Enhanced provision for S&L difficulties

[Ahhhcantthinkofagoodname]

Hi everyone
DS is 3 and a bit and has verbal dyspraxia and ASD diagnoses. He's due to start school in sept 2014 and we're about to start his statement application. He can barely say anything that someone who doesn't know him would understand. His NHS speech therapist has recently mentioned she wants DS to be observed by the lady in charge of a speech and language unit that's attached to a primary school in our area, though not close by.

The ofsted report says this: The school has specially resourced ‘Enhanced Provision’ for pupils with special educational
needs. All these pupils have a statement of special educational needs for speech and language difficulties. Up to 20 can join the provision at any time, from Reception up to Year 5. These pupils come from other local schools and some travel considerable distances to attend until they are ready to return to their local school.

It seems the SLT thinks DS might need to go there. Obviously the major advantage is he'll get more speech therapy. But we're worried he'll then have to switch back to our local primary school which will be disruptive. And another concern is will he get the same level of education he would in a MS class? How will the class work with kids so varied in age?

Does anyone have experience of this kind of thing? We can't work out whether we should jump at the chance for him to go there or if we should be pushing for him to go to lovely local primary school with great SENCO that we met a couple of weeks ago.

Go and look round and see how this school works. 'Enhanced provision' could mean anything. It will probably be that the children spend some time in the resourced class and some in the age appropriate mainstream one.

The thing to ask at the MS primary is:
"Have they any experience of children on the spectrum?"
"Do they have access to TA's with experience of ASD"-as its likely your child may need one of these.
Don't take the lovely senco at face value. They are governed by budgets and funding.
I plumped for the lovely primary with a great senco. Whilst she's still lovely, she cannot push my child's difficulties with support through where it matters. And i have a full statement. I'm now in a position of looking at special schools.
Go and view both. Ask the necessary questions.

..And do what i probably didn't do enough of, think about how your child's needs will be addressed and helped.

Thanks for the advice vjd and Lesley... Any more people able to help? I'd be especially interested to hear from anyone whose DC went to a speech and language unit or who started reception non-verbal. Thanks

As others say - go and look round. I used to work at a school where there was a Res Base for Sp,L,&C difficulties, and over the course of time have visited 4 others - they all work differently.
The general perceived advantage of a res base over a special school is that the children spend some of the time in the mainstream class, and some of the time in the res base. It's unlikely all the children from R -> Yr6 would be in the Res Base together. Generally, as they get older, they spend proportionally more time in the mainstream class.
The advantage of being in a school with a res base is that ALL the staff (including dinner supervisors, office staff etc) are used to having children with similar difficulties in their care, and will often have had training, but will certainly have experience.
You have to go and see though, as the 3 I've looked at this year all operate differently. None of those three expected the children to move out to a different mainstream school though, as / when / if they were ready, they stayed at those schools, but wholly in mainsteam. Some children didn't stop being in the Res Base until the left the school at end of Yr6

My LA tried to place my DS in a very similar unit. However, I appealled at Tribunal because my DS's primary need is severe dyslexia and the unit the LA named was a speech and language unit (SLU) attached to a mainstream primary school with absolutely no experience whatsoever of dyslexia. At Tribunal, the LA tried to argue that dyslexia is a speech and language issue so that my son's needs could be meet in this unit.

So yes I did appeal against a speech and language unit(and won),but only because this unit did not meet my son's primary need of severe dyslexia. But that said, I was very very impressed with the unit and the staff. I was, and still am, very impressed by the commitment of the head of this unit. She was professional, diligent and highly experienced in teaching children with speech and language issues. If it wasn't for the fact my DS's primary need is dyslexia, I would have immediately accepted this unit because of the commitment of this teacher (I said as much to the Tribunal judge). My solicitor and I went through a very lengthy process in rejecting the unit - including me meeting the staff and doing very extensive Freedom of Information (FOI) request on the school and its SLU.

