Ok, another statement problem - proposed statement woefully inadequate, what to do now? (ASD)

[BialystockandBloom]

Right, so have had through the proposed statement for ds. As anticipated it is pathetically inadequate, and most likely cut-and-pasted from every other kid in the borough with ASD. The LA have evidently thought "ah, a 4yo with ASD. Ok, what do we provide for ASD children? Oh yes here's some TEACCH and a 'work station' and 3x per year SLT input. No idea if it'll be do anything for this child, but we won't worry about that. Ah, and we see he's not very severe. Ok, we'll just give 15 hours a week then."

Background: we've been doing ABA for 9 months, provided huge amount of evidence to show progress made, spent weeks testing skills, producing graphs, tutors and consultant writing reports etc. The LA obviously didn't bother to look at any of this - in fact, have not included our consultant's report within the appendices taken into consideration at all. (Told by Parent Partnership this is probably because they "do not fund ABA so won't consider the report". Is this anything I can challenge on re SENCoP?)

Part 2 is barely representative of ds. Part 3 just will not provide anything more than 15 hours per week of babysitting, someone to keep him from disrupting the rest of the class. SaLT input 3x per year. The expected unquantified stuff "will benefit from", "have access to" etc.

Our ideal scenario was 1:1 support from ABA-trained LSA within mainstream school. We could consider tribunal, but our consultant reckons we probably won't need more than 1-2 years more ABA (ds is pretty high functioning), so isn't worth us spending £1000s on this. So what do we do?

Do we go to meet with SEN team and put forward our case verbally? Do we just go through the statement with a red pen and inlcude what we want? If they refuse to change it satisfactorily, what can we do?

Further complicated by the fact that at this point the best looking school for ds is a private pre-prep, which isn't covered by a statement anyway. Butthis might only be till ds is 6/7 so have to think longer-term. If we go private now, will we still have a statement in 2 years time if we decide to go state?

Arrrgggh. Wtf do we do? All help v v v gratefully received! Sorry this is so long - as many of you will know, this is a real head-spinning time.

Agnes and Starlight your input would be especially valuable having done all this before, and Star, especially considering you got great provision without going to tribunal - damn shame all your past posts have gone!

we had exactly this scenario - coupled with the fact that dd1 was already in a TEACCH pe-school, which the LA was funding (was aprivate SN school), and they wanted ehr to stay there, despite proving no progress from there, and loads of progress form ABA.

our proposed statement was a similar cut and paste.

it is another round of well, you never know, maybe this will be the hurdle they give up at" type game form the LA.

we went right through the statement, redlining changes (I put a shout out for copies of other people's statements, and got a few to read through and see whre we were heading - I can email you the two different copies of ours if you like? the original proposed, and the amended version we sent back, to give you something concrete to read thorugh? Obviously it pertains to my dd, but our team were in agreement that what we sent back was a real kick-ass statement)

sadly the LA ignored our changes, and just sent back the original as a final statemtn, so we moved to tribunal. (although LA did settle before tribunal in the end!)

we worked on: making sure the list of needs was accurate; making sure the provision we wanted (in SALT and OT terms was specified and quantified), and above all else, making sure that the only school that would be able to say "yes, we can meet those needs" and mean it was the school we wanted dd1 to go to - this is key. you need to try to work in that the school you want is the suitable one (for whatever reason - preferably backed up with quotes form your reports), and the school the LA want/support the LA want is not suitable (as it does not meet the standards set out in the reports)

Identical situation to us really although DS 15 hours was fulltime as he was in nursery.
What we did was:

1. get an email copy and sent it back with all our changes in eg asking for ABA trained support etc just strikethrough all the crap and put your own wording (PM me for mine if you want)
2. Got back an amended statement with few changes eg they changed bits of part 2 but nothing that mattered
3. We did not flag up that the provision was unquantified
4. Get the statement finalised and appeal asap
5. It does not cost anything to appeal. If you want you can get an advocate to draft the grounds of appeal - we used Fiona Slomovic to do this (basically we drafted it and she added all the legal bits). We did a detailed parental statement to support the legal grounds she drafted which went to SEND (similar to the Parental Appendix A but updated). Use ACE guide to checking a statement and compare the statement to the reports etc and set out why it won't meet need. FOI everyone involved with your child and get all the papers eg SALT, outreach, LA etc you do get some useful emails from behind the scenes this way
6. For the months it took to get to tribunal we let them do what they wanted eg DS followed their provision at nursery and we did ABA at home. We got the nursery to set very SMART targets (previously they had been really woolly) eg within 3 months DS will be able to .... We let the targets come out of the outreach or SALT suggestions but insisted they were specific eg so if SALT said teach three prepositions the target became within 3 months DS will__. That meant when they missed the targets (which was inevitable as they didn't know what they were doing and got little input) we could say they had failed to make appropriate progress. Just stand back and let their provision run its course all the time collecting evidence on exactly what they are doing and what targets they are working to. Don't nag them to come in etc just let the usual provision happen.
7. Nursery scored him on EYFS every term - he continued to go backwards at nursery!
8. We had all our ABA data showing progress (on different targets at home)

We knew we would have to go to tribunal to get ABA. Our LA would not negotiate.
We got indep EP, ABA and nursery to go as witnesses.
We spent £2000 on advocate and expert fees including the tribunal day.

