Meetings - why do they all want meetings?

[cornwallia]

Pk, I'm involved in a SENDIST appeal and have made a complaint about the failure to implement DS's statement and the appalling behaviour of the completely partial S&LT service, and I've been asked to no less than three separate meetings.

I've been to one which took two and half hours for the LA to justify their utter crapness.

Why would I want to go to another so that S&LT can do the same?

I keep on getting the same old crap -

They say - let's do mediation.

I say - Fine but the only real issue is S&LT provision and your S&LT team keep telling me they won't budge on what they are offering and in fact has just filed another self-serving report confirming this, so what's the point?

They say - things can change in mediation, it's very fluid

I say- if you think he needs more provision, offer more and I'll consider it, if you don't, I don't need to spend another 2 and half hours of my life being 'persuaded' that you are right.

Meetings, bloody meetings, they can only benefit the system surely?

Now, it's well if you don't want a meeting, we can have a telephone hearing instead with SENDIST. What about just having a proper hearing and letting the Tribunal decide.

If you don't cooperate with mediation you are handing them ammunition. Go and have their meetings, make sure you make notes, chase the minutes and challenge them if necessary.

That way they can't say you are being unreasonable.

No you don't need to go to mediation - nothing bad will be inferred. It is widely held within the tribunal service that mediation is a pile of crap. We had a very unpleasant, lying and vindictive LA. There was no point. It didn't get mentioned once at our tribunal - which we won.

Thanks. It's an interesting difference of opinion you have there" I think the LA like to make you think everyone will believe you to be unreasonable but surely if there is nothing to be gained because they are telling you they are not going to change their minds, it is nothing more than an attempt to pressure you to change yours. I think if you have a sound reason then you are not unreasonable.

I think they also want (a) to delay the inevitable and make themselves look reasonable and (b) to rehearse your case before Tribunal.

I have said to the LA here for the last 5 months that I would go to mediation if they are able to properly negotiate on outstanding issues. I wrote and confirmed this. Their case statement said 'we have made many reasonable requests for mediation but Ms Cornwallia has refused them all'. They then append a letter in which I say the exact opposite e.g. 'I am very happy to go to mediation but you are still talking to your experts so this is best done when those discussions are concluded'.

Either they are being deliberately inflammatory or just bloody stupid but why would you want to spend hours pretending agreements can be made with people like this?

In out tribunal, the judge asked the autism advisory teacher why there was no plan for transition.

Her response was: 'well, on the first day of term, we'll have a multidisciplinary meeting'.

Er, - a meeting isn't a transition plan. It's a meeting. What's it gonna do for ds? Not a lot if any of the previous 'meetings' are anything to go by.

Write to them. Ask them what they think the benefit to your ds will be of 'another' mediation meeting. Say you are not refusing to go but just want to know what they think the point is, because you can't see it yet and you are concerned about the public purse funding waste of time meetings.

Yes, you are right, they are bogging me down in hours of meetings when they have no intention of increasing the provision they are offering my son.

I am writing today to say that the fact that they feel it appropriate to waste time sending in lengthy reports by therapists who have never met my child to justify how their crap model of working is the best for him, demonstrates an unwillingness to negotiate. So mediation in those circumstances would be pointless.

At no point have they ever suggested they are prepared to budge on S&LT provision, so they are clearly just trying to 'persuade' me of the error of my ways.

I'm not sure about its application to mediation, but LA staff have it drummed into them that they should communicate with their clients, in their clients preferred method of communication.

You could suggest that you are certainly very happy to engage in mediation but your preferred method of communication is the written word as this is what you feel more comfortable and able to articulate with. You can add (since there is no point in pretending) that one of the reasons you feel most comfortable with it is because it leaves an evidence trail of the negotiations.

Good point Star, it is perfectly acceptable to show willingness to negotiate in written form. Of course, they don't want to do this as they actually just want to waste my time and piss me about!

At least my LA didn't even try hard to get a meeting for mediation. It went a bit like this:

LA: Star, we'd absolutely LOVE it if you were to give us some dates to meet.

Star: LA, what a lovely and fantastic idea. How about x, y and z

LA: Star, thank you SO much for giving us a choice, but unfortuntely we are just SO busy saving the lives of little autism kids that we cannot make any of them. PLEASE, we would LOVE for you to give us so dates after those.

Star: LA, What an absolute crying shame that you can't make the dates, unforuntately you may be aware that the day after the last of those dates is the tribunal, so it would be a waste of your precious time attending a mediation meeting at that time.

LA: Oh yes, so it is, isn't that just sadness itself!

