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Immigrating to Australia with an children?

20 replies

pleasegivemestrength · 06/02/2012 12:02

Hi all! Not sure if this is the right place to post but was hoping someone might know. Dh and I have been thinking about emigrating to Australia for a few years now.
We would be applying for the skilled worker visa - I am a teacher, dh an IT business analyst so chances are ok.

BUT we have 3 ds. Ds1 has AS, DAMP and SPD. Ds2 will be getting assessed for autism soon too. So does anyone know how much this will affect the application? I read that any condition which will require expensive and rare provisions will affect applications so I am guessing this will too?!

Second question I have is: does anyone know how good provisions in Australia are for children with asd? We currently live in Germany and provisions both at school/nursery as well as outside are fantastic.

I would be grateful for any advice!

OP posts:
pleasegivemestrength · 06/02/2012 12:04

Sorry, title is meant to say 'children with SN' ...typing with I'll toddler on my lap.. ;)

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zzzzz · 06/02/2012 12:54

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

LaFilleSurLePont · 06/02/2012 13:09

Try posting here on the British expat forum. You should receive some good advice there.

wasuup3000 · 06/02/2012 13:10

Having a quick google many comments seem to be that this would be very difficult. I think you may need to look at it from an angle of paying privately yourself for education and being able to prove that you will be able to provide this in the way of funds and you may need to have a relative already in Austrailia to sponser you all as a family as well. Opinions seem to be that Austrailia is way behind the UK in regards to ASD issues and education.

pleasegivemestrength · 06/02/2012 13:27

thank you, I thought that might be the case but still remaining hopeful...

we certainly would not be able to pay for private education :( and we dont have relatives that way either, several friends but no relatives.

ever since spending a year over there before dh and dcs I have wanted to eventually move there. First it was my mum's ill health holding us back, now it's the special needs of our children...

I dont know why but for some reason I thought they'd be quite advanced in regards to ASD etc.

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BriocheDoree · 06/02/2012 14:42

I think provision can be fantastic or utterly awful, depending on where you are. DSis is in Sydney, her H has a family member with HFA. He goes to a fantastic school. OTOH have heard cases of families leaving Oz for UK due to lack of provision. Bit like where we are (France). Generally provision is poor (psychoanalysis for autism...!) but we just happen to have DD in a really nice school where her 1 to 1 knows ABA and TEACCH. Very difficult to move with SN kids, however. DH would like to move back to UK for family reasons but we are both scared as to how we would get DD into similar school set up in UK.

outofbodyexperience · 06/02/2012 14:54

Speak to justa about nz. Grin

We emigrated to Canada with dd2 who has cp.

Sometimes you just have to go for it and see what happens. Or you spend your whole life wondering what if....

I don't know about Oz, though, sorry.

zzzzz · 06/02/2012 14:58

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

pleasegivemestrength · 06/02/2012 15:01

brioche yes I guess it is like that anywhere, it depends on where you are in a country. I am glad your dd is getting good support at school, and I can completely symphathise not wanting to give that up in fear of not finding somewhere that will be equally good for her.

we moved to where we are now (south west Germany) knowing it wouldnt be forever. I dont really like the area, but this move enabled us to have more time with dh. But provisions really are fantastic. ds1 goes to a mixed sn/ms nursery (5 children with special needs, 12 nt children). there he gets 1 hour OT and 1 hour play therapy a week. apart from that he sees his therapist from the autism centre once a week who uses TEACCH. and just now it seems that we have intensive home support approved (a behaviourist who knows ABA and TEACCH) - she will come to our house every weekday from the time ds1 gets home from nursery to when dh gets home from work!

I feel so, so lucky for the support both ds1 gets as well as me. But I feel trapped here! It probably sounds ungrateful, we have a good standard of living here, our dcs get what they need. But I just feel like I HAVE to stay here to ensure they get the best provsions and a move would be a gamble. on the other hand, isnt it important for the parents to be happy with where they are too? it's so hard when you have to think about the needs of our special children. Moving country or even area within a country is never easy with children and always a massive step, but even more so with our children.

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pleasegivemestrength · 06/02/2012 15:03

outofbody that is exactly what I am worried about! that I will always wonder how it could have been like, and regret never to have tried...

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outofbodyexperience · 06/02/2012 15:55

it took us four years and about £6000 (we decided to use a consultant because of dd2's circs. in actuality, they were worse than useless and just interested in collecting their cash for filling in forms (that they kept doing wrong and we kept having to change) all the consultant did was introduce more time into the process, causing delays. i would never use a consultant again - we knew far more about the procedure for medical appeal etc just by using britishexpats and google. so you can save a shedload of money).

i don't know how much it costs for oz, but we could probably have gone through the process for less than £2000 for the five of us if we hadn't over our money to the alleged 'experts'. immigration consultancy is a great racket ot get into if you're skint.

quite a lot of children with asd have been accepted over the last couple of years for canada. i'm really pleased that they do seem to be looking at individual circumstances now, instead of refusal based on a label. and the appeals process is manageable. fortunately we did everything up front (the poor guy who did the medicals was left with an entire file about dd2) and so didn;t have to appeal. for canada the medical board sits in ottawa and any unusal circs do detour there, so it adds at least 3-6 mos onto the application, but for us it was much easier than i expected in the end. i had been expecting a long appeal process as well for four years! Grin

how much would a speculative application cost you?

