ABA in school

[salondon]

My questions never stop, do they?

Background - 4y2m old non-verbal daughter with autism. Started copying sounds. No acedemics, not potty trained outside home. No peer interaction yet.
VB ABA program - 12 hrs at home+10hrs in day care.
Statement has 10hrs/week (50week/year) - LSA support. Will go up to 25hrs/week during term time when she starts reception. We are appealing to get VB/ABA on the statement
She starts school in Sept 2014. Currently we fund the training of the LSA.(They agreed to use our existing tutor)

Question - I am visitng the local infant schools and they are all saying almost the same thing to me. Most havent heard of ABA, some have. They are happy to have a child with autism in their setting. they have other kids on the spectrum and they are well-supported (as per the statement). They are not sure of the funding for ABA. They say the statements dont come with funds anymore and they now have to find the money from their own budgets.

Now, I realise statement has nothing to do with funding and that funding is between school and LEA. However, as a parent, I dont want that come septemeber, all the support my daughter gets, is pulled away because the school cannot afford it.

What would you do? How do I decide on the school if they are all saying the same thing when it comes to ABA (And where my daughter is at the moment, nothing else matters - if they will run ABA 25hrs/week with her, that is all she needs as of now - confirmed by an independent EP earlier this year)? Would you pick the nearest "good" school(the "outstanding" schools have such outstanding parent-fobbing-techniques, its eye watering)? Our local school is "good" and I know a few mums (from nursery drop offs) and they are all happy with the progress their kids are making.

Sal
'school don't know what ABA is'. You can't stop them talking to LA - and LA will almost certainly talk to them and put them off ABA. You can explain evidence base and that LAs dislike it because of cost, invite the school to watch some, ask them speak to your provider / tutor and if you know other ABA families who have a school which has had ABA then I will see if HT in other school will talk to HT in current school. We did it that way and school was reassured talking to another HT.

'What happens if all the schools say no to ABA'
You get a type of school named on the statement with ABA so DS statement says LA to fund x hours ABA programme and provide access to a mainstream school. And then says ABA and PT placement in mainstream. If you win the LA is obliged to find a school which will accept ABA. Once we had won (DS was still at nursery) and then approached schools with the ABA and mainstream wording already on the statement we had no difficulty getting schools to agree and no interference from LA putting schools off ABA (if they had they would have had to fund private school on top of ABA!)

'finding a co-operative school'
we found a few were interested. But if that fails find local ABA parents and ask which schools have previous experience of ABA / their kids go to (obviously depends where you live, we are unusual here to do ABA) but some areas have pockets of parents doing it.

'how did you get tutors in'
by fighting it at tribunal. In fact this never came up as the LA fought the entire ABA package / approach. They were so certain they would win and we would lose it didn't occur to them to make any arguments about the components of the package. We offered a few options of using TAs, indep tutors and our provider's tutors. The LA used our most expensive costings (of using 100% provider tutors, 35 hours, 48 weeks). Their aim was to show the tribunal how vastly expensive our programme was and what an inefficient use of resources. Unfortunately they failed to prove their alternative worked for DS, so the tribunal was left with one (ABA) option on the table. As the LA made no comment on the different scenarios of running the programme, on no of hours or no of weeks the Tribunal used the highest figure the LA quoted and awarded us the whole lot. And then they added on SLT we said as we had ABA we didn't need. Our LA acted appallingly and messed up at tribunal and clearly lied at tribunal and lost on every point. The tribunal used their own inflated figures against them (what we actually spent the year after we won was £4k less than the tribunal had awarded). So we walked away with far more than we ever dreamed hope for. We fully expected to have to compromise on using TAs etc but didn't have to. For me there would have to be training and supervision of TAs costed into the programme.

So I would say cost the best programme and see what happens. You compromise at the end if you have to, but don't compromise from the start.

