ASD SPECIALIST PLACEMENT 3 YEAR OLD

[mompa]

My DS has a SEN admin panel meeting in a few days to discuss placement at specialist nursery recommended by EP report and CAS appendix C. does anyone else have children at spcialist nursery and if so for how many hours and has it helped. Many thanks for any replies

hi no experience myself but sounds like a fantastic opportunity.
my ds is 3 and was finally diagnosed with autism yesterday. it's been heartbreaking to see him struggle at nursery and pre school for the past 16 months. he finally has 1:1 at pre school but I would love him to be able to send him to a place like you've mentioned.
hope you and your ds get all the support needed. it sounds like a promising placement. wish we had one here! good luck :)

Hi tiredmummy. I can completely empathise and wish you all the best. Mt DS was diagnosed in Nov and I have been going hell for leather to get him support since.We do not specialist funding or one to one at his mainstream pre-school yet - they are discussing at panel this week and will probably be mmonths before a place is found! Where are you?

Yes my son is three (also autistic) and attends a developmental playgroup twice a week for two hours. He is getting on better there than at his mainstream one as it's smaller, more contained and structured. Plus the staff have specialist knowledge.

It's probably the only valuable provision which he has been offered since he was diagnosed a year ago and it's brilliant in that we are able to contrast progress made there compared to mainstream as we want him to attend a special school at least initially.

Well that's the plan anyway!

Thanks Mists - how did you get offered this. Do you have a statement?

We're in the process of getting a statement before Reception and were lucky in that he was diagnosed at 2.9 so when he resumed mainstream nursery (took a break while we were all figuring out what was wrong) he got extra support in place for that.

There was a bit of a waiting list for the special pre-school but only a couple of months.

Sadly it is one of the things that the powers that be are looking to get rid of

In S.E Essex by the way.

Ds went to one for a couple of hours twice a week. It didn't feel like it was helping much at the time (although everyone there was lovely, he just didn't cope well) but when he came to start school it wasn't nearly as painful as we expected so I think it did help really and was worth it. (An added bonus was that one of the other children from pre-school was in his new class which could only have helped). Ds also started two mornings at a church playgroup and the specialist pre-school were great, with staff popping in regularly to give the playgroup ladies any advice they could. They were very supportive at a difficult time.