DS school refusing to meet with me about IEP!

[StarlightMcKenzie]

They want to liaise via email as his provision is multi-disciplinary and they don't have time to get everyone involved in face to face meetings, so I have a head of house who I liaise with, who liaises with staff and gets back to me.

I have the email addresses of the others and am allowed to email directly, but the above is the suggested route to ensure it is coordinated and joined up.

Why on earth couldn't any of Ds' previous settings have done this?

I must admit though, I'v been slightly thrown by not having a meeting on the horizon. No pleasing me I guess!!!!

what a good idea...I much prefer communicating via email. I lose the power of speech when faced with a room full of 'professionals' with files about ds, who have very obviously had a 'pre-meeting meeting' to sort out their party line.
Also you'll have the email trail so no chinese whispers.

I was going to suggest that perhaps an Indi special school needs to be efficient as they are just too busy to have meetings about meetings times no. of Chikdren in the school, - but I do know that state school teachers are also very busy (probably having meetings about meetings on other topics).

Seems to be efficient so far.

In previous settings, I would send an email to the office (as all teachers/professionals denied they had email addresses and they woukd print them out and put them in teachers pigeon holes and I'd never get a response unless I badgered for a few weeks, then there'd be a meeting where they'd do a mixture of ganging up against me and promising to deliver things they had no intention of doing, and then the whole cycle woukd repeat until they'd got through the school year and handed me and my Ds onto the next teacher.......

So far in new setting, emails have been responded to in 2 days and when I was slow at responding, called to check that I had received latest communication.

It's a different world I tell ya!!

The topic we are 'discussing' however is a whole other issue but it isn't blown up by additional frustrations about communication.

I was too tough. They were dark days.

We're also also in indi SS world...communication is so much easier.
Not all plain sailing, but I think forget sometimes just how bad it was in mainstream!

I would love to be able to communicate by email. I just seem to get lost in meetings, even though I prepare thoroughly and take briefing notes. I struggle with the verbal bamboozling the SENCO throws and me and nine times out of ten come out having no idea how I managed to agree to the opposite of polar what I wanted. It doesn't help that I have word finding difficulties and memory issues, which gives them the upper hand straight away at these meetings.

I thought it was just me until I took a PP representative to a recent meeting and she came out and said what a piece of work the SENCO was and how it's no wonder I need back-up. Even she got caught out and she has years of experience of dealing with these situations.

Crafty SENCO tagged on amendments to ds's IEP to the end of a meeting I'd requested last week, so now we have no IEP review and I'm pretty sure they will refuse to see me at the forthcoming parent's evening (which is what they did in y4) as they currently seem to be doing everything they can to stop his teacher speaking to me.

Thing is I have a 7 page Word document of problems that have arisen since our meeting a week ago, many of which are inextricably linked to each other with the result of causing a host of knotty problems for ds (and me) but having just had a meeting last week, I now have no way of getting them to address the issues. Even more annoying is the fact that the problems for the most part are coming out of the cock-eyed way they have ignored interpreted the statement, much of which is blatantly flouting rules and guidelines and purely designed for ease/flexibility of their own resources and nothing at all to do with meeting ds's needs or actually implementing the statement the way it was written. It's not even as if it's ambiguous fgs.

If I could email the relevant member of the team, I could deal with issues as and when they arise, instead of ending up with a huge list of problems that we need to meet to sort out. (Which is obviously a problem when they clearly aren't going to agree to another meeting.) I can't write to them, as there is just too much that needs to be said and I know how they'll react to a massive letter of complaint.

I'm at my wits end with it all really.

Similar problems with my GP/NHS living in the dark ages, as if email has never been invented. Two weeks to send my xray results less than 3 miles from the hospital to the GP's, even though they are digital and it would take two seconds and no cost to email them across.