Blossom House School - Wimbledon. Any info/news/ideas?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

I've had a search in the achives, and I see that a few people have considered this school over the years.

Has anyone got any up to date info?

Good points, bad points - anything at all really.

dd1 is 5, and ASD. He is verbal (very!) and no challenging behaviour wise (actually, really quite placid and passive, which can be a challenge in itself). He is also well above average cognitively but has S&L disorder. He talks a lot but often it is in riddles as he has trouble finding the right words. He is also a bit scared of initiating with peers.

We'd have to move if it was the right school for ds.
Many TIA

I haven't seen the school myself but know of two people whose sons go there and they think it is excellent. Their sons are at the very highest functioning end of the spectrum and they find the school a perfect fit.

Incidentally both boys had ABA home programmes in the early years which transformed them, but the parents still wanted to place them in the best possible specialised setting which would be tailored to their s&l needs while still stretching them academically and having a culture of very high expectations. One of them has just achieved excellent GCSE results and the parents have never been happier!

Hth

Oh, in both cases the places are funded by the LEA

Thank you MEW and zzzz.

I have been to see it and was impressed but it is hard to put your child's future and substantial funds behind securing a place at a school you've only seen a couple of times, not to mention having to move home and find new maternity services for your impending birth

My dd was in the nursery / reception class at blossom house for two terms. Used it to improve her speech before going mainstream. She didn't have ASD (just a long list of medical problems!) but I think the other 6 children in her class did.

School made an amazing amount of difference to her intelligibility. Used non conventional therapy which really worked. All therapists and teachers I met very lovely and very good with the children. Lovely other mums too!

Very small class sizes, all the therapists, support etc.... Focus on child's ability not age so not all ages together in same year group. Flexes to fit child - not seen that elsewhere.

Definetly worth a visit.

Sorry just seen you have visited! If you do move having had one child born at st George's and one at Kingston I would go for Kingston for birth. :)

I know it's off the topic but Kingston is very busy and when I was due they couldn't admit me hence went to St georges and will not recommend it to anyone...

Starlight - if you consider moving I would also visit the ican school in surrey.

Zzzz St georges is a hospital

If you do decide Blossom House is the right school I would strongly recommend moving to Kingston if possible. It's a pretty progressive LEA, funding many ABA home programmes and sending several children to ABA schools without tribunal. It can be v expensive but Norbiton and New Malden are cheaper areas within the borough.

Mainstream primaries are excellent for any other children and although Kingston Hospital can be busy everyone I know who has given birth there has been very happy. In fact that's probably why it's so busy, its sought after! I was v at the private rooms for all

we looked at it - must be about 3 years ago, so not hugely up to date info.

my step daughter also attended there for a while, but that is going back some.

in the case of my step daughter, it was did not achieve great things - she was never really encouraged to be independent, never really stretched, and managed to run rings round most of them and not do any work.

when we looked aorund, it did seem to have changed quite a bit from her time. it seemed nice enough. small classes certainly knew enough about S&L stuff - I was less convinced by their ASD expertise. it was not right for dd1 - she would not have got on well there. she had a ball on her trial morning, but we did not feel that enough would be done to unravel her autism - it would have ended up being a compromise for her.

I get the impression that they have become more ASDy in the last few years.

The HT herself said that they weren't an ASD school but recently 'disordered' that used to be called semantic-pragmatic and social communication disorder were now simply called ASD but the children are the same.

She told us that she had been on some behaviour modification training which has made an enourmous difference to what they could offer (not overly sure what she meant by this).

They don't accept children for whom rigidity in terms of transitions and change is a problem however, and they insist on the primary need being S&L, but they seem to have an awful lot of OT stuff going on. I'm wondering whether it is worth trying it for a couple of years whilst ds is still young.

I don't imagine it will be any more of a disaster than most of the alternatives and I have a huge advantage now that I know how to supplement his learning should it be needed.

But.....I still don't know.

I have very high aspirations for ds. I could put him in the 'best school' but best in this country is often extremely poor for SEN children.

I have seen other special schools. Some of them I have been very impressed with (although not many if I'm honest). They all seem keen to take ds because 'oh it will be great for Kyle to have someone like that to bring his language on as he is the only verbal child in the class and needs a peer' As lovely as that sentiment is, I haven't made all these sacrafices so far for Kyle.

MEW Thank you for the tip about Kingston. I'm a bit worried by the 'expensive' bit though. Are they more expensive than Merton, because I'm not entirely sure we can afford anywhere there even?

And I'll probably have a home birth when/if I ever get a home, if I feel the Edgeware Birthing Unit is too far. I've seen far too much of OBEM to be going anywhere near a hospital

zzzz I would go and have a look at BH. I think it is useful to have a benchmark for other options. You will find (As I did) that the majority of the parents there are trying to place ASish children.

Thank you too biscuits and blueshark

And zzzz You might want to take a look at Riverston in Greenwich for some/all of your children if you have a fairy godmother of some such other source of funds.

we didn't get much out of them as to how they would tackle the ASD side of things.

rigidity not a problem for dd1, and transitions absolutely fine - just had the feeling she would drift through, rather than be challenged where her ASD was concerned (hard to explain). S&L stuff all good though.

whenever we asked about ASD 'handling' (for want of a better phrase - sorry, it's late), we got quite wishy-washy answers. we were left with the feelign they were happy to take dd1 on, on a trial basis (since she was so young, they wanted to see how her ASD panned out), but could well be left high and dry, having uprooted to be nearby etc, if it turned out they could not deal with the ASD side of things. and they were unable to really tell us much about how they did deal with that side of things.

