Is this typical?

[pumpkinsweetie]

I asked for my child to be statemented back in July due to many asd traits, behaviours and sensory issues & we are now in the end of nov and last i heard, a month ago the senco says they are still gathering evidence!

Is this a normal timeframe or should i push them to hurray on with this process??

As it stands at present, my next stop is the nhs, but what else can i do to get things started and get my child the help she needs?

Tia

The school through the senco

I agree with polter. I think the best thing for you to do would be to apply yourself to the LA. The template letters on the IPSEA website make it fairly straightforward.

You/they don't need to gather evidence at this stage when it's just asking for SA. The evidence-gathering comes during the SA process itself, and it will be the local authority who does this by getting an Ed Psych/OT/SALT etc to assess your dd, not the school. So, sorry, it sounds like school is dragging it's feet. I think in your position I'd give the senco one last try, then tell her you're going to apply yourself (as Polter says, you just need a single letter which you can find on IPSEA website) - it just needs to state your dd's difficulties in brief at this point.

It can be harder without an official diagnosis, but the important part with that is when it comes to the evidence itself, not the initial applying.

The other advantage of applying yourself is that you can re-apply if they turn you down initially. I think that school can't do so.

Also worth pushing via your GP for an assessment with a view to diagnosis, if you aren't already doing so.

And in the meantime, push school for as much support as possible, even without a statement. It sounds like they agree that she needs support, so she should have an IEP and TA support. Ask for a meeting to discuss this. It's difficult but you have to be pushy.

Sorry, in case you didn't know, SA = Statutory Assessment - the process the local authority goes through to determine whether to give a Statement or not.

I was told (and it was true in my case) that parental requests for SA are given more weight than those made by school.

I was trusting school to do it too and they dragged their feet massively. The Head made some disparaging remarks about "parent power" but we've ended up with everything we wanted despite their "evidence" not being at the standard they were happy with, so two fingers to him.

In my LA parental requests for SA had a 1 in 3/4 success rate compared to a 80% success rate for schools. The educational psychologist said to us that parental request in our LA was very unusual with the implication that was why we were turned down.