Can anyone tell me anything about 'inclusion' ?

[josben]

I have just agreed for DD (4) to be part of the inclusion support at her school - she is in reception. Her teacher has been concerned that she needs extra support for some time, we are also waiting for an appointment with the paed/development team at the hospital...

DD struggles with following instructions, has difficulties with fine motor skills, and social skills...

Inclusion seems to be a slightly more general term than Special Educational Needs as it includes children that might not get access to the curriculum for reasons other than SEN, like travellers' children, who might miss some school, or children who have chaotic home backgrounds. But in most cases it seems to be the same as SEN in that the Inclusion coordinator is the same person that was called the SENCo.

It sounds like the school are concerned that your DD needs more support than average and are making sure that they are doing their best for her. Is she on school action or school action plus? Are they putting an individual Education Plan (IEP) in place for her. It should be SMART with specific measurable achievable relevant time based targets, which you should be invited to agree and review termly. If school action or SA + doesn't produce satisfactory progress the you should look at requesting Statutory Assessment for a Statement. Google the SEN code of practice for the current law on this.

Good luck with the paed assessment. If you get any DX see it as a stepping stone to getting support, rather than a label, if you can.

Good luck, keep posting for advice.

Thanks ellen, yes she having an IEP put in place, I'm not sure when we will be having a meeting about that...

May be a silly question but do you think that the face that DD is having an IEP will mean she is likely to have a dx?

Not really, the IEP just acknowledges that she needs more supportfrom school at the moment.

Hello josben,

Having an IEP doesn't mean she is more likely to get a dx, in fact it has little if anything to do with the dx process. Your dd will most likely go through an assessment process either with the paeds, an dedicated assessment centre or perhaps another professional if the paed feels its appropriate to refer her on - the actual dx process varies from area to area. She will only get a dx of anything once she has been properly assessed, if she meets the dx criteria. She won't get a dx unless they are absolutely sure.

The difficulties you describe she's having could be due to any number of reasons, or could just be down to her needing a bit more support than her peers for a while.

Its great that the school have identified the issues at such a young age and means that ,if she does have a diagnosable problem, she will be able to get all the help and support she needs to help her progress and overcome her difficulties a lot sooner than many children do - which is great in terms of positive outcomes.

IEPs are just a way of targetting specific areas of additional needs and what support the school is going to put in place to help the child meet them.

My ds2 had IEPs and 12 months of additional support following a serious illness that caused him to regress and lose skills when he was in reception year. He doesn't have or need a dx of anything, he's nt (neurotypical), he ust needed some additional help to bring his skills back up to an appropriate level. His support ended almost twelve months ago now and he's gone from the bottom of his class to the top groups this year with no additional support.

As Ellen said, hope the paed appointment comes through quickly for you. Keep reading and posting, there are some amazing people on here who can offer such a lot in terms of advice and support.

thanks, yes thats the main thing that she gets the help that she needs...

Her school have been very on the ball, they advised me to refer her to the paed rather than 'wait and see'. i've had concerns about certain things she finds difficult/challenging for a long while - she has 2 older brothers and so i have always compared her with them, although i know all DC's are different, but i'm glad that we're requesting help for her - i just hope that it doesn't take too long...?

thanks for your advise moosemama, i go through phases where i think there is defintely something wrong and then other times when i think she may just be developmentally delayed..?

Yes, I am glad that the wheels have been put in motion - i have read that early intervention is invaluable in these situations.

Justabout - as it looks likely that DD is Developmentally delayed, do you think that this could point towards her being ASD?

josben, unfortunately we can't dx over the net and it would be wrong of us to try. There could be any number of reasons for your dd's delay, it really wouldn't be right for us to speculate.

If your or the teacher's gut feeling is that it might be ASD, have you had a look at the National Autistic Society (NAS) website, which might help you get a clearer picture of the type of issues you would be likely to see if she does have ASD?

Lots of other things can have similar issues though, such as dyspraxia and non-verbal learning disability (NVD/NVLD) and some of these conditions can be co-morbid as there is a lot of cross-over and blurred edges between them.

Essentially, what matters most, is not exactly what the dx ends up being, but that her specific needs are correctly identified and supported, but I do understand the feeling of needing to know and wanting to be able to say 'my dc has difficulties because of x'. We went through the whole of infants not knowing why ds1 was 'different' and I would have loved someone to have just told us what was wrong, so we could have got him some help and support and moved on. He was eventually diagnosed with AS this January at the age of eight and a half. Prior to that we had almost two years of people agreeing there was something wrong, but having no definite dx to guide us.

There's no doubt about it, its a tough thing for any parent to go through, but it will be worth it when you get some answers and your daughter is being well supported.

Good luck x

josben

I have an account at CiteULike which is an online mainly academic research paper sharing facility. An academic from Aberdeen has started an "Inclusion" research paper sharing group You may find some of the research papers informativerand useful.

Josben, another definition for inclusion is that children with SEN or other difficulties are actively included in the school, bring taught where possible in MS lessons which have been adapted and differentiated to include them. Lots of adaptions such as the use of total communication, using symbols and/or signing along with speech will not harm MS children and in fact can be very beneficial for younger ones whose communication is still immature.

Some schools still talk about integration, when children with SEN were expected to be the ones to make the changes to conform to the NT expectations of the school. Lots of schools talk about inclusion and being inclusive when they really haven't got past integration. Inclusion coordinators is a newish buzzword in education, but it generally comes down to the same thing under a different name.

That's not what you were asking, probably, but I wanted to answer your original question more completely.

You and your school seem to be doing the right things. I'd always recommend going down the medical route for DX in parallel with chasing up the educational assessments to get support in place at school. If you wait too long for one it just delays the other. You are getting a paed assessment, that's great. Find out what level of SEN the school has her at, if school action find out about her IEP and maybe push for her to go to School action plus as it would be useful to get the Educational psychologist involved.

hi, thanks for your posts, I do think that DD is stuggling with learning, but I have been thinking and observing this weekend and the other big thing she struggles with is social interation with other children, and people.

She naturally gravitates towards adults and her teacher has commented on this - but she does struggle to make friends with the other children in her class.

She can sometimes be a bit aggressive particularly with taking turns in play. I have had a quite few school mates home for tea, in a bid to help this situation, but she never gets asked back for tea, and rarely gets party invites unless they were her friends before she started school.

Do you think the 'inclusion'programme could help with these difficulties...?
TIA