why would lea want a meeting at this stage pre tribunal?

[billiejeanbob]

hi i am fairly new here and have been recommended this site by a friend. I am in need of some advice as to how to play this meeting.
background - ds is in yr3 of ms primary. he has a statement that I req and school did not support application. statement is very washy and vague, however it equates to 20hrs of support a week. statement was finalised in December.

I have taken legal advice and my solicitor has prepared our case appealing against parts 2 and 3 of statement. I heard from my solicitor yesterday that lea have until the end of the month to respond to our case via the tribunal. I was called into school today for a meeting with ht and told that the lea have requested I attend a meeting on Friday with ht, senco, lea statementing officer and ep.
I am fairly sure this meeting is to pile on the pressure to drop the appeal. the ep attending meeting has only met my ds once and was totally against me even requesting the sa, she went as far to say ds will never be statemented.

please can anyone advise how I should play this meeting? thanks

Good move.

Billie - I kind of made that mistake. Well, I was misled. After we had appealed (and that was after my legal representative - Fiona slomovic and I had gone to meet the LEA once before the statement was finalised) and after all independent professionals had been in to the school to make observations, the school invited me saying that they want to review the targets.

My team recommended I go along because it's a benign meeting, that they simply want to have up to date targets. The Case worker and her manager weren even on the invite and no one hinted the b1tiches they were coming. I saw their names on the vistors register and went weak on my feet. They were already in with the school staff gathering all the info and I was asked to wait outside. This was minutes before the meeting

In the meeting, I was told its the biannual review(child under 5), 2 months early and had nothing to do with the tribunal. They made all sorts of accusations about how our intervention (ABA/vb) wasn't in line with the settings' principles etc. thank god for all the wisdom I gathered in this forum. I simply said to them, there is no need to change the statement lets talk after the tribunal. They wanted to see all the reports. I asked what for. And was told, so that they know the latest status and can review the statement accordingly. It was like others said, simply an information fishing excercise. No amount of being nice helps.

They even asked for a 2nd meeting after all the reports were in. On advise from this forum I didn't send them anything because no minutes were sent(I asked for them on email) and no one reminded me of my action. as a mother of a SN kid I tend to forget such actions

It's a dirty game they play.

Billie you can always say your solicitor has advised you to postpone until they can be there (or just go down with a bug and turn up with your solicitor for the rearranged meeting - and oh dear what a shame it's half term next week and their time is running out)
I very much suspect the LA expected you to trot along to school and not know until you got there all these other people had been invited.
The point is the LA has called the meeting, not school, so the fact the LA has not contacted you direct and with no notice is def dodgy.
Don't feel bad everyone else at the meeting got asked for their availability weeks ago it was deliberate to spring it on you at last minute. At least you now know what you are dealing with.
What you need to do next is FOI everyone for your child's file and see what back room dealing has been going on.

just to update you all - I contacted my solicitor this morning and he contacted the lea to decline my invite and asked that all correspondence is to go through him in future. lea then contacted solicitor with a choice of two dates for me (both are before their deadline to provide the tribunal with a response to our appeal).so they are digging their heels with a meeting.

You and/or solicitor may well have prior commitments on both those days though, mightn't you. But maybe your diary is more free, for example, after the evidence to tribunal is submitted

Or, you could simply be completely upfront and tell them, as suggested earlier, you are willing to meet them if they have a new proposal for you, based on your appeal submission, you are happy to hear it. They know what you want, they have your submission, so the ball really is in their court if they want to offer any constructive, substantive new proposal.