Evidence for SA - all my reports say "do not duplicate"

[WhoKnowsWhereTheTimeGoes]

I am collating my comments as to why DS requires SA, I was planning to copy and attach all his old SALT, OT, Ed.Psych reports and have noticed that they all say "cannot be duplicated without permission" on them. Where does that leave me? If I send them in do they have to be disregarded? Can I quote comments from them in my own comments?

Wtf?

Are they LA reports?

They are NHS ones (SALT) and the EP ones are LA.

I can't imagine how that could possibly be enforced tbh, or that it had ant legal standing. Either they meant what they said or they didn't. Similarly you're the LA and NHS surely already have copies .

Well, I guess if they actually do the assessment they would get it all then, but I am anticipating difficulty persuading them to assess, so I was trying to get as much as possible in up front. All the guidance I have been able to find from the LA is for the parental advice during the assessment, not beforehand. I'll send it in, the worst they can do is disregard it.

I had this on some reports too but I just ignored the 'do not duplicate' and used them anyway?

Think about it - is the sky goig to fall in? If the professional is competent and has belief in their own abilities they should have no qualms about sharing them with other professionals. The only other reason is confidentiality but it's your and your child's confidentiality after all - nothing to do with the report writer.

My view is tat it's evidence. Your evidence so stuff the precious feelings of the report writers who have been paid to do their job.

Just use them

Yep. I'd just copy anyway. If anyone asks say they are the originals and shrug.

And from now on in, put exactly that on every single one of a YOUR communications with the LA - ha ha.....

Seems to me that if they're reports about your child, you are the only person with a right to say whether they can be copied or not.

I had that on an Ed Psych report, a few years ago and wanted to submit it for a DLA claim. He said that it's there for the sake of confidentiality, so where I needed to use it for my own official purposes, there was no problem.

It might not hurt to double check, anyhow, if at all possible.

I'll mention it when I speak to Parent Partnership again, thank you. The SALT one says not to be reproduced without permission of the SALT Dept, XYZ NHS Trust, so it looks as though it isn't up to me, but the only reason can be for patient confidentiality really.

What they gonna do if you copy a report about your own child?

Put you in prison?

I just don't want to spend hours picking through it all and copying it only to find it's inadmissible.

Ahh...yes. Different departments word things differently. My county's SALT department says 'Not to be used for Statutory Assessments - contact department in case of query' or something similar.

In other words, they don't want their general reports being used for official diagnostic purposes, and I can kind of see why:

Say they are seeing a child every month. On month one, they comment on attention skills in the main, with plans to focus on expressive language next time. Next time, their report mainly focuses on expressive language, with some reference to the other areas also.

If one of those reports was taken for SA, then they'd have a view from SALT, but not an overall assessment.

So in short, I think it's to protect the child and the department from having incomplete reports (in terms of overview, rather than inaccuracy) used to form a judgement from that professional.

There is absolutely nothing to stop you using any of those reports to justify SA, at all. Once they've decided to assess, they'll ask SALT for a formal report, anyway.

Thinking back, we were given quite vague SALT reports and not much to go on in terms of prognosis. The actual SA report diagnosed 'severe' speech and language delays. Pity the SALT hadn't mentioned that at the time....

WhoKnows..

I quite understand your reticence as (forgive me) you are new to this game but I can assuer you that when you've been dealing with this sort of stuff for a while you will read that 'don't duplicate' nonsense - and treat it with the disdain it deserves.

Supporting a child with SENs /SNs is difficult enough without looking over your shoulder to make sure you're not upsetting anyone.

After a while you won't care who you upset because they'll certainly have upset you

Ignore the instruction - use the report - stop worrying.

Exactly it from Lougle - it's not being used for SA, it's being used to try and get SA in the first place. And I am cherry picking all the worst bits for that purpose. However it wouldn't be right to use them for SA as that is not what they were done for and they are old, for me they are to show that DS's problems are longstanding, complex and have not been resolved by the input he's had to date.

Wet - it's not so much about not wanting to upset people as not wanting to waste my time, I am finding it all very difficult and heavy going and I don't want to waste my energy by spending hours on something that will get dismissed out of hand (although I realise the entire application almost certainly will!).

They cannot be 'dismissed' by the LA or any other decision-makers. They are the opinions and observations of agencies and individuals that have been / are in contact with you child.

They would not dare 'dismiss' - they could be negligent if they did and failed to notice information you had provided to them.

A request for a statutory assessment is actually quite a low hurdle. You really don't have to spend hours and hours making a detailed case. It's not necessary. You just need to provide sufficient evidence for the L to consider an SA may be necessary. That means short letter + a couple of photocopied reports to back up your claim.

Yes, the LA will probably refuse - it's becoming the norm to refuse and only to reconsider that decision if the parent is persistent. They'll do that whether you've spent 2 hours or 2 weeks compiling your request for an assessment. Don't think you've failed (if that's what does happen and we are really prejudging this badly) because you didn't 'put in the hours' when making your request. My request took me about 45 minutes to do (back in the dark ages when parents weren't supposed to know that they could even apply for an SA).

There is no 'right' situation in which to use certain categories of report (you were saying upthread that it wouldn't be right to use certain reports for SA but OK to use them to secure the actual SA). I would resubmit everything again at SA stage. If you do it then becomes one of the Appendices of the Statement. These people deal with scores of SAs each year. You need to keep spoon-feeding them relevant information. Don't expect them to go looking for it each time it's required. Also, you need to refer to those reports in your Parental Advice to show (again at that stage) that his difficulties are long-standing.

It's a time-consuming businesss made even more annoying by the fact that a person at your child's school is being paid a wage to do this - but has shirked their responsibility and left it to you.