Preparing for tribunal - is it wise to be upfront with the lea with all your objections?

[pinkorkid]

I've come across people here recommending not giving away all your objections before reaching tribunal. How does this work? Don't both sides get to see all of the others papers beforehand - or are they only made available to the send tribunal?

Also if you want to carry on negotiating with the lea up to the date of the tribunal, (in the interests of a quicker resolution) how can you do this without being explicit about your objections and reasoning?

In all our 4 tribunals, our objections were written into the case statement that we submitted to the tribunal panel.

But that doesnt mean you have to reveal everything in the case statement.

So for instance, we made the case for having a particilar intervention in my son's statement and I prepared a case outlining why we needed this intervention, but I kept back some of the research I wanted to quote so that I could use that at the hearing.

So, you kind of make your case in writing and then make it again (perhaps with accompanying evidence) at the hearing.

We continued to negotiate with our LEA right up to the tribunal date. We agreed some changes to wording but it didnt affect the substance of our complaint.

A lot depends on your LEA - whether they are open to negotiations or just want to fight you all the way. I dont think there's a right way to do it - it depends on the circumstances and is often a judgment call for parents (or advocates/lawyers, if they're involved).

My only advice is to weigh up the pros and cons of different courses of action and then go with your instinct.

Zogzelda, many thanks for your reply.

I've been struggling with getting my head round this but you've made things a bit clearer for me. My instinct would normally be to be upfront with everything but I feel I would also like to have something in reserve for the tribunal if we get that far.

I still hope we can get somewhere with negotiations first.

Good luck - fingers crossed for you :)

in my case i was up front and honest both with the lea and within the paper work submitted to the tribunal, but i did carry on negociating with LEA or should i say they tried negociating with me.

with my sons case it was because they went over my head and named a school on his statement that i didnt believe was right for him i made it clear if i didnt get my way i would be home educating him. i had numberous arguments with the LEA and refused to back down,i had also reports to back my case including a EP report. the LEA decided to send a second EP to look at my son he was wonderful and worded his report to back my case and rang me giving some very good advice and some insight on what was going on behind the scenes.

right at last moment i got my way , turns out all along the school of my choice had also been negociating with the LEA even though they had turned him down 3 times.

i was pretty upfront with Lea gave them copys of all my reports and said this is what im going to be using as my prrof they caved in once they got letter to say i summited.Think they knew they was in for hding second to none

Zogzelda, thanks for your good wishes.

Electra, I really have no idea if they are likely to change their position, it would be fair to say we've had some mixed messages from different lea representatives. My main motive for wanting to carry on negotiating is the hope of getting resolution for my son earlier. He has been out of school for over a year now and it is a major struggle to get him to engage with us in any kind of productive learning plus outside support is limited to 5 hrs per week so I'm concerned he is falling even further behind his peers. Does the lea have any motivation to speed things up? If by not allowing him a place where he can take up the provision in his statement they are saving money, possibly not. I'm hoping this is not their primary motivation and there is some integrity lurking there somewhere. Some of the people we've had to deal with have seemed genuinely concerned to do their best for ds.

Pinkstarlight, your case gives me some hope - as it is mainly the setting we are arguing about and we feel the lea eps did understand what our son is like. I would be delighted if it turned out the school where we hope to find a place for ds were negotiating on our behalf but I'm not sure they are likely to put any energy into a child's case until he's on their books. Was your ds' school a maintained or an independent school? Also was insisting you would home ed your son perceived as unwelcome by the lea?

goingroundthebend,
thanks for your reply good to hear you had such a good result -could I ask which reports you submitted? Was the letter telling them you were going to tribunal? TIA

got to give up computer for homework now will be back to check messages later

I was upfront with my arguments, based on legal advice for my case. The thinking behind it was that, if we could show there was a strong argument, the LA might be convinced enough to pull out before the hearing (they didn't - but we won everything we asked for at tribunal).

I don't think we were really disadvantaged by setting out all of our cards though. Our LA barely considered any of our arguments. They have to send a response to all of your arguments but in our case, that meant a few lines which didn't really address our points. I am not convinced that they ever read all of our case statement, until just before the hearing (I know that this has happened in other cases).

You will have to be upfront about any reports and written evidence you want to submit - it doesn't have to be submitted at the time of lodging the appeal but it has to be received by the evidence deadline set by the tribunal. If you just turn up to the hearing with a new report, they may not accept it, or could adjourn the hearing. I don't mean research or case law, just things that the LA wouldn't be expected to know, like written reports specifically about your child.

i filed for tribunal

and sent them my arguments why and my reports from ican which covered ,salt .Ep and ot report .

Within aboyt 10 days of me filing I got phonecall saying erm yes we agree to the placement and yes you can have Ot in part 3

Think lot depends on why >Herts are not so good on asd type provison but are better when its somehing more well known and theres physical evidence of disablites

you have to be careful in that our tribunal did not allow any extra evidence on the day so they might not allow it if you keep stuff back

thanks again goingroundthebend, at the moment we have no independent reports and not sure if we can afford any/many. Having said that I think if they had really read the existing reports - as sugarcandymix says it really seems doubtful at times - I think we should get a different outcome and crucially a different educational setting.

