Lies and Tribunal

[Claw3]

The decision notice of Tribunal, is filled with comments from SENCO that are not true. I have evidence that the comments she made are not true.

For example decision notice states "SENCO told us that school are not aware of any self injury" which she did. But i have a letter she sent to the LA, when they requested a list of ds's difficulties and she listed the self injury and told LA they were managing it. I also sent her a letter and photographs of the various injuries ds had caused himself in school, all prior to Tribunal.

Also things like telling the Tribunal that ds was receiving help, that he isnt, saying he met IEP targets when he hasnt etc, etc. All of which i have evidence proving the opposite.

I have written to SENCO asking her to clarify. Have i done the right thing?

Sorry guys, so much going on in my head im waffling trying to straighten it and not listening!

I have written very simply letter saying thank you for the letter and OT referral, but no thanks. I will request school file etc too. I am listening, just a bit delayed while my head is swimming, time for a bath

So many people have said that to me - basically bide your time and watch as they system fails your child. But look at the life you lead while you are 'biding'.

No offence Agnes but schools are very different to nurseries. The LA employs the staff, Governors are useless and unless school need help with your child, they are very unlikely to ask for help for him. They will simply lie about how he is being failed. They will say LA provision is wonderful and the child is making adequate progress and they will lie, as they have done with Claw and me and many others, because we don't have children who make a fuss or get excluded etc etc. They are simply ignored and failed.

So you fight, and fight, and fight and piss everyone off and get made ot look like a loon even when you catch them out lying - in writing. What does that matter when they continue to lie about whatever you present them with?

My son has 3 years left if primary school and I am not going to ruin my family's life for a further 3 years in the hope that he fails so catastrophically or hurts himself, runds away or becomes a persistent school refuser and then gets offered a whole extra load of crap provision.

These people have got nothing to offer. There is no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There may be some good independent schools out there if you have 10k to fight sending your child to one but nothing is guaranteed.

So what choice is there Star? Choose life. Move, HE for a bit, spend your money on services and not fighting for crap provision. Try different things, be flexible, find a school with small class sizes.

This is not the only way and life is what happens when we're making other plans - or watching out children be failed

'Choose life. Move, HE for a bit, spend your money on services and not fighting for crap provision. Try different things, be flexible, findly a school with small class sizes.'

Appropriately These are still fights too. But I agree that you need to have imagination when choosing your fights and weigh up the cost-benefit.

DS is not in school currently. I have approached independent school. Not interested in what I want. They either think they can meet his needs regardless or don't want to even try. Similarly with state schools. I have come across NO school that want to work in true tpartnership with parents wrt the child's special needs, because the model of partnership we have in this country is that the teachers are experts and the parents are to be pitied for not accepting that their child will never amount to much.

Even when something like ABA is won at tribunal, there isn't partnership witht the school EVEN when the tutors are working in both school and home, because the school will not ever agree that they were unable to meet the child's needs themselves (perpetuated by the LA) and as such there is no involvement of the class teacher in the targets, no interest in the programme or openess to learn or at least consider the benefits and hostility towards tutors, and an attempt to get rid of them asap.

Tribunal panel members are a part of this culture and model, BUT not exclusively. It might be just luck whether you win or lose but the chance is there.

Appropriately, it does feel like i should be holding them accountable, as and when it happens, rather than saving it all up for a 'big fight' at the end. Its confusing and complicated enough now even for me and i know ds well. Trying to convince a room full of strangers in a years time is going to be even harder. It goes against every bone in my body to just sit back, be lied to, when i have proof and respond with a polite thank you.

I dont know what to do, i dont know what to think. I cant play this game anymore, but i dont what the alternative is.

dont know

It also feels that there is nothing to stop them from telling lies, claiming false success, saying he has something in place when he doesnt, even with a statement in place.

