What should I put in the parents bit on the statement application?

[emkana]

the school are planning to apply for a statement for ds, bit I could do with advice what to put in the bit that the parents are supposed to fill in?

We filled ours in this year and I wrote that I believe that he really needs the support and why. What does the form ask? What are your Ds needs?

I haven't seen the form, the sn teacher just said to send it to her and shed put it in the form. He has a variety of needs, no single huge one but lots of small to medium ones

Physically - he has dwarfism
Communication - his speech is delayed and he is difficult to understand
Learning - takes a long time to learn some new concepts, while on the other hand very quck in other areas
Personal care - not reliably toilet trained at five and a half

I would ask to see the forms before they are sent, you want strong bullet points, that your DS needs combined together need a complex education provision. You need to see what the school has wrote to ensure it is them to make the request or yourself.

Parent Partnership helped us with things like this. i would suggest writing a letter that focuses on practical things such as help needed with personal care. 1:1 for speech therapy. We were advised to be specific as possible and think about his worst day not his best.

You need to constantly refer to how behind he is compared to his peer group.
You also need to empahsise what good the statement will do. You need to make it sound as bleak as possible. Think of the worst day...

So without knowing much about him here is the following - pick and chose what is relevant.

X suffers from dwarfism which gives him a significant disadvantage in physcial based activities with his peer group. He needs extra support to develop his gross motor skills and to differentiate PE based activities for him.

X is delayed in his speech and at present is immature in his speech. This means that people find him hard to understand and his vocabulary is behind that of his friends. This means that he struggles to learn new ideas and concepts and this results in him falling behind in class work. He is struggling to gain the phonic concepts to aid reading and writing and needs one to one support to reinforce this aspect of his learning. When he has been given support by his class room assistant X has made real progress. X becomes very down hearted and sometimes angry and upset at his inability to communicate and this can lead to tantrums. He needs time to come to terms with new ideas and process what someone is asking. Maketon symbols in class have been very useful but the statement would provide the support for more kinesthetic and non verbal reinforcement of ideas and concepts.
Although we have worked really hard on X's toilet and self help skills, he is still significantly behind his peers and can have toileting accidents. He needs verbal reminders to use the facilities correctly and without one to one support it is not possible for the class room teacher to meet these needs. Some of his friends have started to comment that he has soiled himself and if this situation is not resolved we are concerned taht it will lead to him being further isolated and excluded by his peers.

If this is just the request stage and the school are applying you justhave to make sure you are both applying on the same basis. I would ask if you can see the form so you know what the headings are and then you can make comments based on each section, If the school are applying they must think he needs it, which is positive. Working qith them is a good thing if you can.

flyingmum makes good points. Can I also point you to www.specialneedsjungle.co.uk - lots of advice.

Thanks everyone, this is very helpful.

whereabouts in the country are you, emkana? the forms differ (although not always by much) depending on what area you are in.

ours (in two different counties) was a series of questions to answer about dd1's development and difficulties. do not feel you can only write in the box - I wrote all my answers in a Word document, and then printed and sent that - I used a separate page for each question or subsection of a question (there is no such hting as too much information, especially in a complex case).

also, depending on area (as these things tend to) - is your ds likely to get a Statutory Assessment first off? (not meaning he doens't have needs, but LAs can be tricky buggers and sometimes will refuse, make you appeal and go to Tribunal etc). if it is likely that your LA will play silly buggers, you might be better off making the application yourself, rather than the school - you still get all the same forms, some for you, some for school etc, but ultimately you as a parent have better rights of appeal than the school, I believe.

If you want, I can dig out the parental submission I made for dd1's statement and email it to you? (obviously won't be entirely relevant, as dd1's needs are different form your ds', but I found it helpful to see what someone else had written when faced with similar forms)

Silverfrog yes that would be great! My email address is emkana at gmx dot net.

How do I know whether the LEA will play silly buggers or not?

will start hunting for it, and will email it over to you.

as to silly buggers - erm, yuo don't always! but some LAs are notorious. Kent, for eg are absolute bastards who will do anything at all to avoid statementing, and have (in the bit I was in) hopeless provision for childrenw ith ASD. yet they refuse to statement, try to shoehorn into local schools, and will not fund alternative provision.

there may be other posters on here who are in your area - they might know better what your LA is like (although it can vary from dx to dx)

I've just sent an email, emkana. hope it is useful in some way

Thank you for the email silver frog, really appreciate it

no problem - hope it helps a little.

any questions, just ask!

lots of standard phrases but make them relevant to your ds, so... "X will need support from an adult to enable him to access the curriculum equal to his peers... and then giv especific examples accross all curriculum areas and linked to his specific needs.
We also added lots of stuff about as he goes through the school his needs likely to increase to enable him to access equeal to his peers & without support how he would fail to access the curriculum equal to his peers and not be included & how this would effect his confidence & self esteem and further impact on his learning.
Really spell it out! Good luck.