British expat looking for info on UK SN provision

[ALeo]

Quick background: we moved to Belgium 4 years ago. My dh's contract included some provision for "equivalent education", meaning in my understanding, education in our own language, but his employer declined to give it to us. There are several English schools here but they are all fee paying. My children (6 and 4 at the time) then had to start school in French whilst not speaking any French at all. Of course, this has not been all bad as they are now bilingual. Unfortunately, 18 months after arriving, my dd was diagnosed (privately) with a language learning disorder. The first recommendation was that she should be taught in her own language. We have not been able to afford this as it starts at 30k euros per year. So she had to be diagnosed again throught the Belgian (franophone) system and now goes to a very good specialist school.

However, and here is where I need some help, we pay for her to get Occupational Therapy (in English) twice a week. Thanks to this, she has been a lot of progress in the last 6 months. If I can prove that this would be provided for her in the UK, we would have a case for the employer to fund this therapy. This would be a great help financially!

Can anyone point me to where I can find this information? I really need an official source. Thanks for all your help!

It's very hard to get OT twice a week for free here in the UK.

Hard to tell from your post exactly what your daughter's SN are. But you almost certainly wouldn't be getting vast amounts of OT free.

I can only echo what IndigoBell says here; if you need OT twice a week in the UK you will have to fund it yourselves. OT on the NHS is bloody hard to come by, it is available but the waiting lists for such services are immense.

I'm not sure you'd find anything official for OT provision as it tends to be on an individual basis rather than a blanket policy. School aged dcs if lucky will get it written into their statement of sen but often the OT isn't actually delivered by an OT, more likely a specialist TA that has been trained to what that dc needs iyswim. As the others have said, if you wanted that level of OT delivered by an OT on an ongoing basis you'd be paying.

We have what is classed as very good OT provision enshrined in DS's statement. This is one 5 week block of 1 hour sessions every term so 3 x 5week blocks an academic year. In addition to that there is 1 hour per year to attend meetings and 1 hour per term to adjust and order new equipment.

Personally I think DS could do with more, much more than this but I am aware that this is considered good and DS's primary need is for physio.

we have never had any nhs OT help for dd1.

she is 6, and has poor motor skills, as well as sensory and tactile issues.

she has not even been assessed by nhs OT services, as she is not eligible.

any OT help she has had is because we paid for it.

Oh dear, it seems as though I had an overly rosy view of the UK provision. Thanks for sharing!

I'm off to a job fair tomorrow; maybe I'll find a part-time job in English! Then again, maybe not. They are rarer than hen's teeth and highly sought after!!

ALeo The way we do it in the UK is to pay for one or two sessions where we observe and then whenever we can save up for another. In between sessions we don't work, we do as much of the OT as we can remember.

Sorry. Some PCTs don't even have OT departments for children.