I think the only way that you can ever get a decent provision (in a school that is failing your child) is to prove they are failing your child.

and unfortunately, that does mean leaving your child to fail at school, while you first of all find something that does work, and then set about proving it works.

that something else might be private provision (OT, SALT, even tutors if the need is there) or it might be home edding (by which I mean working separately on the targets your child has, to show that they can be achieved at home, while not being achieved at school).

and then you wait, while your child does nothing at school - going along with it all, while documenting that targets are not reached at school, but met on X date at home (with proof), that attainment is stalled at school, but forging ahead at home - and that is hat you take to Tribunal.

not evidence that the school lied, or covered up, or overlooked needs. you need to prove that:

your child is able to learn
the school is not teaching them effectively
progression can be achieved by doing XYZ (preferably this will be on the same targets as have not worked at school)

the Tribunal is not interested in what has happened beforehand - they are not there to see that the school lied, or that the LA are failing children. they are there to ascertain what is the most efficient way to educate your child, and so they need to know how to go about doing that.

if you turn it into a "he said, she said" war, then the LA will almost certainly win.

if you (and it is unbelievable that it has to come to this) let your child fail, and prove that that failure is not the only way, then you have a better chance.

When your child is not meeting targets and the school say your child is not meeting targets, its easy. What happens when the school are saying your child is meeting targets, when they not. It then turns into a war, someone has to be right.

NSF is right. Claw, it doesn't matter whether your child has met their targets or not. Ds always meets his targets because they set them so low. What I need to prove is that their targets are irrelevant to you ds' progress. No point in setting a target of lining up if a) he never had a problem doing it and B) there are more pressing matters which you are succeeding at teaching him at home.

I have a tribunal next week claw. I have got evidence by virtue of the fact that I used to email the SENco that part of the statement hadn't been acted on.

This evidence is going to be used to prove that certain changes to the statement need changing so that it is more likely the provision will happen.

I gave the school a term to act on the statement and carry out the provision.

The provision they acted on was the provision that benefited them ie academic part of the statement - statistics.

The provision they didn't act on as specified in the statement was the social and the speech programme.

The SENco emails state he has no written records for the SALT programme. The SALT programme to the school is dated a month after the school said they started doing it. TA emails state that the programme hasn't always taken place.

In a meeting with plenty of witnesses the SENco admitted that the school had been concentrating on the academics and had spent all the LA's provison for the statement on that.

The LA have had my daughters new dx for almost two months and said last Friday whoops sorry will amend the statement.

Meanwhile of course my daughter is getting more and more anxious in school once again which may result in her being too anxious to attend school at all.

Your son's current ongoing anxieties are evidence of his need for more support in school.

Being on good terms with this school is not going to get his needs met by the sound of it.

Just printing off my letters requesting info, ive done one to school.

Now for LA and PCT

SALT, EP, ASD advisory, i think that is it, who comes under where?

I don't know what you can do really other than try and set better targets

I am not implying do nothing, but in effect set them up to fail. Give them enough rope to hang themselves.

So give them some scope to set targets etc but then 'improve' their target so you say within 3 months DS will...and its really clear after 3 months if he did or not.You have to be clever about the targets you choose. Yes the school can lie, but you can get evidence from independent people or video him yourself to prove eg that he did not learn x, y or z.

All I am saying is that sometimes you achieve more by seeming to work with them because then you can influence the targets, the monitoring etc if you have a dialogue. Whereas if you are battling them on everything they will not listen to you on IEPs, targets etc, they will ignore you and carry on setting rubbish non measureable targets which mean you can't prove anything.

NS is completely right about how tribunals look at it. Its all about the child and what meets their needs on that day. You have to show lack of appropriate progress with their model (which means you have to let them get it wrong) and success with another model.

If you are constantly telling them how to do things better (and I totally understand why you are, I hated DS being failed at nursery but agree it was only three half days a week so bearable) then you are setting yourself a higher bar to jump.

It does depend what your end game is. If your end game is an indep school then your best (only) chance of getting that is for the school to fail your child quite dramatically. If you want your child in mainstream and the current school to up their game then it is worth doing everything you can to improve what they are doing so yes fight on.

But if you get to the point where they refuse to deal with you and they close ranks I don't see how that will achieve anything, unless you have got a fab EP, outreach team, CAMHS etc who will come in regularly and back you up or can afford private assessment regularly.

