting with the statementing officer but in the meantime do I tell them of my concerns and start negotiating now or wait until the meeting?

1. Do i need to specify who i want to provide support or let the LA advise?

1. To what extent do i involve my son's school? I get the feeling they won't like it if we push for defined hours of support e.g. social skills group work

1. I've been ringing IPSEA for two days but can't get through. I want them to look at the statement. Does anyone have any specific contacts?

1. Any other advice for me?

Thanks very much!

Well done on getting this far!

Don't negotiate in a meeting - do it in writing as Star suggests. You can use the meeting to reiterate your points but do not agree to anything in a meeting, and make sure you bring someone with you.

Involve the school if you think you can get support from them to get more detailed/increased provision - and they're willing to put something in writing. But this is mostly between you and the LA. The school may not want things as specific as you do, as it makes things more difficult for them - but any flexibility in the statement must be for your child's benefit, not the school or LA.

Keep trying with IPSEA, perhaps during the evening. Also try SOS SEN. ACE may also help.

You need to look at all the annexes and highlight every difficulty that the Ed Pysch, Paed, School etc have all reported and make sure evry one appears in Part 2. The LEA will not include any that are not specifically backed up by evidence in the annexes.

Then decide what support you think is appropraite for each difficulty listed in Part2 and quantify and specify it as suggested changes to teh Proposed Statement.

You could also try the national Autistic society's education advice line. Try not to think about what the school would or wouldn't like. That is not your problem. You need to focus on getting the statement very specific and watertight then it is up to the LEA and the school to implement it. LEA's are good at writing very woolly and meaningless sentences such as 'opportunities to...'. At the proposed statement stage, my two dc's statements were virtually identical despite the fact that they are totally different, have totally different strengths and weakness. Keep trying with IPSEA - they are v good at homing in on all the meaningless unquantifies stuff in statements.

Good advice here. Some LEAs don't quantify at proposed statement level. They will only quantify at Final Statement level. Cambridge is one that springs to mind. DO NOT ALLOW THIS. Once the statement is finalised, the only way to get it changed is to go to First Tier Tribunal (previously SENDIST).

Thanks so far for your feedback, very helpful.

I've drafted a letter saying I am rejecting the statement as it is unquantifiable and that I will send them, separately, the changes we require.

Another thing:

The needs in Part 2 are written as narrative (ie. a series of paragraphs) but are not categorised or listed.

Therefore, the strategies/objectives in part 3 are not directly relating to each need.

It just seems very jumbled.

Should I ask them to re-format the statement or should I just concentrate on getting all the stuff in there?

Just make sure they are all mentioned in some context within Part 2. List them youself and then develop your own Part 3 specific and quanitified support strategies to meet each need.

So Part 2 states the child has language problem so Part 3 shold state that n hours per (day/week/month) SALT input from a suitably qualified SALT will be required at X intervals to address (language problem). Vague but hope you get the drift.

Aim high as this will be your negoaition opener with the LA and they will certainly try to manage your expectations downwards.

We're in Cambridge (which won't quantify until final statement).

What we did was send in our own version which put in everything we would like, quantified at the level we would like it (eg OT programme delivered on a daily basis by TA (who has been trained for no less than 1/2 day by OT) for 30 minutes (made that up as I can't remmber the acutal details).

So essentially we sent the statement back to them re-written as we would like to see it.

In the event very few of our changes made it to the final statement but they did quantify the hours as 32.5 which was beyond our wildest expectations.