How long is too long for part 2 and 3 in a statment?

[Willmum]

As title really. Am redrafting my sond statement to send back to the lea and just wondered how long should parts 2 and 3 be? I figure as long as they need to be but I don't want there to be so much in there that it is unreadable iyswim.

For example in part 2 I've gone through all parts of the reports relating to speech and language difficulties and am unsure of how much there should be.

E.G Should it just say say he has a speech delay with severe speech disorder, probably phological with element of verbal dsypraxia.

Or should it be more detailed for example include things such as:

not using conjuctives,
poor intelligibilty
inconsistant production of words
particular difficulty with words requiring lip closure etc etc (theres loads more)

I dont want to put in too much if it makes it hard to see the 'bigger picture' as it were, but equally dont want to leave things out that should be in.

Also in part 3, there are quite a lot of suggestions from various people, eg use of TEACCH Approach (whatever that is), visual timetable (shocker), start and finished trays 'write from the start programme' etc etc.

Should all of this be written into part 3?

Thanks

Do it as PROBLEM - EFFECT in Part 2.

I.e Child has (X) which causes (x).

In part 3 describe support

i.e. Child to have (x) days/weeks from whom to do what to (address the problem/effect described in Part 2).

thanks for that, I'm going through it now but I don't know if I'm just putting too much in. How long are statments generally? Is a couple of pages on each section (2 AND 3) too long?

We had one page as Part 2, half a page as Part 3. Ours was probably a bit short.

what wetaugust said about what goes in. Part 2 is the description, imagine someone reading it who doesn't know your ds, will they get a good picture of his difficulties. Part 3, if it isn't in you won't get it, so go through the reports again and make sure every recommendation of support/program is in there, avoid phrases like, 'would benefit from access to . . .' and make sure you have phrases like, 'must have . . .'. The wording is very important.

I can only say that dd3s part 2 is 2 sides of A4 and part 3 is 4 sides.

almost forgot, the order that needs are placed in is important if you don't want ms, so make sure primary need is at the top.

What do you do when you're not sure what the primary need is?

you have to go with what you need out of it right now. Round here a base or sn school will only take you if you have their specialism as your primary need, so it's not that important if you want ms but can be everything if you don't and of course it may be different where you are. We're London so everywhere is oversubscribed whether in or out of borough so schools get to be picky over small details. It's a bugger to get changed at a later date, as I'm currently finding out, but if need changes or becomes more prominent then it's definitely doable.

If you're aiming for a particular special school which is aimed at a particular SEN, make sure that is named as the primary need.

Our LA had certain categories of primary need - not sure if that was particular to our area or it might be in SEN COP.

Our statement had 3 A4 sides for Pt2 and 5 for Pt3 (but 2 pages of that was standard monitoring arrangements/transition comments that goes into every statement). DS is described as 'complex and severe' and has a few dx, hence the wordiness. We'd asked for more than that too - we were told to ask for more than we really wanted, as you'll always be negotiated down.

Have you looked at the SEN Toolkit on writing statements? That's quite a good guide on what should be included.