Go have a look round with a totally open mind. Take all your questions and ask to see the head of the unit. Ask if you can quietly observe lessons both in mainstream and in the unit. Ask and look at everything in the entire school setup. Here are some generic questions for you (my solicitor asked these, and many more, as part of a very extensive FOI request):-

• How many pupils attend the primary school

• What is the average class size (both mainstream and SLU)

• How are pupils' progress measured

• How many children are Statemented in the unit? How many School Action? How many School Action Plus

• How many children have verbal dysprexia

• How many with ASD diagnosis

• How many with

• What formal qualifications do the teachers have in

Those are excellent questions Towiela, my child went to a MS primary with a resourced class for children with a wide range of disabilities. They said they had a SALT on site, that actually meant she used an office there and the kids had very little contact with the SALT, once a half term if they were lucky.

Hi ahhhh,

Im in a similar situation to you, my dd will also be starting reception next year and she has speech delay. I recently visited a primary school with a s&l unit. I booked an appointment with the inclusion manager who was just delightful and really thorough. They are divided into 2 classes, rec to year 2 and year 3 to yr6. Children will have registration with all MS children and be taken to the lang unit for 2 periods. They have a break with other children n then spend the afternoon session in the MS class with the support of a TA/SALT.

The lang unit itself has specialist TA who have been trained by a SLT, a specialist Teacher and a SLT. Everything in the classrooms is very visual based, they do lots of activities around speech (the kind salt do). They have a white board, educational toys/equipment.

I was told that my dd needed to have a statement emphasising speech to be the area of need, the child also needs to have average or above cognition skills (that doesnt make much sense, but basically needs to have average academic abilities), so they usually accept children with a specific speech impairment but i did see a couple of children with ASD. Also, if a child was making a lot of progress in one group they could join the higher class, so a yr2 child can join the y3-6 class.

The inclusion manager gave me a tour of the whole school and told me of the progress some of the children made, a few boys n girla came in with little spoken lnguage, and are now in y3/4 not needing to access the lang unit but still recieving some input from salt/ta help.

I also found that they had small classroom groups for children with ASD, so alrhough they focus on language, they also have a lot of provision for other special needs.

Sorry of some of this doesnt make sense, its just off the top of my head from my visit a few weeks ago.

Im very happy with the school tbh and i think you definitely need to go and have a tour because your experience might be different from mine.

Cba to correcr my spelling mistakes im sure you the the gist

Go and look. In our area we have 'enhanced provision' and it is NOT a unit. It is a mainstream school and the children are in mainstream classes of 30 with no guaranteed TA support. The school has specialist teacher and TAs on site but these have to provide support not just to the children in the enhanced provision but to dozens of children in other schools via outreach. Try and speak to parents who use the Enhanced provision to find out exactly how much specialist time your child will get. In our area its really little different than being in mainstream - and in some cases worse because the children lose 1:1 TA would have in their own school. There is a 'base' but I know children who only get to use it 10 mins a week and don't see the specialist teacher from one month to the next. So you have to go and look and ask lots of questions because unit / base / enhanced provision can mean vastly different things in different LAs. Here its little more than a gatekeeping measure / extra hoop to jump through before SS. They hold it out as being super specialist, but its really not. 99% of the time the child is in a mainstream class with a mainstream teacher who will have had a bit of extra training over a teacher in another school.

Wow thanks so much for all the info and advice. Hopefully going to arrange a visit in the next couple of weeks but so useful to know the sort of stuff to look out for.

Seems the general consensus is that these places are better than normal MS tho - assuming they are suitably geared to the child in quetstion's needs. Our view is that although DS has ASD it's his speech twhts the primary problem at the moment so maybe it would be a good option for him.

Any more for anymore?!

If you have a Proposed Statement, watch out that your LA doesn't remove any 1:1 provision when the Statement becomes Final. My DS's Proposed Statement had over 22 hours 1:1. This mysteriously vanished from the Final Statement with absolutely no explanation whatsoever - it would be far too much to expert my LA to have consulted with me over these hours before removing them.