Government proposes biggest reforms to special educational needs in 30 years

[CQrrrnee]

online consultation closes tomorrow - last chance to reply
here

Yes I know. It's that same ole bollocks about not needing to envoke your child's 'rights' as well as the expense to you and them of 'evoking them' if the damn school and LA would engage with you fully as a parent, respect and work with your ideas and you could trust them.

It's LA's defense mechanisms plus the defensive staff who are the biggest waste and misuse of public funds. In my case they are going to need to spend money and resources on explaining why they can't do something that doesn't cost anything. Crazy.

Parkinsons Laws again.

Not to forget the Autism Advisory Teacher say to me in front of ds' school staff'

'ds' autism isn't going to go away Mrs Star, you know!'

Bloody fucking cheek. Not if you have anything to do with it certainly, but ruin his chances of being able to live and cope and manage it why don't you?

I went to a meeting last week where LA bod gave talk to schools about funding statements etc and then said and by 2014 with personal budgets all this money may be in the hands of parents. A teacher turned to me and said how would you feel about that. So I told him via aba we sort of have a personal budget, do the hiring, arrange the provider etc and it's bloody brilliant. And I told him that I would have sacked the autism outreach teacher after the first half hour as the biggest waste of money ever spent. Somehow the cynic in me doubts personal budgets mean any more than a voucher to spend at x or y ( for which most likely my LA not knowing how to provide choice will get no further than x) but it was quite nice to sit in a room of teachers and sen professionals all thinking about how they will persuade parents their services are worth paying for. I know there are huge problems with personal budgets as if money not pooled may end up being no services. Barnardos locally say they used to be able to plan a year ahead but with DP now live from week to week as don't know who will buy services. But is slightly amusing to think of private autism consultants being able to compete with LA outreach. And it's not just parents, academies may vote with their feet too.

Some new dept for ed data on sen came out on 30 June. Might be useful for the group. Shows the LAs who issue lowest % statements.

Love the idea of doing foi especially for each others LA. We've run into vexatious thing for foi so be happy to pool and swap these so they don't know the family asking for the info.

Do you think as hard to get group together face to face we could set up website (dh can do a google sites one) for free plus I guess we could do a free yahoo group forum? We can limit access to just core group to start so not live but start to swap ideas and get some bare bones of a website together? Eg various people can add to website, add pages etc. That way have done some groundwork before any meeting and those who can't make it still involved? I would think we could do a lot without even meeting actually. Perhaps be good to get it off an open site too?

Timing not good for us as away in aug but much more avail in autumn.

it needs to be a closed group so that LA professionals who don't share our interests aren't nosying in...
There's stuff I wouldn't say openly online and I'm sure that's the same for other folk also

Official Statistics are very handy. You can find out exactly what your LEA fund, where, when and why.
Might be interesting to put in FoI requests for stuff you know the answer to already and see what they tell you.

I can give you a county by county breakdown for example of how many kids have their education funded other than in state sector special or mainstream schools.....

Using publically available information of course......

"I'm beginning to really resent how much of my parenting effort and time is spent on the "system" and not directly concentrating on my child, home and family life (late nights on everything from DLA forms, to prepping for & attending meetings and tribunal application etc). I doubt I'm the only Mum that feels this way".

Bochead you have perfectly summed up the way i feel. Know it's not an education issue here but recently my SW told me that when the boys are in school that is my respite.
Huh! Nothing to do with them getting a lawful education then? Nothing to do with it being the LAW that they have to go to school.
And where was I when she said this? Having botox, a manicure, lunch with friends...?
Er...no i was in a 4 hr meeting with my SW form filling and fighting and of course thoroughly enjoying me respite!!!!!

Agnes, I can assure you, things will still be shit in September

I'm afraid even though people have been flexible it's not looking re the date. I think your idea of an initial online session might be worth a go to see where people really are and book a date way ahead that is just set and people can just do their best with it.

Someone asked if we could thing about ways to hold schools to account too, so if that is what people want we can include it although I think we need to work at a strategic level mostly as resources are pretty scarce.

I found out today that my LA legal rep has been having regular meetings with the HT, which does explain why she has said some daft things in response to sensible questions - puppet!

Indeed!
Ok I will ask DH shall i to cobble together a website etc to get us started shall I? He's not an IT whizz or anything but has done one before.

Interesting re meetings with HT. We are awaiting response to a complaint about SALT passing info to SEN officer last year without consent. Reckon it breaches DS confidential info. They had stitched up some agreement to 'report back' after each visit / tel call with us. Be interesting to see what comes back. No doubt some bluff about interests of child etc etc

As far as i can see DS school records and health records are private and unless we have given consent to share info - or is part of statementing or annual review requirements, then its a breach of his confidential info

Google docs is great for online conferencing. You can make them password protected. I've used google docs for planning etc for both work and charity stuff in the past. All you need is a googlemail log in.

Several people can work simultaneously on a report or document and there's a chat column at the side. It's free and would be perfect for our needs. I loved using it for work as it cut to a minimum the time needed to produce and review reports & could be accessed anywhere, at any time by those that missed the online "meeting". If you can use word and this site you can use google docs to it's full potential so no scary techy stuff. Version control is fantastic too.