'what if regresses with untrained staff'
This is what would happen to DS if untrained staff were used. He's done ABA for 4 years now and still needs it. In many ways its got easier as he's got older as his needs are much more obvious and school staff see how expert ABA staff are at dealing with him - and are able to compare him to other children in school with similar needs and no ABA who don't do nearly as well. If LA removed ABA and took us back to tribunal then we would only have to use TAs for a short time to prove his education would fall apart. Its not even really about ABA anymore, its just he needs autism specific education and probably always will. We didn't know that at 3, but now thats pretty clear.

Agnes - I have offered all of this You can explain evidence base and that LAs dislike it because of cost, invite the school to watch some, ask them speak to your provider / tutor and if you know other ABA families who have a school which has had ABA then I will see if HT in other school will talk to HT in current school.

No other ABA families in the school. The schools are almost scared of the LEA. I dont understand how can a future school feel threatened? If its on the statement then they have to implement it and any forward thinking HT and SENCO(and believe me some are forward thinking, you can tell they are interested) not get excited at the prospect.

I agree with this approach Once we had won (DS was still at nursery) and then approached schools with the ABA and mainstream wording already on the statement we had no difficulty getting schools to agree and no interference from LA putting schools off ABA . My daughter is in the (not the school)nursery too and they are allowing ABA. I was hoping once the tribunal agrees to ABA, the primary school will see no problem. However, Fiona suggested that I sort the school before the tribunal date. I think its because then we can have the school in the statement itself.

if they had they would have had to fund private school on top of ABA!) - Can you believe there is no private school in our borough. We just cannot fund an independent place and ABA.

we are unusual here to do ABA Me too:(

We used Fiona she was great. I agree if you have a school on board perfect. If not then you can ask for a type of school+ABA and find the school later. Especially if the LA is putting schools off ABA. Just saying that not having a school on board is not necessarily a deal breaker as far as tribunals are concerned. They can name a type not a specific school.

LEA opposing anyone going in (even consultant) on grounds that it is not necessary as school can deal with everything themselves (this is a non-verbal child with no social skills, who has only just come out of very serious self-harming behaviour with use of ABA!). School (head and SENCO) both forced to agree with their paymasters at tribunal hearing. But not what they really feel.

Dude's mum - this is exactly what I fear. Even if I was to find the training of the lsa the school won't let/be allowed outsiders in. I have no idea how to covince them that this isn't woodoo

Sadly, our school is totally on board with the ABA programme, but the LEA is opposed, so keeps them in their place.

We had this. It's the strategy a lot of LAs employ. When we were going to tribunal a letter was sent around to all of the HTs of all of the local schools saying that they were not under any circumstances to agree to ABA as it was barbaric and would give control to a mother who would subsequently make their life difficult.

The schools in the LA are told to go to tribunal and say that they would not be happy to have ABA or ABA consultants in their school in the hope that a tribunal would find it difficult to impose a provision on a headteacher who was so against it for the bad relations it would cause between parents and school.

I don't know what the answer is. At one point it looked like a potential solution was to get a tribunal to agree mainstream plus ABA and when no maintained school came forward, present a case for independent who would and get that funded.

We have already got mainstream with full time one-to-one, plus intensive ABA programme on our statement (although, as I have banged on about ad infinitum, we have fully funded the ABA so far despite it having been on the statement for nine months now). We are waiting for tribunal ruling on how often our tutor can go in to school.

(LEA are also clearly intending to take the ABA off the statement come next review so it will be a fight all over again of course).

Dude's mum - I know very little about how local authorities work on this sort of thing. However, common sense tells me that it the ABA consultantation was on the statement the school should have contacted (your? Was your consultant named btw) the consultant and paid them for the visit. Your case confuses me. I don't envy you.

Star - I am sure that my LEA have already started telling schools that ABA is barbaric. What gives me hope is that my day care is happy to run it. The LEA EP and Special needs advisory teacher came to the statement planning meeting. They agreed that ABA was covering the statement(which in doesn't have ABA on it yet) objectives and let us continue ABA. Why the primaries are so hostile is beyond me. Our tribunal and sub annual reviews are going to co-incide. It will be a mess