Private school/nursery not allowing ABA shadow

[zumbaleena]

Hello....am facing a peculiar problem. DD goes to a lovely private nursery and their concern is mainly lack of social interaction with her. She is under an ABA program at home and with 1:1 support can now ask other kids to play with her and do simple pretend play and stuff like Simon says and Musical chairs with other kids.

We would like to introduce an ABA shadow to kickstart her social interactive progress at school and are perfectly happy to pay for it. The school is refusing and wants to go down the council route and says I can show them some techniques which they can implement. DD is 3 now and if ABA shadow is allowed, we are confident she will do very well in life.

Any ideas on how to get the school to see reason? I have given a written presentation already and was thinking of aproaching them again towards end december with a specialist report from my ABA consultant insisting on an ABA shadow.

What about you suggest your ABa tutor goes in one morning to demonstrate a few techniques. Then she is as charming as pie,they see she is no monster,you suggest a follow up morning when they have tried it out. She makes sure to take lots of kids off their hands,maybe for a big game of Simple Simon. They see "ooh, a spare pair of hands, for free".

Make clear that,whilst in the nursery, your tutor is bound by school confidentiality (as in my experience the main worry of schools is that ABA tutors in the class all day will go blabbing to mums along lines of "my God,they do f* all the whole day, those lazy teachers"!)

And/or see on here if anyone in your area had a similar arrangement with a private nursery who they could talk to ,as it is probably fear of the unknown too.

If one of the children with SN's in the setting I work in was going to come with a shadow we would probably lock him/her in[the shadow that is]

I think it is a great shame zum but I guess it is fear of the unknown that makes people act like this

:-)))

the reply i've been given by headmistress is that it is unethical for the school to take more money from the parents (us) as we are already payign the fee. that other parents will look at our shadow and say oh! why is that child provided with a shadow...our child does not know the following and we can pay for a shadow to come and teach the same.

There is also option 3 - tell them sorrowfully that you will be looking around for another nursery, as you fear they are not able to help her overcome her social disability. Tell them you know of plenty of private nurseries that do this. After all, you are a paying customer, this isn't the state system!

I think I will go the whole hog of saying how my child needs special attention and it is so sad that even when I am willing to pay extra for it, she is being denied the same and is regressing big time in this nursery..that it is hurting her to be here than benefiting ....or is that too much?

I got the same spiel about "all the parents will want one" when I asked for an LSA for my boy in state nursery. I would keep it very polite,unemotional ,and just point out the obvs answer to such parents is that your daughter's case is a one-off due to her autism. This usually shuts them up - ie it isn't a case of special treatment but special needs! You could also bombard school with all the research on how effective early behavioural intervention is - eg my recent Professor Hastings posts.

A iron fist inavelvet glove - charm itself,but utterly determined.

They are NOT a "lovely" nursery if they are actively blocking the intervention that will help your child to overcome a significant disability. It's extremely unethical to deny a child who needs it, access to the help that would change their life for the better.

Without it her long term life prospects are seriously impacted - that's not showing a genuine concern for you child's welfare in the slightest. Ask why you were not informed that the nursery does not want children with disabilities on their roll?

If they are unable to accept the ABA shadow then sadly they are NOT the right setting for your child at this critical stage of her development, and you need to tell them so. Remove her if they do not change their stance as their refusal can be said to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding as to her support needs. This does not impact their staffing levels, nor their budget.

Could you perhaps have better success at a playgroup rather than a formal nursery setting with an ABA shadow?

thx bochead..u put it strongly for me to understd

They sound as if they are threatened by the fact that the shadow will be paid by you. Maybe it would be a good idea to have the supervised in to observe your dd and make recommendations. Perhaps also ask the nursery to give the ABA shadow a trial so that they can feel comfortable with her before agreeing to it on a permanent basis.

My ds' nursery timed their open mornings for when his ABA shadow was in there doing language group work.

Can you pay for one of their decision-making staff members to attend a treehouse training event? That should knock some common-sense into them.

zumba, - we were told this too, about other parents wanting to pay for 1:1s for their children.

But unless their children have SN, it is a non-argument. The law states that reasonable adjustments should be made, and that some children might need a specialist education. The 1:1 shadow covers both these arguments for a child with SN, but not a child without SN.

Of course, if they want to pay for this specialist intervention then that might be a solution!?

Do they already think you are a pita? Would they be quite happy or delighted in fact to lose your business?

DS' nursery not only wanted our business but wanted to pretend these social interventions were their own doing.

DS ABA supervisor was in on the day of the OFSTED inspection at nursery and they let the inspector think she was a member of staff, praise them on their SEN provision and give them an outstanding rating! This was the same nursery that didn't even bother to invite DS to take part in the Xmas production as they didn't think he would be up to it.

They were fed all sorts of lies about ABA for a year before tribunal by LA / outreach and then when we won ABA and they had to switch to an ABA programme told us after a week it was nothing like what they had expected. I think they thought he would be tied to a chair or something.

The nursery are going to have to let outside professionals like speech therapy, OT, outreach staff etc in so its no different letting a private adviser in. Presumably they won't refuse a speech therapist on the basis all the other children will want one too!