autism outreach anyone had experience of how they help schools?

[autumnsmum]

hi im back again as i posted previously i had the meeting with the senco yesterday and they said they are in agreement with sons diagnosis of hfa , they are going to get the local autism outreach involved which Iam very happy about. Has any one any experience of what strategies they may suggest to help my son , he is very anxious about school and indeed life in general , Ihave been told he doesnt need one to one or statementing although i think that may happen in the future , sorry for such a ramble but im new to all this.

Hi autumnsmum,

re your comment:-
"I have been told he doesnt need one to one or statementing although i think that may happen in the future , sorry for such a ramble but im new to all this".

Don't buy it re the statementing issue. Who told you this nonsense anyway re not needing one to one or statementing, you are in danger of being fobbed off here. If I had £1 for every time parents have been given similar comments I'd be qquite wealthy by now!.

AO can only do so much and the school may not be able to fully impliment any recommendations that they come up with.

I would apply personally for the statement asap on your son's behalf. You do not need school's permission to do this and when all is said and done you are your child's best AND ONLY advocate.

IPSEA are very good at the whole statementing issue and there are model letters on there you can use www.ipsea.org.uk.

How old is DS?. You need to think longer term as well i.e secondary school. He may well need a Statement in secondary school in order to manage and so it is better you apply for this sooner rather than later.

Our experience of autism outreach was poor. We were initially offered weekly visits at home and nursery. We had about 8 visits in 14 months, most of which did not achieve anything. To be useful they have to come regularly and get to know your child. The strategies they are likely to use will be things like visual timetables and social skills or singing groups. Our team spent alot of time on the environment - getting nursery to create a quiet plain space for him to retreat to. They pushed use of symbols to supplement speech alot. All of this is fine except that my son is not anxious, does not need a quiet space and we wanted him to use speech not symbols. So we found that very generic strategies were being imposed on a child who they did not suit. There was also a total absence of any specific programmes as to how to teach him, how to engage him, how to get his attention etc. But this takes alot more time and training of school staff than just popping in occasionally and saying use a timetable and buy him an igloo tent. However other families had a different teacher who spent alot more time in school and was much more dedicated. If you download the Inclusion Development Programme for autism (IDP) from nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk that should give you an idea of the sort of strategies. I think the support really varies from place to place and even from teacher to teacher.

I would echo Attila and apply for a statement as you may find outreach support is not enough.

Agnes Thank you. I am no longer now staring at a black page for beginning my complaint to the Autism Outreach Service.

I forgot about the IDP too. Will stick that in my policy stuff.

Hi, mine was good but then I have quite a lot of contact with her, via emails, phone etc. She suggested that school put in a social skills programme 10 months ago, which they ignored; she also told school that ds was not deliberately being naughty but probably did not understand exactly what they wanted etc. As with all the services, it depends on who you get. However, you also have to push to get what you want as they are so overstretched.

Also, agree with Attila - you should get a statement as soon as possible.

Our ASD team is very good. School discuss any problems they are having, and the ASD team recommend different strategies they can try.

They have also done some transition work with DS (sessions where they talk to him), and came to the swimming pool for his first lesson 'cause we were all a bit nervous about how it would go.

I think it's very much dependent both on how good the team is, and it how good the SENCO is at 'building relationships'

(Our prev school had access to the same ASD team with far less success....)

They also had a session with me and DH that school arranged because school were concerned that we weren't being supported.

Our ASD team refuses to talk to, work with or even respond to parents.

It's because they're crap basically and if any parents found out they'd be in trouble. So they don't tell anyone what they are doing.

They're on my hit list btw!

Thus far, they have been good with dd2. The outreach teacher seems to work with the class teacher and TA. She has provided useful resources and helped support my request for my dd2 to remain in reception for an additional year. However, I think that they are largely intended to work with the school and the child. I am able to meet her, but all contact is through the school. I think if there was any disagreement between us and the school the outreach team would be supporting the school so there is obviously no independence at all which is a major drawback.

The Autism team are telling the school that ds needs visuals to make choices and that he won't cope unless he does and so to have low expectations until the silly parents change their minds.

Ours considers itself a school only service too. They offered home visits to cover up that we had been given the wrong info about portage and abandoned for 6 months without so much as a HV visit - but stopped within a fortnight. I did go into nursery and watch outreach once and they never came back. Our service uses a lot of advanced TAs who are really just on a 'watch one - do one' training process and provide an identical singing group for children from 2-10, verbal and non verbal - same songs, same piece of lycra etc. But there is one teacher elsewhere in the county who actually goes into school when its a child's first day etc and really puts in the hours. I think for a school with little autism awareness the strategies are fine - but when it comes to actually needing strategies to engage a particular child it fell down for us. It was more a case of whether the child fitted the limited range of strategies our teacher seemed to have, rather than whether the strategies fitted the child.

However our outreach teacher also told every other professional that I was so unpleasant and obsessed with only following ABA that it was perfectly acceptable for her to have not implemented a single programme in a year and to have withdrawn staff because I dared to speak to them. Apparently I was not allowed to talk to the TA or ask any questions, that was banned and so wholly unreasonable that she was entitled to pull out all support without telling us. To be fair we only found out staff had been 'removed' due to our unreasonableness when we got to tribunal - we hadn't actually noticed any difference in their service!

The Tribunal did uphold that being unable to implement any specific programmes was of significant concern so to be fair our experience was (hopefully) about as bad as it could get.

Star can you tell I am in the process of drafting my complaint too

Getting a specified amount of support in a statement is important as otherwise things can start off well then fall off when they get new referrals.

Agnes Your story is my story. Almost identical.

Any failure on their part is due to the parents intefering. If we don't interfere then failure on their part is due to ds' autism.

I know its so spooky! So much for the North:South divide.

thank you all so much my ds is 5 and in year one sorry should have said that at start

Autism Outreach weren't great with our DS. They gave the school a bit of advice, and we met with them a few times, but he needed a statement and until he got that statement, he didn't get the proper level of support he needed.

It is worth getting the statement process going. My DS has HFA and now has 1:1 support which is just fantastic for him.

The statement isn't just for 1:1 support, it can also include specified hours for OT and speech therapy which has bumped our DS right to the top of the list (I think the current waiting list is about 1½ years).

I get the feeling people take supporting your child far more seriously when you have the backing of a statement.

Our Autism Outreach service is only surpassed by the community SALT service in just how dire it is.They seem to have stock answers and strategies regardless of the child's ability or difficulty. So visual timetables were meted out as a cure all and no consideration given to sensory issues.Have to say we have "forgotten" to invite them to Annual Reviews and so haven't seen them for years