The only thing we'd have to be careful of is being "infiltrated" by any LA bods (as people have been stalked on here!) by peope posing as parents to gain trust and get the password.

Confidentiality only works one way my dear - you have your whole life violated with intrusive questions (my fave to date is am I planning to have more kids when they know I've been single since 7 months pg) yet they can be VERY reticent to hand over the simplest meeting minutes or reports. It's not in the child's best interests for the PARENTS to know anything if you judge by their hypocritical actions.

agnes- are professionals not allowed to share info then? Didn't know that - I know for a fact that info has been shared about my ds.

so LA folk have stalked people on here to get info! That's terrible (and why I keep namechanging)

Agnes that is a very good point. I think this is why they like parents to sign the CAF giving them the right to access health/education records and share them.

I didn't agree to do this and can't remember signing anything allowing people to share information about DS yet I have a letter from the head of S&LT telling me that a S&LT who has never met my son rang school and had a discussion about his programme. She delighted in writing this to tell me that the school thought everyone super and wonderfully competent but I can't see they have the right to share info like this without my permission

I don't think many LA bode could be bothered to infiltrate tbh. Most have their heads so far stuck up their arses. The biggest risk is parents who have bought into the system who buddy-up with the professionals. That's their coping strategy and fair enough, but the are the risk in this kind of project.

yes google sites and docs thats what I was thinking

AT I shall be interested in seeing what response we get - not hopeful and actually not that bothered - really just wanted to rock the boat and hopefully make them think twice next time. Sure they will say they had implied consent from the statementing process but as far as I can see we only gave consent for SALT to be approached for one report for SA, not to an ongoing dialogue behind closed doors none of which was ever shared with parents and which we only found out about through FOI. SALT have never managed to attend even one review meeting or team meeting in 2 years, yet seem to manage private phonecalls on a regular basis. We agreed the SALT report anyway (it wasn't helpful to LA) so of course what happened was a behind the scenes leaning on SALT to shift into line and change their views.

We never had a CAF or anything like that so pretty sure we never signed anything giving consent to disclose his NHS records.

Pretty sure its against SALT code of conduct too.

Agnes, do let us know what you find out! Phonecalls behind the scenes are pretty much par for the course and many services, including mine, do not allow therapists to attend all reviews and prioritise e.g. transition etc so phonecalls are an attempt to know what's going on and ensure that the SALT angle is covered. I have never much had with SEN Officers so when I speak to them "behind closed doors" it's usually because they want to clarify a report etc eg. do you really mean intensive, what do you mean by significant and severe language difficulties ? etc. I know where a parent is on the road to tribunal or the conversation has been heated I will have reported back... but I'm pretty sure I won't always have sought explicit consent and I can assure you that in no way was I ever intending to allow for any prejudice against my clients etc. If it is deemed a breach of data protection this is something I can report to my own team so that no one makes this mistake so it would be valuable learning!

I asked about holding schools accountable because of a conversation I had with the LGO officer. He said that if the LA was seen to have tried very hard to comply with the statement but can't get the school to agree, then their ruling would be that it is mainly the school that is at fault. The LA is caught between a rock and a hard place...

The LGO officer then went on to say there is nothing they can do about difficult schools nor about the quality of the provision etc and suggested the governors (and we know how unbiased most of them are).

A lot of us on this board has had problems with schools, as well as with LA but nothing seems to hold the schools accountable. Parent Partnership suggested maybe OFSTED but admitted that there is a loophole unless parents are willing to use the Disability Discrimination Act.

Also, if schools are not really accountable, it would be easy for the LA to liaise with schools and exploit this loophole.

I thought that schools had to comply once it was finalised what's the point of a statement then if they can just do what they want anyway?
Academies will just be able to do what they want to regardless then I suppose.

If you believe that schools adhere to a statement then you need to wake up fast.
Most of the staff working with your kid probably haven't even read the damned thing.It will sit in a filing cabinet somehere but even if they did, it is genreeally so vague as to mean notihng.

That's the tragedy-fighting so hard for something that ends up meaning very little anyway.

working9while5

As I say I suspect its a grey area.

Without giving too much away the way it was recorded sounded very much like collecting evidence against us for tribunal rather than obtaining evidence about DS language level.

I also think having meetings with professionals to prepare the LA for tribunal is unfair - its not like I can call the SALT, EP and outreach to a meeting and grill them for 2 hours about their evidence in advance of tribunal which is clearly what the LA did at every stage.

But the chances of the SALT dept saying that they crossed a line is unlikely.

I think there is a vast difference between collecting evidence for positive reasons and telling parents what you are doing and acting to the detriment of the child (arguing for significantly less provision than you originally recommended) to stitch up a case. We think the SALT was being pressured to say she also found us difficult and obstructive when in fact we had always got on well and agreed her report

I doubt we will ever find out the truth. I would just like to think next time they will get consent and think twice before becoming an arm of the LA and losing their independence and integrity.

I just wanted to share that I get my child's statement out for each annual review and I annotate it electronically in red to show what is being provided and what had not been provided and therefore where the LA are in breech.

I submit this annotated document along with other documentation for his annual review! Doesn't go down very well with some but there's no hiding from what the statement says.