Thanks. Justa to be honest, I'm not sure what else I can sensibly do. You are not going to solve an issue between two S&LTs in mediation when all the LA do is constantly file evidence demonstrating their 'model' is the only way.

I have left the door open by saying: if you feel that face to face mediation would improve on the provision you have offered, it would be worthwhile. But if you are sticking to your guns about your measly provision, we will have to agree to disagree and this will end up in Tribunal.

The fact is that this is THEIR job - i.e. holding endless pointless meetings. It's not mine. I have a job doing other things. It costs me money to meet and emotional stress. If they want to meet, it needs to be something worth doing and not just a waste of my time.

We already turned up to one meeting earlier in the year to be told 'I don't know what you expect to achieve today but we haven't read the reports'.

Then I spend two and half hours with two LA people who still bang on about mediation. Why do we need to fix a date for that when we're all in the room already? This was only two weeks ago.

Then they file another report demonstrating that their position remains unchanged.

Then they write and say they won' comment on my amendments on the working statement until we have had a mediation on S&LT.

Why?

Because they are trying to see how little they can get away with.

I'm sick of being played for a fool and I am very happy to tell a Tribunal this is how I feel and that I was happy to meet and mediate if it was likely to achieve anything but that the ball was left in their court.

I want my bloody life back!

I think you just write and say you have attended three meetings of x hours and this has led to nothing new - the statement you have already remains unmet and you have no confidence that if they cannot meet the current provision that they are prepared to offer more / a compromise without being ordered to by the tribunal.

You can say that if they have something new to offer you, they should set that out in writing and you will happily consider it and will also be happy to attend a further meeting, if required, at that time. However, if they have nothing new to say then you do not consider it will be useful to meet again just to go over the same ground.

Your letter should actually be written in effect for the tribunal panel to read to show how reasonable you have been and you can add it to your evidence if the last date has not yet passed.

I also do not think mediation is necessary very often. As a lawyer I mediated about 3 cases in 10 years. All the hundreds of others I just got on the phone or had a round table meeting and thrashed out with my opponent through negotiation.

The SEN green paper idea that mediation be compulsory is missing the point which is that if compromise is possible it actually usually only takes a phone call not a whole expensive day involving a mediator who has to be paid for.

If they had more to offer they would have done so.

And thats the second time telephone hearings have popped up on here as an LA treating them like a mediation - telephone hearings are just procedural eg adjusting the timetable - the Judge will not look at the evidence or comment on it. Has some email gone out to LAs suggesting telephone hearings are to be used as some sort of threat?

So yes you have met three times, that is more than reasonable and it should not be held against you to decline any more meetings especially when they are not even meeting the current statement and therefore are in breach of the law.

"if compromise is possible it actually usually only takes a phone call not a whole expensive day involving a mediator who has to be paid for".

Absolutely my point Agnes! If they wanted to seek to settle this, they could have said we can offer an increase of x visits. But they didn't and stil don't. This is because they think:

(a) it's a war of attrition and they can grind parents down with constant meetings
(b) they'll still look good while doing this as they have offered mediation.

Well, I can offer to discuss invites to the royal wedding with them but it means jackshit if I don't have one.

Enough is enough; put your money on the table or get lost.

They were stupid to file an unnecessary third S&LT report. It critiques my parental statement and our therapist's report but it is by a therapist who has never even met my child and it seeks only to justify their position yet again. There was no requirement to file another report and it doesn't even provide an up to date assessment of DS's needs. Its sole purpose was to demonstrate to me how strong their case is.

Yet, at the same time, they offer to mediate? At the same time my child is without his statementing provision?

Seriously, I'm sick of being taken for a mug.

'Well, I can offer to discuss invites to the royal wedding with them but it means jackshit if I don't have one'

LOL

Sorry corn it isn't funny.

And I'm sorry too about another thing. You've changed. Your posts have changed. Not in a bad way, just a bit harder.

This crap turns people to stone. It did me.

I think we have a clone LA!
Ours wanted to bring a SALT witness who had never met my child (the most senior SALT!) that got turned down as the person never having seen my child - so how stupid were they they requested another SALT witness who had never worked with my child (but who I had seen once early on)
They are just trying to grind you down / drown you in paperwork
It shows they are desperate
And they just want to be able to say you refused to meet them, are obstructive, difficult etc etc
The Tribunal has seen it all before
Just go in with the dates you did meet them and the letters you sent to hand

Most of this goes away at the actual tribunal (unless you get a crap one like Star). It should all be about the child and their needs and not about all the hassle you had to get to tribunal. Most tribunals wont tolerate the LA going on about this crap. They will want to know why the LA is not meeting their obligations.

