What age should we start applying for a statement & how do you go about doing it???

[proudmum74]

Hi - my dd is only 10 months old & has Down's with mid level DLA support. My MIL is a primary school teacher & she keeps on telling me that we should start applying for a statement for her as they can take several years to come through & it really helps to have them before a child starts school.

I think it's probably a bit early to tell what her needs will be yet & none of her support workers (SENCO, Portage or Ed Pysch.)have mentioned it yet, but I was wondering what other peoples experiences have been? and if it's not too early how do I go about getting the process started?

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure your child has to be 2 before you can apply for a statement. It's a minimum 6 months to get a statement in place, several years would not be that commonplace although does happen.

There's little point in asking for a statutory assessment before you have an idea of what support she is likely to need.

If she is likely to attend an early years setting before school then you need to speak to whoever runs it 6 months before she starts to work out whether they could meet her needs from their own resources. If the answer is no, that's the time to apply for a statutory assessment.

The Early Years setting can apply for the assessment on you behalf. This is useful because if it is turned down you can then apply yourself straight afterwards.

It gets complicated when she goes to school because she made need them to name a specific school in the statement if the best one for her is oversubscribed or you are out of catchment. That would mean you'd be best having the statement in place before the places were allocated.

yes get on to it ASAP they take more notice of you anyhow so you can apply for it yourself, and dont worry about what her needs are later as its reviewed and changed regularly and if even between that her needs change you can get an early review so thats not a problem get someone to help do it with you a lot people dont like to ask but there are different groups who will help you eg:parent partnership ive found them very helpfull, SNAP diff ones depends where you live my son was in school but we applied as well as the school so it wouldnt be turned down , in your case as your not in school/nursery yet the local nursery or where ever your thinking of sending her would perhaps be best to go in for a chat it should take 26 weeks at most to sort out the statment btw as they have strict guidelines to work to llok up and print off (its quite long) SEN code of practice for you advice HTH

sen cop section 4:39 onwards. You can get a statement before 2 but it would seem this is rare. I'd say it depends very much on how your area fund their early years support and of course what your plans are work wise, here we didn't need a statement in place until she turned 3 so started the process almost as soon as she turned 2.

yes 6 months before startings a good time to start but in your case as yr DD has downs there will probably be things that HAVE to be put in place before she goes to the nursery

sorry, am half asleep today and a general fug seems to have descended on me If I remember correctly your dd goes to daycare some of the time and already has support in place?

We found with dd3 that until government funding kicked in the term after she was 3 then her support at preschool was funded by early years and a statement wasn't necessary. Once she hit the term after she was 3, dd3 went to a school nursery where she had to have the statement already in place to make sure the support was there ready and waiting for her. Hope that makes a little more sense, so if you want a statement in place for when your dd starts at school nursery, I'd start about a year in advance.

I really should have stayed in bed today, either that or not put my ramblings on here If you want to apply for a statement, ipsea has a model letter you can use here and it's worth having a look round the site, plenty of useful info about the process and time scales.

i wasnt fully awake either late night and early morning with DS lol

Thanks everyone - she actually starts nursery on a part time basis next month, just before she turns one.

At that point we've been told that Portage will stop & we're currently negotiating (I think is the polite word ) with the council to get her a pre-school SENCO instead. I've already spoken to the nursery's own SENCO & talked them through her daily exercise (SALT, Physio & Portage), but is there anything else I should be doing?

Thanks

Ied apply asap because even though the statement may be done ull offten ave meetings to amend things if needed well that's the case for me , unfortanatly Saul was four when school realised he had issues and got a educational phycoligist into assess him that was the worse thing I did , she pointed out there was problems there and wanted him to go to a school with smaller classes , he's been treated awful at 2 schools and they couldn't cope even though u won't get a bad word about him for being naughty , it's taken four years to get him a statement and 3 schools on he's finally settled and I fought to find out he as global delay / dyspraxia and learning problems , he goes to a mainstream school but he's also in a mld class there which is fab he's with a mix of children with downs / dyspraxia diff abilitys but they all get on so if I was you ied apply for the statement asap as sometimes u ave to play hell for one and u may disagree with what it says like they give my little girl who as spina bifida 25 hours a week which I think is to much as she needs to be independent more and we had to fight for 10 hours a week with saul wish they did it the other way round, once Saul had the statement I could rest knowin he was ok when at school