LaFilleSurLePont · 06/02/2012 16:13

Personally I would consult an agent. Peter Bollard seems to be highly regarded and respected on the BE forum. He specialises in medical issues. I think George Lombard may also do so.

It seems to be $150 with him for an initial consultation. If you've no chance then he'll tell you upfront from what I've read. I can't recommend him personally but his name comes up time and time again on British Expats.

I'd also really recommending asking for advice on there. Or you can search for similar threads.

LaFilleSurLePont · 06/02/2012 16:18

It'd help if I posted a link to his website here.

dolfrog · 06/02/2012 17:59

There are quite a few Facebook Australian parent support groups you might like to have a look at support group, for children with speech and language problems and Auditory Processing Disorder Australia/New Zealand obviously there are others, some members of these groups may have more locally based information.

Frustrated2003 · 12/02/2012 22:35

Hi,

Australia is a beautiful country, I lived in Victoria State with my son who is autistic and deaf. To get my son into any of the specialist provision he had to have an IQ of below 56, which as you will know is really low, and he had a much higher IQ.

In terms of ASD at the time I was there in 2010 there was no support within mainstream unless you had MLD as well, as its not seen as a predominant special educational need.

My son went to a mainstream school with 20 children in his class, and one teaching assistant, by in large he struggled but they tried exceptionally hard to include him and educate him. I came back because long term educationally it was not right for him, but had I not gone I would not have known.

Its not impossible to get into OZ with children with special needs, as there was a landmark case over there involving a doctor and he won right to citizenship, so immigration were a little more gentle with our children.

On the plus side I paid for a speech and language assessment over there and it cost 180 dollars and then 1 hours therapy per week was 50 dollars this was also the same for occupational therapy and it was much easier to come by than it is over here in the UK.

My son was also more accepted by the children, for example we lived in a cul de sac and would often have children asking if he could play out with his scooter something that has never happened in the UK.

If its Victoria they provided a good support service through Anglicarevic.org.au my son was able to access after school and holiday clubs and provided one to one support.

You could also look at Department for Education in victoria also. It doe vary from State to State the provision but by in large the education requirements are not dis-similar, also in Victoria on a 457 visa you would be expected to pay international fees as your child has special needs, on a permanent residents visa it would be based on a total expenditure over 5 years and the figure is quite low, I hope that makes sense.

There are clearly advantages to living in Australia, and clearly one of those are that children are really accepted for being children, but the level of educational support would possibly be significantly less than they currently receive.

I dont regret my decision to go over there and it was supposed to be a long term move, but was not right for my son in the longer term. Also since being back in UK which is just over 18 months I am stull arguing for support for my son and finally am going to an educational tribunal at the end of April.

If you want to know anything else or some weblinks let me know, I was working for the state department in Victoria over there, so have some good contacts for you if needed.

jandymaccomesback · 13/02/2012 13:31

Isn't St. Tony Attwood based near Sydney? So there must be something going on over there.

pleasegivemestrength · 13/02/2012 13:33

thank you frustrated that is really helpful! ooh I dont know...if we were without children or with nt children this decision would be much easier.

fact is that ds1 need a lot of support at the moment. The fact that I managed to get a 1-to-1 behaviour therapist for him for the afternoons, as well as lots of other things, speaks for itself I guess. As much as I would love to go, I just dont know if I can risk having much less support. Especially as ds2 is about to get assessed for ASD too and is likely to need a fair bit of support too.

Really, standard of living is very good where we are, we have a nice house - rented but hey - children get what they need... maybe I should just started being happy with what I have and give up that aussie dream.

in any case, I think we would have to wait a few more years to see how things develop with the dcs and then reconsider.

thank you all for you input! and I admire those of you who were brave enough to at least give it a go!

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pleasegivemestrength · 13/02/2012 18:50

good point Jandy I think Tony Attwood is in Brisbane!

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jandymaccomesback · 14/02/2012 13:14

Yes, it probably is Brisbane, sorry.

Fresh01 · 14/02/2012 14:26

We lived in oz for 9 years but moved back when DC1 was a toddler so can't help you with your children's needs but the mumsnet equivalent website in oz is called Essential Baby and it has special needs forums so the ladies there would be able to assist you. I do know assistance in oz varies significantly from state to state.

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