I think this is a load of bulls%$% but i wanted to double check my thinking with you mums.
Appealing statement, so LA increase hours of support as previous mainstream school was needing to provide 1:1 full time.
But even though we only had 9 hours stated of asd specialist support brought in by the school originally - the reality was that the original school were actually needing the asd teacher support approximately for double the time. We showed that this was being provided by the school for the last 12 months (preschool and first term in reception).
Cut a v long story short- moved ds (asd) out of ms ofsted outstanding but non inclusive to a new ms - starts next week.
LA call me today to say they agree to full time support but not to increase asd specialist teacher support because IT WOULD BENEFIT ME (?!) as the school could then say they wont take my school because his needs are too great.
The school are very inclusive and agree to my OT and SALT coming in. (which i have said i would pay for as LA say can only offer twice a term and no OT in authority). I also spoke to them weeks ago and they said it was just a question of funds being given to school to buy in the asd support, which support that is (council/asd outreach) isn't a problem.
I need to think pragmatically about this.
LA will give us 9 hours asd support and another asd child in the year above has 9 hours also so will double up and have autism outreach come in (my preference over asd council support). This was the LA's proposal to me. I checked with the other mum and she is happy with this too.
They also have secured my ds a place at ss for sept as the ss is full till then. But they are saying (in an underhand way) that if i fight this asd support hours- they could in theory remove this ss place from my ds for sept and say "if ms fails again in July we will then apply for a ss"- and there are only 8 places available so if we wait till july gauranteed they will be full again for the academic year sept 2014.
Do i take the LA's offer and speak to the school later on about buying in more autism outreach support if required? Thus keeping the ss place for my ds in sept, or fight it?
Its the only sticking point left on the statement and i'm thinking a better use of my funds would be to just buy that extra support in if my ds needs it, get the ms on board and keep the ss place for when this ms place fails.