LA have tried to frighten school out of offering a place

[zen1]

I knew this would happen. After several meetings with my local school over the past 9 months, they continued to emphasize they'd be happy to offer DS a place (his siblings already attend) and support him. He has ASD but none of his behaviours are particularly problematic except he has his own agenda so needs to be kept motivated (if he's not kept on task, he will just sit there pretending he can't do whatever's being asked of him). He also needs help with dressing and trips easily as he is hypermobile. He has no problem learning as long as the right method is found to engage him.

Anyway, the school even sent teachers to observe him in his pre-school setting and they reported back that they didn't think there would be a problem meeting his needs. After the LA sent his proposed statement through 2 months ago, they strongly suggested an ASD unit placement, which we felt would not be appropriate for DS. I responded that I wanted my local school to be named in part 4. I heard nothing for 7 weeks (despite going into school every week to find out if the LA had contacted them.) Last week when I went in (week 8), the school said they had been contacted by the LA. I was told that that the LA had strongly emphasized that they thought he would be best placed in a unit and basically tried to talk the school out of offering a place. Consequently, the school have now replied saying they would still offer him a place, subject to certain conditions (such as confirmation that he is toilet trained!) and have said they would want to hold an early review after one term. Can they do this? I wouldn't even have found this out had I not gone into school.

If they decided that DS shouldn't stay at the school when he'd barely had time to settle in, this would be really detrimental to him.

I know there are severely underhand practices going on in the LA, such as them telling me last October that they would not be issuing statements for children going into mainstream education from 2013, so I'm sure this is behind their desire for him to attend specialist provision.

I would write to the LA asking them to explain their actions and demanding that they provide copies of any correspondence/records of calls/meetings between themselves and the school.

Ask that you be included in any further discussions.

Sounds like a financial argument. Not your problem.
The toilet-training is a side issue, so feel free to ignore it.

I'm in the process of writing everything up (for my own benefit), then I will contact LA. The case officer did not respond to my emails asking which school they were going to name on the final statement. To complicate matters further, a transition meeting was called by DS's SN pre-school, despite the fact that we still haven't had final statement through. They were in the know as to which school would be named before we were. It's appalling.

But MumudeLulu -Zen has a right to be part of these discussions surely. They shouldn't be going behind her back

Mumu thanks for the link.

It's quite normal for schools to refuse to commit to a dc till the LA agrees to fund the necessary input. Probably reassuring that they know the rules.

Their 'early review' means an early crack at either reducing expensive provision, or rewriting the statement to get a bigger top-up. And since LA's tend to play information-sharing and provision-withholding games with schools too, they often want safeguards just as parents do.

However, 'normal', I would want to be part of this exchange.

Yes inappropriately, I was mightily pissed off with the school when I found out what was in their letter and that they hadn't thought to copy me in. The LA could have jumped on their assertion that "we are not completely confident we can meet all his needs", and used it as an arguement to not name the school. I'm still not completely confident as to which school will be named.

IE: yes, a moral right.
Possibly not a legal right, if they have one of those stupid disclaimers.

It was just the phrase "trial period" that worried me.

I haven't said anything about there being a legal right to anything. Just that I would want to be part of this exchange and would ask to be so.

Let them justify why you can't.

To be honest, I was thinking of making a FOI request to the LA to find out how many spaces are available in the unit and how many are not taken. I know I can't prove anything, but I hate that they're making decisions not in the best interests of the child.