anyone experienced a emergancy statement review

[pinkstarlight]

i have major problems with my sons school since december most of it lack of communication between staff and a stressed snappy TA as a result im left with a emotional stressed child thats becoming school phobic and cries alot at school.

i have tried my best to sort it all out i have had numberous dealings with the school meetings,emails,phonecalls etc my gp says my son is suffering from stress and need to sort it with the school the school are blaming my son saying hes looking for excuses because he doesnt like school and twist everyone of my complaints round and are backing this TA to the hilt.

the kind of things that are going wrong are my child sometimes misses lunch because he cant find his money(hes dyspraxic and sometimes cant see whats in front of him)he only has 2 lessons that he is really good at and they remove him from all or part of these lessons to do other work,i sent him school with a sprained foot i emailed his tutor wrote it in his contact book,let the office know and rang and spoke to the head of special needs yet he was still made to run crying his eyes out on a sprained foot and his stupid TA allowed this to happen,his TA snaps at him hes overheard her call him useless and makes comments like why cant you be like other kids and other similar comments, he has to do half hour daily speech and language with his TA my son says she shouts at him and its clear these sessions end in tears as its well documented in his contact book that he has cried through the whole of these sessions but still managed to complete the work.

i could go on and on but recently everytime i complain i have been threated with a emergancy review and the school will say they cant cope and my child will be made to go to the local special school(not a good school)but there are no other suitable schools in my city and ive been made to feel threatned and backed into a corner.

i have finally snapped shocked the school and called a emergancy review myself, what is the most likely outcome and has anyone got any good advice my son at the moment is statemented 32 1/2 hours pw and a has a fulltime TA.

You poor things :(

I don't have any experience of emergency review but as you are allowed to put your views in writing, I'm sure the LEA will be very interested to hear that the school are putting your son at physical risk and bullying him! If your son is managing to complete the work despite this you can prove this isn't an academic problem.

Photocopy the contact book, write down everything that's happened so far with dates if you can and keep a log from now on. Also look at IPSEA if you haven't already.

My DS's school tried to move him because they claimed they couldn't cope but I stood my ground and now they claim his amazing progress is all down them! Call their bluff.

You have a legal right to mainstream:

A child should be educated in mainstream school unless that is incompatible with the wishes of the parent or the provision of education to other children.

The LA can only make your child go to special school against your wishes if they can show there are no steps they can take to prevent it being incompatible with educating other children.

Having a crap TA does not make it incompatible as they could replace her with someone else, retrain her, or provide supervision from a specialist outreach teacher.

You can argue at the review that your child's needs can be met at mainstream and you want to exercise your legal right to mainstream but the school are failing to do what is needed and the LA must ensure that this situation is resolved.

Look at SEN code of practice 8.58-8.69 and Education Act 1996 section 316 and schedule 27(3).
I would take the relevant bits with you.
The school cannot ditch your child - the LA are unlikely to want to pay for special school either and should be supporting you in saying the school can do better.

The key is probably to get some external support eg via EP, outreach and more regular monitoring etc agreed and on the statement so the school have to do better.

Are there other mainstream schools???

Have you thought of approaching the governor responsible for SEN and letting them know the tactics being used by the school?

I've done this for dd3. Make sure you've done your research and know what you want, find relative parts of sen cop to quote, and put everything in writing as far as you can before hand to give to everyone. Invite everyone involved, definitely case worker from the LEA, ed psych, outreach worker, inclusion officer, head, senco, ot, parent partnership and someone else to support you and take notes and anyone else you can think of.

Ask for everything you want, change of ta etc, don't think oh I won't get that, just ask. They can't force ss as agnes said unless they can prove it's detrimental to all the other children and him to keep him there which sounds very unlikely, it's not just about them meeting his needs. They will need to prove they've done everything within their power to meet his needs before they can say they can't and from what you've said, this isn't the case.

If you want, consider making a formal complaint to the head, following up with the govenors if you are not happy with the response. There is also ofsted to complain to as well.

after the meeting write up your own minutes and what your understanding was of what was said and what will be happening and send this to all involved. Go over the minutes they send you with a fine tooth comb and dispute anything you're not happy with.

don't feel threatened or intimidated in the meeting, and don't agree to anything on the spot that you might want to go away and consider, it's fine to ask for thinking time.

We had an emergency meeting for ds. The school called it as they wanted extra funding and we backed it as we wanted to change placement. As it later turned out, school really objected to us removing him and put in a lot of effort into making things better in order to stop us.

I agree with the above recommendations re SEN COP. Do you have evidence that you can bring to show what has not been done and what you want changed? How about looking at the DDA?

Are there any schools nearby who will be more willing to work with you in the interest of your child? Maybe you could visit them as it is sometimes easier than trying to get people to change.

Good luck.

Take someone with you. It helps to have someone to talk it over with afterwards. I have been to meetings with a friend and I took notes and typed them up for her.

thanks everyone for your replies suddenly the school are trying to put off a emergancy review suggesting a meeting instead, i have been in touch with my sons case worker from the LA and they are in agreement that the school have not done everything in their power to support my son they suggest going ahead with the meeting but also to put all my complaints in writting.

hes had another upset apparently he had a short detension because he hadnt comleted enough work but he said that was because he had struggled to work alone because his TA was sat at another table helping other children all afternoon and had not once checked on him.The school say they try to encourage independence and my son had chosen to stay behind after school to talk to his teacher yet again implying my sons lying yet he xame home intears and had a restless nights sleep including sleepwalking.