tribunal looming. now LA wants to meet. Yay or nay?

[chocjunkie]

In a nutshell: we appealed DD's statement (part 3 as nothing specified & quantified).

The deadline for the LA to respond to tribunal is fast approaching and suddenly they want to meet to discuss.

Is this a good thing or not? I do not trust them.

LA know exactly what we what we want re statement. If they want us to withdraw appeal they basically could just change the statement. I haven't really anything i would like to negotiate. My pov is non-negotiable iyswim.

I am in two minds to meet.

Any thoughts on that?

Say you're also very keen to discuss but woukd like to do I via email.

They probably just want to meet you to get advance info on what your argument is, and to rattle you. You're probably right not to trust them. FWIW our LA settled before tribunal, made the changes we wanted after seeing all our evidence. They didn't ask to meet us, just agreed to make the changes. You're right, they could tell you right here and now if they were going to make the changes you want.

But you don't want to do anything that could be used by them at tribunal to make you seem unco-operative, so don't refuse to meet them outright.

So agree with Star, tell them you are very willing to hear anything they would like to discuss if they would like to send their comments to you by email.

I met with my LEA.
They knew what changes I wanted.
When I got there it was me the school, the new school ( DS moved up to High school) and the LEA. I was so glad I had DH and the parent partnership woman with us.
We were able to explain the reasons for all our changes. We were able to agree on lots of them straight away. They really hadn't looked and prepared. The LEA kept saying " so is this in a professional report?" and we would say "yes- look it says page 99, para 9 on the bit we want changed - here's the report" and point at the para.
There was stuff we wouldn't agree and DH was fantastic. He basically kept saying
" Well you don't agree with our wording and we don't agree with yours so what we need to do is find a form of wording we are both happy with. So what would you agree to?" ad nauseum until we thrashed most of it out.

We had to compromise a bit - but we ended up with so much more than we had expected and the things we compromised on were the less important bits - not Compromise not allowed to disappear from the statement.

One other thing the LEA said to us during this was that we could amend parent opinion to say what we wanted as no-one could challenge this. This meant we could use it in part 2 as an opinion to hang support on in part 3.

Thanks. Will discuss with DH. Might try the email route but pretty sure they won't like the idea of putting their lies into writing.

What do i have to lose in meeting them? They SA reports are really clear and the LA are basically just making a mockery of the sen cop by not specifying anything. Even refused to even mention 1:1 (even though reports say Dd needs ut FT).

I forgot but when our LEA decided to talk to us, I did e-mail and ask the purpose of the meeting who would be there and for an agenda in advance to gauge whether or not they were willing to amend the statement or if it was an information gathering exercise.

Yes, that was what we were advised to do too.

Thanks. Good idea. Will do that.