Is a TAC the right place to say this??

[lisad123isasnuttyasaboxoffrogs]

I recived DD2 CDAC report on Saturday. It seemd quite clear that her "normal" preschool havent a clue and even lied
Now what I want to ask them is if they have ever had a girl with ASD before, did they read her reports before she came and what experience/reading did they do before she came?
I am very angry with them and know if I had a child coming into my setting and had no/little experience/knowledge I would have done something about it before they came in.

The specialist SALT is going in the day before TAC to explain what they should be looking at and also coming to see me after.

Im scarced, and Im on my own with only myself and special school agreeing but the lead proffessional is the advisory teacher for the preschool, and have 2 of the preschool staff coming to.

is everyone out doing xmas shopping or building snowmen?

Hi Lisa - don't have a lot of experience of TAC meetings but I would probably wait to see what Salt has to say. She may have more evidence that shows their inexperience and lack of adequate support which will back up your other report. Then I expect she could back you up in the meeting if necessary. Is someone going to be taking minutes?

yes minutes will be taken, i will offer SALT isnt coming to meeting :(

Whats the advisory teacher like? Has she been in to preschool much to watch? Ours was useless and just gave very generic advice and didn't want to go much. If the preschool need help the advisory teacher is the person to give it and it sounds like she will need to go in lots and do hands on rather than just leaving printouts etc.

If you feel the preschool have got it wrong / underestimated the needs then you have to say so. It would be nice if the advisory teacher agreed. But I would approach it from the point of view of the preschool not being expected to have this expertise and you being anxious to know how the advisory teacher is going to train them up. You need to be asking for the advisory teacher to do actual setting of programmes and demonstrating.

I don't think preschools should be expected to be experts in every kind of SEN to be honest. Certainly for ASD what has worked for my son has been alot of specialist input. Preschool staff can implement what they have been shown under regular supervision but would not be expert enough to set the programmes, break down teaching tasks, know which strategies to use etc.

Quite often preschool staff get blamed for not knowing how to teach kids with ASD but they don't actually get any teaching on this on their courses so the expectation should be the advisory teacher assesses the level of expertise and puts measures in place to train them up and provides alot of hands on support eg several hours per week would be what you would get if you went to tribunal.

Often LAs like to pretend this is all within the remit of the preschool and have a go at them of they get it wrong. Whereas we always said to the preschool we don't expect you to know this stuff and we will work with you (fight for you) to get the support from outside professionals.

the advisory teacher is terrible. She went in once for an hour and week before CDAC and wrote a report saying all was fine and then sent someone each to the assessment.

True, she should be helping them and I did send her some training courses that might be of intrest to them.
She gets 5 hours1-1 a week, and they even asked what they shoudl use t for

want to come and hold my hand? LOL

Oh Lisad I´m sorry this is all happening. Is it the preschool advisory teacher or the autism advisory teacher?

now this is where it get complex, because of the preschools refusal to see DD2 difficutlies we didnt get dx in Nov, even though the other proffessionals agreed she was.
This is the preschool advisory as we cant get autism advisory until dx

Lisad, if you can, request that the meeting is stopped at key moments to ´sum up/clarify´for the purpose of yours and their minutes.

I´ve refused any more TACs as I see them as a way of the LA contriving the evidence in their favour in their biased minutes.

I´m really not trying to frighten you any more than you are. Remember this:

This is not THE big meeting of the century that will decide your dd´s fate. You can follow up immediately in writing anything that you think you didn´t get across well or want to ask questions that didn´t occur to you at the time. It is probably sensible that you do in any case, and before THEIR minutes come out too.

Good luck.

tbh, the only reason they put a TAC together was to get DD2 the preschool funding which they now dont need. The last load of mintues sucked tbh.
I can just see them there all smug saying well DD2 didnt get a dx because we dont think there is anything wrong. Of course all the specialist that agree that she is arent there :(

starlight, do you want to come and hold my hand

Lisa I think you could say they don't know what to use the 5 hours a week for. Say to the advisory teacher I would like you to go in and support DD for a full nursery session to demonstrate and then ask the advisory teacher to write a series of programmes which nursery can implement throughout a session so as to make the best use of the 1:1.

Locally we have 1 advisory teacher who does this as standard eg she does not expect the nursery to know what to do - she will write a timetable for the session to show the staff how to break it down and suggest activities etc. Of course this is still well short what is needed eg really they need to have new programmes regularly and be supervised delivering them, but it is a start. Obviously we did not get this particular teacher! But it shows its not an unreasonable ask that preschool should be shown what to do before having to do it themselves

You can identify needs eg social, language, play skills etc and ask teacher to set a target and specific programme for each area.

The key thing to prove nurseries do not know what they are doing is to make targets specific eg DD will within 3 months be able to ....... That way if they work on it for 3 months and don't achieve it you have evidence the level of expertise / input is not enough.

Agnes I agree with you, but this particular bunch will say that the reason the targets were not met is because they were unrealistic, not because they don´t have a clue how to meet them.

unrealistic and beyond the capability of the child I mean

Lisad I´m not sure that you´d want me there tbh. I´m my own worst enemy at times and don´t bring out the best in people. Better that you have me in spirit than body.

hmm Tac always seem loads of waffle i have found .Mind not that once they accept that a dc has addtional needs nothing changes lol except for the name of the meeting.

Ds sw got a shock when she heard ds gait had detoriated and was like well why is he not getting new afos yet then asked me if i had missed appointment great delight in saying no its just the normal slow service

We have another meeting in January still waiting on minutes from the last one