ABA - anyone else had problems getting consultant into school

[WilsonFrickett]

So DS has just moved school and my ABA consultant and I were keen to get an observation set up and put some recommendations in place, particularly for his classroom assistant.
Spoke to teacher about it yesterday, followed up with an email this morning. Grabbed her at home time and she said all requests for visits have to be authorised by HT, could I forward email to her.
Did that, HT has just phoned and been very slippery.
Consultant has to go in and meet with her before she can go into classroom, and have processes and procedures explained, HT needs to phone previous school to see how they handled her visit (I very much doubt if previous school will remember she'd been in at all). There's no way this can happen quickly, etc etc.

In retrospect I probably should have been a bit more circumspect in how I set it up, but this does not bode well, does it? Can she actually stop me using ABA observations in school?

(DS has a Social communication disorder, 5 hours support, mainstream school, Scotland)

The LEA/HT can refuse to allow the consultant in - yes.

Yes they can refuse. Offer her the consultant's number to call if she wants. If possible offer her the number of the head of another school that consultant has been in if possible. Try to be as open as you can be and focus on gaining insight into what skills you can practice at home rather what you might be telling the school they can do better.

I haven't had a problem with this primarily because the consultant was charm personified when she went in and very quickly managed to present herself as being there to observe the child and how she was progressing. And also was careful to present helpful suggestions rather than criticisms. I think if you can even get the consultant into chat with the head you should be able to get a foot in the door. I think that schools have very little experience of outside private observers and are a bit suspicious / worried. I would proabably be all breezy and say yes of course I quite understand that procedures have to be followed and then set up an appointment for the head to meet the consultant and charm your way in.

Hopefully I've done a bit of a charm offensive now. Am just annoyed that there will be delays as I really wanted her in to work with the new CA quite quickly. Incidently, I am happy with the school so didn't need to fib. The HT was a bit tinkly on the phone which got my back right up...

I called her a private speech therapist to get foot in door. Both nurseries happy to have her. Current nursery wanted ds settled in a bit before she visited though - we waited about a month and then they were utterly charmed, asked for her number etc.