It was worth it for us as were asking for fulltime programme. We won because DS had made no progress with their provision and it had been in place for a year by tribunal, outreach had set no specific programmes, nursery had asked for extra help and training which was never provided, outreach made out the reason they had done nothing was because parents were so obstructive, unreasonable, obsessed with only using ABA etc - there was no evidence of this, but was evidence of us asking for more support for nursery. Outreach were so confident of winning on the basis of us being nasty parents they actually stopped going in to nursery at all for the 6 months pre tribunal which made them look pretty bad. The LA EP had not seen DS for a year by tribunal.

Keep being polite, go to meetings if you have to look reasonable but not more than necessary. I would not volunteer a meeting. The more meetings you have the more you give away about your case. "keep your powder dry' was advice we got from someone who sits on SEN Panels actually! Appeal and see what they put in their response if possible and then only meet them if they want to reach an agreement / you think you have to to look reasonable. They threw everything at us in their response eg all the negative stuff about ABA, criticisms of the nursery, personal attacks on us, useless bits of obscure research.

The Tribunal is only interested in whether the current provision meets need, if not whether ABA meets needs, and the costs of the two. The Tribunal can award something between what you ask for and what they offer. They also look at progress and behaviour problems. You can add docs after you have their response so you may not want to give them everything right now.

Even at tribunal the LA did not quantify their provision - the panel actually gave them a massive steer but they just didn't get it, they didn't grasp that failing to quantify provision meant the statement was unlawful.
Thats why I would not necessarily push the issue now as if they fail to quantify the statement then that will actually help you at tribunal.
If you have to appeal then the weaker the statement the better your chances of showing that its not good enough. The more cut and paste it is the better actually.

What we left too late was getting them to cost their provision - for the tribunal you have to do a comparison. You should FOI everyone to cost the provision eg the three SALT visits etc and do a comparison. Get started on this now. If they don't provide it (we got the its a nil cost argument) you can ask the tribunal judge to direct they disclose it as part of the directions.

If your provision is similar price (and may well be once you add on training etc for mainstream staff and professional visits) you should get your choice on parental preference. If yours is more you have to show their provision will not meet need (and yours will) - which is why leaving the statement fairly weak and unquantified helps you out.

You can ask for tribunal to be expedited eg if going into school and the tribunal can cut the time for all the steps by 50%.

If you have money for just one thing then get an indep EP report and do the legal bit yourself (use NAS, IPSEA etc) and take indep EP and ABA to tribunal.

It is worth doing even for a year or two esp if you are asking for year round provision and you may need supervision to be ongoing even if the ABA tutors fade out.

Issuing the appeal does not cost anything (other than time and stress) and just taking it to the next level is in some areas enough to get a concession.

If you get ABA at home it is education otherwise and I can't see why this can't be delivered in a private school if you pay for that part of it.

Our statement says part time education otherwise (home ABA) and part time placement in mainstream school (with ABA support specified). You don't have to name a particular school, just a type of school. We did not choose the school until we had won. So you could just say mainstream school and not mention which one at this stage.

If you don't intend to follow their provision then it will be much harder to show it will not be enough. It is probably better to let them implement their rubbish statement for 6 months so you can point to lack of progress. esp if child is HF, it will be harder to argue their provision cannot possibly work when you have not tried it.

Wow, thank you so, so much for your responses. This is so helpful I cannot tell you. If you both don't mind I would very much like to pm you for more info.

An awful lot to think about. Thank you both

as well as all the wonderful advice above would you consider getting the mediation service to help talk to them (LA and senco/teacher) and with PP if you want them too if you are not getting what you hoped for but feel it wont help going to trib ? there called global mediation freefone: 0800064448 emails : [email protected]

Hi Bialy, not ignoring you but a bit short of time atm.

Just want to put the record straight. We took the LA to tribunal for ABA and lost. The result was a statement that had everything the LA had to offer. Our case was so strong for ABA that the only way the LA could win it was by giving us provision that many others would die for and pretending that it cost less than our ABA programme (and wowing an inexperienced judge that knew nothing about education, by spelling out the details of the national curriculum.)

Sorry Starlight Total misremembering of events - I thought you won the provision without tribunal. Sorry.