Volunteers or Paid Help Advice

[chocaholic73]

It has been suggested to me that I could get some volunteers or possibly a paid helper in to support my DD, 15. She has ASD and Dyspraxia and has been suffering badly from anxiety. School has always been extremely difficult for her and has now become impossible and we are now thinking about home education - apologies if I should have posted this over there - I just thought people here might have had more experience of getting helpers in. At the moment, we would be thinking about someone to spend a bit of time with her, play gentle games, go for a walk, do a bit of cooking and so on. I am wondering about the implications of this though - in terms of health and safety, insurance etc. Any pointers, suggestions, would be greatly appreciated.

Hi chocaholic73. Does she already have support in place at school or a statement?

I don't know much about the school system at that age as our older 2 children have been out of school for a few years, and our younger 2 children are 5 and 2yo. But I'm sure there will be a fair few on here that can give you some solid advice.

She doesn't have a statement. She went from going full time in the Autumn term, to part time but was still unable to tolerate it. Since then, she has been going into learning support and spending 2.5 hours there each day but she is still unable to cope .... can't concentrate at all. Despite this, they are still going on about GCSEs etc and won't recognise that she really can't manage that level of work at the moment.

What support has she had up until now in school? Has she been struggling like that for years or just in the last year? You said school's always been extremely difficult for her, so I'm just wondering what the school has done to support her thus far. Surely if she's only going part time and spending 2.5 hrs in the learning support area each day, the school should have come up with some sort of alternative plan - at the very least changed some of the things in her IEP to focus on getting her back in school.

She has always struggled and to be fair they have tried. She did have LSAs in some classes, but it wasn't that she couldn't manage the work, more that she found the classroom a terrifying place. Unfortunately, she still finds even going to learning support very scary. We have had meetings galore and I think we can't take much more - hence my question.... just basically looking for someone to give me a bit of space from time to time.

Ah, okay. That just kind of clears up the picture a bit. Other than straight out respite, I think homestart has been mentioned by a number of people here. (I don't have one close, so while I've been thinking about it, I'm not sure exactly how it would work)

Given this history then it is clear that the school is not able to meet needs. By not being able to attend school clearly additional support is needed.
Write to the LA tomorrow and ask for a statuary assessment. Letter on the IPSEA web site. If this is not gripped now then the LA/ School will allow it to drift and she will leave school completely wreaked. It does not seem that people either understand her or have supported her appropriately. Sorry to be harsh but there are many kids like her out there who drown in mainstream.

Besides asking for an assessment, is there a befriending service around you?

The local Autism society might be able to point you to such a service. In theory they pair your dd with someone who has been through an ASD befriending course who will take her out and do things together with her.

At this age I'd be signing her up to Interhigh pronto (online school that does 8 decent GCSE's) and applying for a statement to make the LEA pay for it. Due to the delay in application and statement implementation you'll have to fund the first 6 months yourself.

She's in grave danger of leaving school with nothing to show for all the years at school & for me it's time to take urgent remedial measures.

If she can't cope with the school environment - they've delayed too long now to make a measurable difference in the time she has left & being a NEET isn't good enough.

My neighbours AS son had a similar story to tell, re school, but he got a 1st class degree via the Open Uni in November, now has a good job he loves (as a result of that grade!) in an environment he can handle and became a Dad in April. For a 23 year old he's now doing better than most of his age group as it's damn tough out there. He's the inspiration for my advice above.

I've kept the link as a back up plan for my own child after seeing my neighbours success with home ed/online learning www.interhigh.co.uk/ (I cannot for the life of me imagine my son coping in a London comprehensive environment).

Interhigh in the mornings combined with a support worker to help with life skills a couple of afternoons a week would give her a real fighting chance of a decent life methinks. The NAS looks like the place to look for the afternoon help as they'll know how to help her anxieties. Alternatively if she has a special interest like music or science or art you could hire a student to do specific activities with her along those lines.