Got the tribunal directions today.....

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Back to the sick feeling when staring at as yet unopened letters.

It has been opened. It was due on 21st July but tribunal admin is a joke. It isn't a scary letter (I was represented last time so didn't get this stuff) but my adrenaline was sky high when opening it all the same.

Star, I nearly posted yesterday about moving or making a home ed plan B, but you're very coherent about why to carry on fighting. At the same time though, remember that school is only 30 hours a week and his long term prognosis is much more influenced by the other 138 hours. Those are largely dependent on your sanity, your optimism and the happiness you need to maintain in his home.

Look after yourself, dont let the LA drag you down, because thats their main weapon against the potential tribunal successes. Which is why I'm not personally off to tribunal right now... though I'm keeping records ready for when / if my mental state is robust enough.

There is one Trojan horse, but you'd need to nobble some governors or get the behaviour support team in. The BESD or SEAL SEN category uses behaviouralist interventions, albeit poorly targeted, usually not well planned and rather old-fashioned. It's ok because it's 'treating bad behaviour' or 'lack of home support' rather than competing with 'teaching'. DS got a bit when he only had the ADHD label, and it did help. They haven't applied it to his asd issues yet, but I'm working on that.

Star, again a challenging question but from a position of genuine support:

a)Where do you see your DS in 3 years' time if he has ABA now? What ability would he have i)socially ii)academically
b)Worst case scenario, your DS 'wins' TA support, 1:1, in mainstream school, for 20 hours per week. Again, where do you see him in 3 years time in that scenario?

What I am asking is the perennial question. OK, so ABA is the ideal model for your DS. But what would happen if he just got the standard LA provision in your area? Would he suffer so tremendously? I don't know, all I know is that you really do need to think carefully, if the 'win' of ABA will outweigh the 'lose' of a very stressed Mummy who is ploughing all her energies into something which is likely to be started all over again next year

Lougle,

I think what I am trying to do is get ds some decent EARLY INTERVENTION. It is overdue, and he is getting old for it but I feel I am trying to claw it back.

Once he has HAD his quality early intervention I would be happy for the LA provision with tweaking. I am not silly enough to believe that what this looks like and what it means will always be suitable, or that the quality will be consistently adequate, but the gap to bridge will be less.

The whole POINT of ds' ABA programme is to give him the skills to prepare him for independent learning and to be able to engage and access his education from a mainstream environment. If it doesn't do that, then it is totally the wrong argument. What I want, is the fastest path to the minimum support.

Maria, thank you. That is very helpful to research and present to a school who insist they are 'not an ABA school'.

Have a look at these: Guidance, see pages 9-11

From the course titles, it looks like Herts are doing an aba-lite training for families whose children have challenging behaviours quite soon.... herts extended schools cbf

Thank you again.

I never understand why behaviourist interventions are considered the most effective way of changing behaviour that will affect the authority/teacher/parent, but never as an effective way of changing behaviour that will affect the child.

i.e. used to reduce disruption in the classroom, but not used to promote actual learning.

Maybe you need to facilitate some inappropriate behaviour that the school will know how to use aba-type methods to extinguish

Ah, well he's not going to school. I've defered until Jan. Tribunal in early Jan.

Spoken to a number of legal people now (using their free 15mins) and they're all a bit surprised at our case. In fact they're all surprised it's even going to tribunal and think it's an easy peasy win.

I disagree. I know my authority will change their offer, move the goal posts, pretend that I deregistered from school, remove his dx if they have to and they'll be collecting and inventing evidence on my insanity. Whatever it takes.

You sound so much like me at the moment. Do you have friends in RL who clearly think you're a bit paranoid? I do. They can't believe the system is that fucked up. But we know it is...unfortunately.

Re: pre-namechangename. I needed more sleep and demanded it. More than one pair of shoes and I had a spectacular bust-up (hence me leaving for a while).

Oh blimey! It's bloody good to see you again!

I most certainly did miss you!

I don't talk about my situation much in real life. I'm embarassed to hear the words coming out of my mouth. It sounds like fiction or some rantings of a sore loser consipracy theorist. Fortunately I really am sane enough to know how insane it sounds even to friends that I'm sure respect me on other levels.

Oh Star, you do have my sympathy about feeling like a conspiracy theorist! It is so hard to have to explain to anyone how they're all at it - LA, school, S&LT and even the LGO.

It's a good job my friends know me as a sane, level headed individual so their response is one of shared outrage rather than disbelief. But I wouldn't even try to explain it to anyone I don't know extremely well. To those outside the circle of trust who ask why I have suddenly taken my boys out of school, I politely say we are moving out of the area to somewhere with a bigger garden!

But then I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't happening to me!

I am glad you got pointed in the right direction with a bit of advice. It is so horrible to be in this situation though, always waiting for the next deceitful kicking.

"I wouldn't believe it if it wasn't happening to me!"

I know.

Tis crappity-crap. Hate it all!

Star, glad to know that someone did!

I never understand why behaviourist interventions are considered the most effective way of changing behaviour that will affect the authority/teacher/parent, but never as an effective way of changing behaviour that will affect the child.

Our school's Ed Psych recommended Precision Learning but did not think much about aba! However, this recommendation only came about after I lodged appeal documents when she knew she would be called as a witness. For the 4 years before this, there was not a single recommendation to help my ds learn.

Also be careful about getting BSS's involvement. What Maria said about the techniques they use is true. However, in our case, it was not all positive and school used them as 'experts' who backed the school's position when school wanted to take statemented provision away cos ds no longer needed them.

In RL, I stopped talking about my situation with others except close family members.

First sentence was a quote from Star's post.

I think that is why I want to get this group up and running. Because at the moment I have little voice. What is happening sounds insane. But if we can expose some of the things, with available information and evidence, which looks surprisingly easy to do, then we can be heard and believed.

Trying, you're right.

I have a situation where I can either say 'don't say you don't believe in this stuff - you use it' to which the tribunal will say 'well what's the fuss then?'

Or the LA/school saying 'what you want is barbaric and we cannot allow it in our land' followed by scathing reports and evidence of abuse that happened in the 1800s wrt something vaguely related.