place in unit - hours specified in statement or not?

[chocjunkie]

Hi, just asking on behalf of a friend. her DS had just received a proposed statement for reception. DS will attend a SN unit within a MS school.
hours in the statement are not specified. When my friend queried this she was told that hours would not be specified as DS will attend a unit which is very highly staffed. however, unit works in a way that pupils spent about 2h/day within unit and the rest of the day will be spent in a MS classroom.
I know that statements for SS usually do not have hours specified. does anybody have any knowledge/experience regarding this kind of unit setting?
TIA

Here the units work by the children staying in the unit at all times but maybe spending an hour or two in ms class, staffing is 5-8 so almost 1:1. If it works the other way around there then I would definitely want that tightening up, unless the statement says 1:1 it is not going to have hours on it. I would however ask for the time in the unit v the time out/in ms is specified.

Ds when he was in the unit specified 1 to 1 support for the whole of the school day including breaktimes and lunchtimes. Others in the unit didn't have 1 to 1 but had support for the whole of the school day. 8am til 3pm 35 hrs per week.How much time ds spent in the unit was decided minute to minute depending on how he was coping, on bad days he wouldn't leave the unit.

I worked in a school with a Sp.,L.&Comm Resourse Base. The 'supported hours' were never specified for any of the children, beacuse the children were having a place of "specialist provision" 'bought' for them - in effect, they were in a special school, which was sited on the mainstream site (although it was only one classroom!). The staffing is extremely high compared with MS, and the staff are also specialists. We altered things round so the children then had their register / milk / assembly /hung coats up / etc. with their classes, and were supported in class (part of the time) and withdrawn into the Res Base (part of the time) and had times when they didn't have specific support in the class. The school had the support hours appropriate for all the children (2 per yr group) and it was up to them as to how they managed them.

The question is what is the standard provision within the unit for a child and does this child need more than the standard. eg if SALT and the standard is 30 mins with SALT every other week and this child needs and hour a week then that need to be specified. Although there is case law and CoP wording that agrees with what you have been told the Tribunal tends to interpret it rather loosely. LAs rather like the wording as you have found.

thanks everybody.
my friend talked to school and there is no standard provision for resourced children. some children are just 30 mins/ day at unit with only some support while in MS classroom. some children spend 1-2h in the unit with much more 1:1 support in the MS setting. some have lunch/break support, some don't. some get Salt, some don't. I would have thought a statement for such a setting should be pretty specific... will get her to have a word with ipsea as well.

The barrister David Wolfe has a good, what he calls "noddy guide", that covers this issue here