S&LT battle - any S&LT advice

[appropriatelytrained]

OK. NHS S&LT therapist is suddenly appearing next week as Tribunal reports have to be filed soon.

She has never undertaken any assessments with DS but is wanting to measure progress. She has previously met DS once for half an hour to model a session for his useless TA.

He is supposed to get S&LT visits a year. 3 of them (including this one) have already been used up without any sign of progress.

I have two problems:

(i) I really resent this woman appearing just because she has a report to do when she has not worked with my son, trained his TA or offered guidance on how targets are to be measured/ work recorded etc. She will just be saying 'yup indirect therapy going fine'

(ii) bloody stupid TA is a lying cow who is just interested in making herself look good. One of DS's targets is to encourage communication with adults. We got our own S&LT involved who organised with her how she is to do this e.g. send DS on messages etc. She has done absolutely nothing. I know cos DS liked the message stuff when it started but tells me he hasn't done this for weeks

LA have recently had their application to add a senior S&LT to their witness list for Tribunal refused so this is getting very heated.

I really hate the thought of them putting DS through assessements just to fix them for Tribunal purposes when they couldn't bother to assess him before. It will only go one way because they have already decided what they are going to write. I wish I could tell them to f* off.

I want advice on what kind of questions I can ask about how progress should be recorded and monitored and how I can deal with the inevitably lying TA and the S&LT's failure to bother to train or advise or even appear to assess before.

Thanks Agnes. I think this should be the last meeting really and it is actually supposed to be part of DS's statementing provison so I can't really get out of it.

Our head is a witness for the LA and of course you have to tell her things to get anything done in school! It's a bleeding nightmare.

There is no way that DS would give evidence and I wouldn't put him through that. He doesn't know anything about the statementing process.

I could try and get him to draft something but he finds talking about school very stressful. That is why I end up communicating for him. Unfortunately, his TA is out to try and mess things up for us royally but I think the head will feel very uncomfortable being questioned on her level of skill/experience.

Stupid question here: do parents give evidence? If so, do you have to put yourself down as a witness? Can you file a statement/report yourself?

you can be asked questions
you are not one of the three witnesses
oddly you get asked very little (especially if like us you have said it in writing)
they spent far more time asking the witnesses questions
take some post it notes so you can point anything out to your advocate - its better coming from her
we had to answer a few questions but mostly we had said it all at length already
i felt a bit as though they felt parents were biased so really wanted to test out what DS could and could not do with witnesses eg LA were denying he had some problems and saying he could not do other things so the nursery were useful as they could answer those questions yes or no and were believed
But to an extent our provision had been so awful and the LA were accusing us of lying that I think the Tribunal were going out of their way to get independent evidence not from us so that the LA could not challenge the decision
We did file a statement - when we got their response (a lever arch file) there were these horrendous allegations about us so we did a rebuttal and referred to all the evidence which proved the LA had fabricated evidence
We did not talk about this on the day so I was glad I had said it all in writing
I was worried I would come across as angry on the day so tried to say little
Your advocate will give you advice about how / whether to respond
She spoke to our witnesses on the phone and tested out what they would say

Thanks Agnes. I will ask her about filing a statement when I speak tomorrow. I am the same - there is no way I could do this at Tribunal and not scream at these people. I would lose it.

I need someone to take these last few weeks off me and just direct this a bit so I will speak to our mutual friend tomorrow.

Thanks so much for your time and posts.

This gets weirder.

I speak to the TAs this morning. One has been told she isn't needed at the meeting although she is working on one of the three S&LT targets and she has not been asked to give feedback.

I spoke to the head about this and it appears neither TA has been asked to attend just the SENCO.

This is, on the face of it (if we suspend disbelief) supposed to be one of DS's normal statementing visits to monitor progress and assist with any training issues.

Why would you want to exclude the people working directly with him?

Email bounced, sorry! Can you send again? Thanks!

Hmm
If the meeting is purely designed to lay out the party line for those attending as witnesses perhaps? And as you say nothing to do with your DS but just an exercise in box ticking?

I have managed to secure attendance of one TA and have complained that the visit (which is supposed to be one of DS's statementing visits) has been arranged without main TA's attendance as she requires training and that is supposed to be part of the statement plan for these visits.

Things got worse when senco started lying about work that has been done on targets - see my post on school lying!- and this has strangely outraged DS who really wanted to work on that particular target and is adamant that no one has done anything.

I have said he tell people that tomorrow if he's able but he has written a few thoughts down too

Honestly, how stupid to lie about it. It beggars belief with a child's provision in question.

It's an attitude question though. Our advocate spoke to the head last week and she was full of crappy resentment about DS not being that bad and how she can't even get S&LT for children with severe impairments in her school.

She has absolutely no understanding of ASD but of course, the lack of S&LT for the other child (who I know and who hasn't had a visit all year) is nothing to do with her crappy senco but is down to my lazy DS hogging all those lovely visits!!

Sorry most of this makes no sense unless you have read my other post about school lying!

So, meeting today. S&LT's job is not to suggest training levels (as per statement) or assess progress in any scientific way or to even suggest measurable outcomes.

Just to have a chat with the senco not working with the child about how 'it's all going'.

Oh put she spent an hour doing some useless tests with DS.

I had to sit and argue the toss for two bloody hours about mindf*ingly ridiculous things such as whether the work on n targets should be properly recorded - like on a sheet. Whether it was acceptable to sign off on a target regarding teaching idioms when you've done no baseline assessment and so don't know if you've just been teaching him the same idioms he already knew for the last 3 months.

Oh and the lies. Incredible to the point of me saying; I don't believe that.

Of course, TA working with DS is not even there, so there's one statementing visit wasted.

Oh but they are all trying so hard and it's so difficult.

I had to try and say, yes, that's why I don't want your efforts wasted. Lots of SEN money is just frittered away by people doing useless things. I'm interested in outcomes not all the time spent talking about idioms

Head walked in in the middle of the meeting to see if she could 'help' as she could see it was getting fraught.

But seriously, a S&LT programme with no baseline assessments, no direction on recording targets, untrained staff, no way of measuring progress objectively and they all feel sorry for themselves.

Add to that DS' laptop only arrives on Friday (five months after his statement required daily laptop sessions).

And yet they all feel like victims

'So, meeting today. S&LT's job is not to suggest training levels (as per statement) or assess progress in any scientific way or to even suggest measurable outcomes'

I would 'normally' put this in writing to her for 'clarification' that you heard this right, but this close to the tribunal I would hold off as you can get your advocate to 'clarify' on the day.

btw, I wrote a post and deleted it a couple of days ago, trying to reassure you not to be nervous about impending SALT visit because it is likely that the ONLY outcome to go against you from it is that she has seen him recently, not that she got anything meaningful.

I held off due to the recent complaints on the SN board that it was anti-professional but I wish I hadn't now.

'whether the work on n targets should be properly recorded - like on a sheet'

Oh god. I had this very same argument in which the whole world attended and backed the crazy headteacher in her assertation that recording progress took time away from ds' 'provision' and as such should not be done because there just wasn't time.