Tribunal question - can tribunal make existing statement worse?

[bialystockandbloom]

If you lose a statement appeal, can a tribunal not only say "sorry you lost" but also "and we're actually going to slash your existing statement by half the hours and reduce the support"?

In a v v difficult situation with statement appeal/school/ABA - wondering whether to abandon not only our appeal but also any attempt at negotiating for a better statement.

Arrghh.

Thanks.

As I understand it, a tribunal will just look at the statement again. So yes you could end up worse off. That might just be in my LEA though - and I have never heard of it actually happening...

its unlikely.
They would need evidence and one side to be arguing to slash it.
The only case I have heard of where tribunal did not follow parent or LA was where the family were doing Sonrise and were arguing over how many hours (LA was funding some)and the tribunal decided it was not satisfied sonrise had enough evidential support and wouldn't award any - but in a case like that they would adjourn until a school was found etc, you wouldn't walk away without provision.
The starting point for tribunal is what will meet the needs of this particular child at this particular point. If both your and LA option are found to meet need they will award the cheapest. If the LA does not meet need but yours does, then you win.
For ABA the tribunals have been given training that it is effective for some children and is one of approaches that can be used, so they will be interested in if it works for your particular child.
Don't necessarily lose heart. They are probably throwing the kitchen sink at you right now, but mostly its tactics.
And school provision for ASD is notoriously poor and one size fits all.

In theory yes - the tribunal can alter the statement anyway they please or even say no statement is needed at all.

I would advise any family to have a "plan B" for how they are going to cope if the Tribunal doesn't rule the way they want, (homeschool perhaps? move house?). I'd also only advise it as a last resort, simply cos the whole thing is sooo streessful!

In practice though - include a few quotes from the LEA reports in your arguments and even though you may not "win" outright you should come away with summat better than you went in with so long as ALL your arguments are totally logical and fact not emotion based. That sounds so easy doesn't it?

Do be prepared for an unfair fight, and make sure your evidence is rock solid. The odds do seem to be stacked against the parent/child at every stage of the sen process I feel. I guess some of your chances of success depend on the luck of the draw the the panel you get on the day. Panels do seem to vary in terms of personal bias and expertise.

Having said all that though my lea's statement writing skills are so abysmal that it'd be hard NOT to improve on them, if only in terms of spelling and grammer by going to Tribunal! On some points I achieved more for my son than I ever dreamed was possible in terms of support and I would deffo do it again if I felt the situation serious enough to warrant the effort and risk in the future.

Thanks for all the replies.

The problem is that our own 'side' are basically telling us we have no chance of possibly winning ABA - and in fact that ds doesn't need it. This is our Ed Psych, our ABA consultant, supervisor and our tutors. The school are also saying ds doesn't need it.

They are right. Ds has made huge progress (there is no doubt in my mind that this is due to ABA), to the extent that he is 'indistinguishable' to not only the casual observer, but to the class teacher, the SENCO, the school's asd support staff, and to some extent our EP and ABA consultant, who has proposed phasing out school support in the new year, as he doens't need intensive aba intervention.

He does still have some definite problems so we are continuing a minimal home programme and sporadic school support (and are changing consultant).

His existing statement, issued 6 months ago, is outdated, and part 2 does not reflect him now. It says 25 hours but doesn't specify exactly what.

We would be happy with a statement that specifies the support he needs (admittedly not 25 hours a week), delivered by someone who knows what they're doing (so we would give some training).

agnes They would need evidence and one side to be arguing to slash it. There is an argument that ds requires very little support. This hasn't come from 'them' but from our own side - our ind EP has confirmed this. We have very little in the way of recent ABA evidence as since he started in Sep our programme has been minimal, and he is doing well in school with a very light sort of support.

School are apparently supportive of us but in practice doing virtually nothing, and they waffle on about eclectic intervention, teacch, visual supports etc etc all completely inappropriate for ds.

Choices:

a) try and negotiate for the above
b) if the LA doesn't negotiate, abandon our appeal altogther and try and work with school directly
c) go to tribunal to try and achieve the above but risk the tribunal saying ds doesn't need a statement or reducing the support to barely nothing

Don't know what to do!