I guess in summary, it seemed that if we had sent dd1 there, and she got on well, then all well and good - she would have been well served. but if they had run into problems, of any nature other than S&L, then we had no confidence they would be able to unravel them, and that dd1 would be out, leaving us with very few other options from that point. it was too big a risk for us.

Ah, I think I see what you meant Silver. We have another appointment shortly so I'll think about what you have said and see if I can get some decent questions together. If I'm honest, I think that ds has become too capable for his cohort there but if I can be convinced that he still has gaps that could be well served then I might consider it.

I'm not sure if you know but ds has been dx (Well unofficially as I refused the dx) with SLI that is on top of his ASD and supposedly seperate to it. His receptive language is now 3 years ahead of his expressive.

Personally I'm not certain he has any 'innate' impairment, but that enormous receptive language advances have been made due to his ABA programme and the fact that when he was last assessed his receptive was very far behind so we have been focussing on it for the past 18months.

But anyway, the point is that S&L has become his primary need according to our experts so that is why we are looking more widely at our options than we have. I know what you mean about a S&L not having the skills for the ASDness but god knows there is pretty much no way on earth ds will be going to an ASD school unless it is one similar to the one your dd attends iykwim.

I would choose S&L over ASD because of expectations wrt language mainly. I helped get a place for a child in an S&L unit a few years ago (having discussed with child's parents the pros/cons of diagnosis at that stage of child's life) and know that on standardised assessment the language disorder has now resolved, but that the staff struggle with supporting this child to engage with peers and with some of the higher level cognitive/executive function stuff. However, if this child had gone to the ASD unit, I wonder if they would have coped any better with these higher-level challenges and this child would still have the language disorder as there would have been no focus on this side of things. The child has also had the benefit of having language-matched peers with good social interaction skills within the unit, who have been a good bridge to developing interactions and friendships with m/s kids. There is more work to be done, but I wonder if this child would be going for tea at other people's houses/playing on the playground/managing conversations at their current level if the language disorder hadn't been addressed and they had been in a setting that "understood" allowed/expected children with communication might not interact with peers.

Thank you Working. What you said makes a huge amount of sense wrt ds.

The closest he has ever had to having 'friends' in terms of the amount of social interaction has been with children with English as a second language. He is less afraid of them and can cope to some extent with communicating with gestures and action. Also some bolshy younger children who don't have the language yet but do have the will to make him their playmate.

His expressive and receptive langage are also now within normal range (with receptive actually being well above average) in standardised tests. The 'issue' for him is the gap and the inability to use the skills functionally in a busy classroom.

However, we are also considering the option of a private m/s with 8 children in a class and ABA support, of the type that we have (flexible, social language support pretty much embedded in all potential interaction times). But then we have to rely on NHS SALT and OT and put up with dangerous annual reviews because this support plus ABA will be paid for 'on top' of the school fees making it an easy target for withdrawal and a likely fight each year.

It seems it would make a big difference to your life not to have that fight.. though I suppose if his expressive language is within the normal range (gap aside) there might be an issue with securing funding and a place for it unless you push the pragmatic side of things? The private m/s has small classes, will likely have good behaviour but will their language be very high level in comparison to his/frustrating for him to be able to engage with/formulate appropriate responses conceptually, how "normal" is his normal, and how high will the language levels of a high-achieving school be? Academically the future appears rosy, so you are seeking the social/behavioural intervention really... On the other hand, keeping the support you know is working for him is appealing.. but consider potential disruptions to this too, tutors moving away or going on mat leave (as women are wont to do after a while, pesky pregnanies ). I suppose it's about finding the place with the right philosophy and a school that will not only enable him to fulfil his potential but will give you an opportunity to be a parent that doesn't have to be banging down the doors of school to demand better service on a weekly basis. That's incredibly stressful, and though I've heard no. 3 slots right into a family, babies still need a bit of working on . Good luck with your decision..

TBH I don't think his expressive IS within normal ranges. He averaged around 9th percentile on the CELF with around 32nd percentile for Receptive.

On the PSLS he scored 25th for receptive and 18th for expressive.

I was getting confused with his verbal reasoning and non-verbal where he is advanced, 21st and 86th percentiles.

He is 5.
On the Moodley, Cooper and Reynell Scales of Attention he scores level 3 (Age 2-3yrs) (suspect this is tied up with motivation rather than purely an attention thing but still)

Having said all this, NHS SALT says he is well within normal range, but then I know that the blanket policy criteria for help unless you have a tribunal statement, is being on the 2nd percentile.

But they are all just numbers. He rarely talks to other children. It is like they are invisible, and he rarely hears adults speaking to him if the background is 'busy' and he can't tell you things even when he wants to.

LOL, just seen your last post Working............yes - exactly!

Hello,

Came across this thread when I was looking at other stuff. I have a kid going there, and he seems a lot like yours, Been there since 4 months and he has adjusted very well, really engaged with the curriculum and all other 7 children in his class, which is a HUGE improvement over what the situation was in his previous mainstream where he could never talk to any of the kids as they were too advanced socially, my kid is a talker but has social and mostly speech issues, is on the AS as well, although borderline and is doingfairly well academically. He's 9, and I am pretty happy with the school so far.

sorry meant talks to all other 7 kids in the class which is a big thing for me because socially he was quite in need in the other school.