The only other thing I can think of is you go back to the SEN officer and ask for someone to be appointed to monitor your DS / school because you have concerns that school are not being honest in their assessments of progress. eg someone to go in from time to time and see the programmes are being delivered and monitored and outcomes achieved. Obviously mostly I don't trust LAs as far as I could throw them but if the LA want to avoid the cost of repeated requests for SA / tribunals in might be in their interests to do so. You could be open and say that there have been a breakdown in trust and you feel some external monitoring is needed. SEN depts have monitoring and quality officers (allegedly). Sorry can't think of anything else.

I get totally Appropriately is saying, we are fighting for statements, but for what, the crap provision available on the NHS. A SALT to go into school and say do this worksheet. An already over stretched NHS OT to go into school, when school are saying she really is needed, how long before overworked OT and school reach the conclusion, she isnt needed anymore. Unless your child is causing school a problem and school agree a Statement is needed to help them manage, is it worth it.

I dont know whether Tribunal is the right route for ds.

I might be better off saving the expense of Tribunal, legal reps, expert assessments and reps and get a private SALT to deliver the programme, a proper programme. A private OT to deliver the programme and train staff. How hard is it to get school/LA to agree to this?

With me paying for it of course.

Its not the NHS SaLT's fault that school are not following the req. programme it is the programme that would be rec. by either a private or NHS SaLT in my daughter's case.
It's just the fact that its been left to the school to implement it and they don't understand the significance of delivering it when they have been asked to as it is not their area of expertise. It is like asking a chef to knit a jumper.

I think you need to say this is supposed to be happening. I know its not happening, make it happen or I will complain to the LA.

Wassup, ds's SALT 'programme' isnt worth the paper it is written on, its not SMART, the provision is 'follow worksheet number whatever' etc, etc. I also assume school report to her that ds has no difficulties with speech and language, communication. That is certainly what they fill out on all questionaires they are required to fill out. They also fill out that he has no sensory difficulties, no social interaction difficulties, so he basically doesnt have ASD. Yet they give him social skills groups, sensory difficulty groups and 1:1 SALT (supposedly) perhaps they need to understand WHY they are doing that!! So although the SALT programme might be written by a SALT, school do influence it by reporting 'no difficulties', same as they will influence NHS OT or any other professional they come into contact with by claiming false success, 'no difficulties'. SALT is also supposed to review the programme termly, that was a year ago.

Independent experts are harder to convince.

Anyhow i have written and sent off all my requests today. I have also emailed parent partnership requesting an appointment and also saying i would like to sort out the provision ds needs with school, without the need for starting the statement process if possible. Hopefully LA with bend over backwards to avoid a statement and push the school to give ds some help in meantime. At the moment he appears to be getting nothing.

You could ask for mediation. They have to under COP have a mediation service for SN disputes.
You could threaten tribunal / repeated requests for SA but say really you just want the right provision now and can't you all sit down with someone indep (mediator) and thrash out something you are all happy it - but make it part of your bottom line that it includes proper independent monitoring and assessment of the school's provision.

Do you know any other parents in school in similar situations? Could you run a SN coffee morning and join forces as if you are having these problems you cannot be the only one. I know a school that was rubbish and a parent did this and formed a parent SN group and they have had some success at moving SN up the schools agenda.

Ultimately it is not in the LAs interests for them to have a school which is underperforming and generating complaints and requests for SA so PP should be able to get the LA to do something, otherwise they are just storing up more work for themselves later on.

Agnes, i will invite parent partnership round, she came to my house last time regarding old school, prior to me applying for SA. All i plan on doing is showing her a list of ds's needs as identified by experts, a list of what the school currently have in place to meet those needs and then a list of the recommendations and yes proper independent monitoring and assessment, including me having copies and going to meetings etc.

Any help, has to be better than no help in the meantime, is my thinking.

Sorry i dont know what happened there, some of my post isnt there!

No i dont know any parents in similar situations, but i dont know any parent with a child with SN's in the school either. I dont think a suggestion of a coffee morning for SN parents would go down too well with the school at the moment. They would see it as me stirring, i already have a rep for being 'difficult' and 'needing careful handling' etc from old school.