Oh yeah. I had a crap tribunal panel. It happens but generally common sense and justice is on your side.

Tribunals aren't that scary either, even when the panel is crap and the judge is a moron. I'd do it again. In fact, I would recommend every parent does it, because a)the government will start to pay attention and b)once you have been through it you're not afraid to re-offend.

It's the whole accountability thing again.

Star, you do get hard don't you? You have to when you realise that people aren't in it to help your child but to get away with whatever they can get away with. You stop being conciliatory when they spend more time drafting critiques of your case than they do on offering therapy to your child.

But I can't believe how they insult your intelligence. 13 weeks with no S&LT provision and yet they've filed a statement by this stupid S&LT advising how wonderful their consultative model is and how it suffices for DS at a time when they have not even commenced the provision in his statement. What consultative model? I mean seriously .... it's no more than an urban myth to me at the moment.

Of course, S&LT dept simply say 'I'm sorry you feel we have not acted as quickly as we could'. Er no, acted as quickly as the law demands. LGO are dealing with that one.

I've filed FOI Act requests about their level of expertise and the outcomes for children like DS with direct v indirect therapy. Fact is they never offer direct therapy for children like DS so how would they know what was best?

That's the thing Corn, I just don't think people realise that such a predicament as yours could possibly ever happen.

It does though. A lot. So it isn't about your intelligence, it is about the fact that there is no accountability and they have got away with it before, and the fact that whilst you are waiting for a tribunal they can feel justified in further puting provision on hold.

You get very hurt, and take it personally, but I promise you, there are people just as intelligent, with just as much resources and having put in just as much hard work, that are treated as shit as you are being now.

Not that should make you feel better really, but hopefully it can make you feel less isolated and less vindicated.

You are dead right Star. It's a game to them and they are one trick ponies. It's how they always act. It's not about me, it's how they would treat anyone.

They are never held to account. If you go to Tribunal, you can't judicially review the LA for their poor practices so they become above the law and unaccountable. Tribunals are not going to do anything to them either apart from maybe make them do more than they are doing in this particular case.As for the LGO, well, you're always the weakest party as it is easy to take the LA's views (who wants an LA challenging you) than the parents.

We are powerless and it needs to change!!!!

Sorry to but in and slightly off topic but just interested to know for those of you who have been to tribunakl, who did the lea ask to attend of their behalf?

'I am very happy to go to mediation but you are still talking to your experts so this is best done when those discussions are concluded'.

Don;t refer to their 'experts' as this is a tacit acknowledgement that they know better than yuo.

You can of course see any file on your child, you do know that don't you?

SALT ones are individual.
They won't let you take it away, but you can go through it and photocopy.
Ask what contacts are direct or 'face to face' (might not be obvious at first).

Their should also be a database record-ask for a copy.

Rather effective to show that although the NHS might claim they havee say, 17 contacts for your child, only perhaps 3 of those are ones where the SALT is with your child. 2/3 might by 'observation' only.

Catch my drift?

feynman ours brought the autism outreach teacher, the lead autism outreach teacher (two people from the same team!), their EP (initially they wanted to bring the lead EP for autism but they changed this last minute to the one who actually assessed my son). They also wanted to bring the senior SALT but were refused a 4th witness (we objected as had not seen my son and LA had refused us a 4th witness). The tribunal criticised them for bringing a salt with no direct experience of my son which prompted them to change the EP. The EP had supported our request for specialist provision which was why they did not want to bring him.

Their original plan was to bring the most senior person from each dept to say how great their service was and then the autism outreach teacher and sALT were supposed to say what awful parents we had been and so enthralled by the cult of ABA that we had obstructed their input and therefore the reason for my son's lack of progress was his parents fault and not their poor intervention / lack of visits.

Sadly blaming the parents is still alive and well in autism land.

Fenyman - our LA is brining S&LT who has not started working with our son yet and has not even met him! But she will have started by the time of the hearing.

The EP who has seen him once last year to assess him and does not work with him.

And our head teacher and I think she actually agrees that we need more S&LT and more hours.

We are taking our S&LT (an experienced Tribunal operator who did the SA assessment for us), our EP, and I'm not sure about the third.

We have instructed a S&LT to work with him but she hasn't started yet but she might be useful as she does not agree with their consultative model (but then we'd be calling two S&LTs).

Or I could put down DS's TA who has only just started working with DS and feels like she's been dumped in it without not support/direction (so much for training staff on the ground) but this would cause tension and she'd probably mysteriously have her mind changed by Tribunal.