Thanks for your reply sugarcandymix, that's useful to know they will make the distinction between reports specific to your child and references to case law/research.

sanity wouldbenice,
thanks for the warning about extra evidence on the day.

feeling slightly less panicky about it all now...

pinkorkid my son went to a mainstream primary the LEA decided he had to go to a secondary special school which i felt didnt suit his needs. i wanted him to continue in mainstream education as he has no social or behavioural problems and a close network of friends.my choice was the local mainstream school the LEA and the school itself was against the idea.

in all fairness my son didnt really fit either option as he has complex issues, but i felt to move with his friends was the best option. the LEA was totally against my son being home educated and i was called unreasonable more than once and went through a couple of caseworkers thinking someone else would be able to talk me around.

one good bit of advice i was given was to keep the lines of communication open and contact the school that turned him down and ask for a meeting to discuss their reasons. felt really pushy but face to face they was much more prepared to listen.i was then turned down again but a funny thing happened the children from primary was being sent to look round the secondary to get them ready for the change in groups of 5 my son was chosen to go look round. apparently it was a mistake but i believe the school wanted to meet him on the sly i was told they was so impressed by him as he was happy chatty,polite and asked so many questions he took them all by surprise.apparently the 3rd time he was refused they had all took a vote and said no,once they met my son they all changed their minds and gave very positive feedback

Pinkoid

mine was all done at Ican for one fee.Depending if your dc has speech issues could be s route open to you

Pinkstarlight,
Thanks again for your reply - that's lovely that it was meeting your son that swayed the school, what a credit to him. We're trying to move the other way, I had really hoped that the move to secondary school would be a fresh start for my son and at first it seemed that way but gradually the same problems with socialising or in his case not having a clue how to came upplus a number of other issues and it became clear he just wasn't coping.

Issue with special school we want is firstly they are already over numbers for his year, secondly panel didn't think his needs severe enough for special school setting despite several reports saying opposite. school have said he could benefit from their level of support but don't want to go over numbers again. So it's the panel we need to convince mainly.

goingroundthebend,

thanks for your advice - ds does have speech issues though not severe and not his primary need. I will contact ican and ask them if they think he would fit their service.

I really appreciate people taking time to read and reply here. It's heartening to hear that you have got there in the end with battles for your dcs.

Just a question for the people who've been to a tribunal (or at least prepared to). Several people here have mentioned submitting reports to the tribunal. Are these extra reports gained after the draft statement or the ones that were submitted when the statutory assessment was being done?

Put another way, I'm preparing to possibly go to tribunal over my sons proposed statement. Mainly because reports I have have been ignored. (e.g OT not mentioned at all and salt provison not quantified etc). In this position I don't need any new reports do I? I'm just trying to get them to take notice of the ones they've already got.

Thanks

Willmum, reading and running her as am running late for a change but will answer as best I can later

I am just at the beginning of all this. I have raised my concerns with the school, who are adamant they are meeting Saskia's needs, however 'off the record' the teacher has admitted she needs more as has her pysio. Now though they have closed ranks and in the last report sent to the LEA the school claimed her needs were being met. I am having to prove they are not. It is a very scary prospect, and hard when I ahve to do it on top of caring for my daughters complex needs, and struggling to recover from spinal surgery. What I don't uderstand is, these people are in a proffesion where they are supposed to care. Yes the school will lose the funding hat comes with my daughter, but they too are mothers, can they not see that it is for the greater good that Saskia is placed in a specialist school?!

Willmum. With your existing reports, do they recommend the provision that you want and is it written in a clear and specified way? Are they independent reports or done by NHS/LA?

If you already have good reports which have all the recommendations you need, I don't think you'll necessarily need to get new ones for a tribunal - sometimes it takes the threat of tribunal for the LA to take proper notice of them.

However, the tribunal does insist on having 'current' reports - this means they need to be done within six months of the hearing. Since it can take 5-6 months to get a hearing date, you might still need to get an updated assessment. We had to do this, plus DS had deteriorated significantly since the first report, so the recommendations were stronger with the later report.

Willmum, you can submit your appeal to tribunal and say that you may want to submit further reports later. You don't need to have all the reports up front. Like you I feel existing reports clearly state a particular type of provision is necessary for ds but lea seem to be interpreting them quite differently - either that or ignoring. Alongside writing my objections to their decisions and critique of their reasoning I am planning, in priority order, to consult partnership with parents (as relatively easy to get through to), then sossen and or ipsea, (very helpful but not always easy to get through as staffed by overworked volunteers), to get another point of view and make sure I'm not going mad and that we do have a strong case. Based on any feedback I get, I may then set about getting supplementary reports. At the same time I guess I'll be carrying on negotiating with the lea, turn up for work occasionally, maybe even look after the family in my spare 5 minutes .

mum2harryandsaskia, I was talking about similar feelings to yours with a friend this morning. It is very hard at times to not get wound up by the fact that our dcs welfare doesn't appear very high on certain professionals' priorities. Since starting the whole statement battle, I feel like I've had to take on a new persona, someone who is getting less and less worried about being seen as pushy or tactless, if that's what it takes, even though it goes against my normal instincts.

sugarcandymix, when did the tribunal let you know that they considered your existing reports out of date? If they need to be done within 6 months of the tribunal - that would make most of the reports on which ds' statement is based out of date by then.

I think I was told that at an SOS SEN workshop. I don't think it's the official tribunal's policy and you might be OK with up to 12 months - but obviously the more recent, the better. I would call SOS SEN or IPSEA to check if you're in doubt.

My LA reports were a year out of date by the time we got to tribunal and it was not raised as an issue. Their EP came and had not seen my child for a year but that just went in our favour. I think as long as your reports are the most recent it is not essential for them to be within 6 months. It depends on the child but in our case we were not going to see any sudden transformation in 6 months.

I like SOSSEN but think they are a bit perfectionist - sometimes parents just have to make do with what we have and can afford. We don't have vast legal budgets. We did not have a SALT report at all but still walked away with increased SALT provision.

thanks sugarcandymix, will contact sossen.

Agnesdipesto, agree it is often a case of make do with what you can afford. Did you get an independent ep report?