what is an annual review and who is involved?

[chocjunkie]

we received the final statement for DD (will start YR in sept) in june and put in an appeal last week. I haven't told LEA about the appeal; they will be informed anyways. final statement was the same as the proposed statement, none of my concerns/objections were taken on board when issuing the final statement.

I suppose LEA heard it through the grapewine that we put an appeal in (I mentioned it to a couple of other people involved with DD's statement). surprise, surprise, I received yesterday in the mail a 'proposed amended statement' following the 'annual review'. the final statement (against which we appealed) was only issued in june 12, so no annual review due until next year.

anybody any idea what they are playing at? what does the new proposed statement mean for the appeal we put in recently against the recently issued final statement?

just to be clear - we were not involved in the annual review (neither was the SALT not EP) - hence I am so surprised about the 'annual review' that has allegedly taken place.

anybody?

as said, no AR took ever place and the 'evidence' used for the AR are the reports they used for the statutory assessment (dated Dec 2011). AR would have only been due next year .

How confusing! Does your child have funding already in place? Could it be for this? Ds has no statement but has an annual review every year to look at his funding and whether or not a request for it to stay the same/increase / decrease.
Anyway... It goes like this. It is usually us, the senco, anyone else we want to take . we are asked to inform them who before hand.(. I sometimes take a friend to take notes, prompt me with things I may have forgotten to ask). We are given the paperwork with reports from all of ds's teachers and TA s a few weeks beforehand. Ds and I both fill in bits ... Then we send it back... Then we meet.
We usually review the iep while there too.
Then I get a letter a few weeks later with outcome.

thank trout. DD has a statementfor when she starts reception in Sept (statement came recently through and we appealed).

I have no idea what the annual review is that has (according to the cover letter) taken place. no it has not. i was not there, school was not there...

I think this is just another delaying and time wasting tactic. cannot make sense of it really.

think I will try to reach ipsea...

Well as the veteran of many annual reviews, it is usually a meeting and you would have been invited.
Do you think it could be just a case of some poor clerical officer sending out the wrong standard letter with the proposed amended statement?

no idea.

the thing is - we put in an appeal against the shitty final statement. i did not tell LA but I think they heard about it from school or Salt or nursery. we just appealed, so they have not had the official notification from the tribunal and i wonder if this is a kind of strategy related to our appeal... i just cannot make sense of it.

I don't know about annual reviews - DS has yet to have one, but a proposed amended statement is exactly that "PROPOSED" so this has no bearing on your appeal except that it shows they are trying to move towards your amendments ( or not?).
Do not do anything about your appeal. Let it trundle on and in the meantime keep on negotiating with the LEA about your amendments.

Sounds like a balls up. Not surprising we received many many incorrect letters. The LA can issue a new statement at any time - bizarre I know but true. Is the new proposed statement any different from the one you have appealed against?

If it is different - and you still disagree - you can ask the tribunal to amend the appeal to cover both statements. Our LA issued a second final statement (they added a bit of extra funding) after we had appealed and we just wrote to the Tribunal making it clear our appeal was against the initial one and the second one.

But first I would check if the LA intended to send you this letter and has not got you mixed up with someone else. I would do this in writing. It is always helpful when going to tribunal to get stuff like this in writing in case it is the start of mind games.

What you do not do is withdraw your appeal. So if they say you have to wait for a new right of appeal once they have issued the second final statement thats wrong. Your appeal against the first statement stands and you can roll into that appeal anything new the LA throw at you.

thanks agnes.

the new proposed statement is slightly different from the final one (the one we appealed against) but still not what we want.

i will write to the LA. suppose this proposed statement needs to finalised to be included into our appeal, doesn't it?

AFAIK you would have to be given notice etc of an annual review, especially if it is brought forward for extraordinary reasons.

Yes, write to the LA asking for clarification of why you received a further Proposed Statement on x date after already finalising on y date. Ask if this is an error.

Inform them that for their info, you had already lodged an appeal against 1st statement. If the 2nd final one was not sent in error, and you are still not happy with it, inform them you will be appealing against both statements.

Copy in SENDIST. At the very least as agnes says, it will show the tribunal what incompetent twits they are, and more probably the fact that they are playing mind games with you.