What Needs for ASD would you put in in Request for SA letter ?

[Toppy]

Hi - I am STILL drafting the Request letter for my ASD DS age 3
Parent Partnership advised me my Borough likes bullet points (they are more likely to read it) which makes it difficult to ramble at length about DS - so I am saving that for the Parents Report when we get there

In the Request I have listed the following general points and have added my son's specific needs which I have tried to relate to the educational setting.....

• Diagnosis of autism and assocaited learning difficulties

• Severe speech and language delay (then used Lougle's totally brilliant extract from a previous thread by Deadly.
• Inability to communicate his needs
• Easliy distracted & hard to engage
• Huge difficulties transitioning
• Noise sensitive
• Does not understand social cues

I have elaborated and given specific examples after each bullet but this is just not enough.
Can anyone else who has requested a SA on the basis of additional needs relating to ASD help me out with ideas. My son is pretty much standard ASD - mild to moderate I would guess

Haven't requested SA but for 1:1 funding I talked about ds needs in terms of

• personal care (ds isn't properly toilet trained)
• the risk of harm/physical safety - sensory difficulties/poor expressive language mean he cannot report an injury (had examples of bad injuries being missed)
• severe speech/language delay ...risk of harm and disruption
• cannot follow group instructions/whole-class instruction
• difficulty gaining his attention
• significant difficulties in forming relationships with his peers - requires active and substantial adult involvement to help him notice, attend to and respond appropriately to other children.
• transitions
• minimizing his anxiety
• IEP teaching & specific teaching methods required to access curriculum

thank you Frosty - ALL of those apply to my DS to so I shall add them in

Any more with any more ?

• repetitive behaviours which are a major barrier to learning
• lack of social interest / intolerance of peers
• behaviour difficulties eg push away a peer who tries to join activity

-Does he struggle with sequencing or organisational activities? (eg my DD struggles and needs help at end of day to get coat/book bag/lunchbox etc)

-Any motor issues? (my dd struggles with fine motor control and co-ordination)

-Any other sensory issues? (my dd is odd about the feel of some things)

Yep - all of those. I will add them in
I have just had a look at the form that nursery woudl have to fill in if THEY were doing the request its called a SA1 form

Interestingly the form is broken down into the Early Years Foundation Stages and askS for the age range and stage of development the child is operating within. I find this really weird as it is a totally different approach to the one I am taking. I'd really have to shoehorn his sensory issues (can't touch sticky things) into the Creative development box !

Toppy - I wouldn't worry too much, because the very first thing they are likely to do, is send you a form asking you to give further information about your DS.

At this stage, all you are doing is triggering the timeframe. As soon as they have that letter, they have 6 weeks to decide whether to assess.

You could send them a piece of paper upon which you have written 'my DS needs a Statement' with your name and address on it, and they would have to treat it in exactly the same way as a carefully drafted proposal.

All you need to do at this stage is give a brief outline of your DS's needs (ASD is a 'flag' in itself) and request that they undertake a SA.

They will then ask you for a Parental Information form, which is where you detail his finer needs.

Once they have decided to assess, then you complete 'Appendix A: Parental Advice', which goes on to form part of any Statement that is issued.

Hurray - you found me Lougle. You really DO need to do this for a living you know.

Thank you so much for your advice - I had suspected as much but have ended up doing a nice 6 page letter with lots of supporting docs to make up a real fatty of a request. It has possibly broken the back of my parents report too which I am sure I will be grateful for down the line.

In my mission to work out how to go about this I have found two GEMS of documents that have kept the end goal in sight for me and I would like to share them in case anyone else finds them useful...

The first one is Barnet's Parent Partnership 'Information on Statutory Assessments' Pack. This came up on a random google search and has been brilliant. It clearly lays out all the criteria for how SA requests are evaluated in that Borough and I kept all 17 points in mind when drafting my letter. I am certain this would apply across most Authorities

The second which may only be of use to anyone in my part of the word is my local borough's SENCO handbook which for some reason is readily available online. I did a very specific search of a caseworker's name I had been given and the handbook popped up. It had super useful stuff in it like names of everyone in the dep't, how cases are allocated (alphabetically) and most usefully an example SA1 form which is the form that my borough (not sure if this is borough specific) asks the education provider to fill in. It uses the Early Years stages to break down the nursery's assessment of the child. Obviously this is all meant for the SENCO helping the nursery but it has given me a real insight into what I should be thinking about.

Hope this info may somehow help someone else (am desperate to give something back after all the advice and support I have had so far)

and Lougle - thanks so much for that amazing suggested wording in Deadly's thread. I can report that I lifted it word for word as it was so spot on

oh and Lougle - am so glad you got your mojo back