what school??

[jogalong]

Very traumatised.
Psychologist recommended d s go to an asd unit attached to a main stream school. We went and visited one today and feel it's totally unsuitable for our child.
5 OUT of the six kids were non verbal and some were in nappies. D s is fully verbal and toilet trained since he was 2.5.
The other kids just seen to be more severe whereas d s is diagnosed as mild.
Has anyone else felt the placement was not appropriate and what did they do about it?
He will be 5 in Sept and is currently in mainstream playschool with sna only for two of those days.

I think you should look at more than one unit if you can. Different units can have different peer groups. Also talk to them about how they operate - it could be that your ds will in practice spend a lot of time supported in the mainstream rather than in the unit.

DS (ASC, age 7) is verbal (sort of - he has lots of language but it has to be coaxed out of him). Little social interest in other children. He has typical spiky profile - some parts of P scales are still yawning gaps. Strengths in reading, maths, spelling and any rote learning. Overall he comes out at NC level 1 in Year 2, but within that hides severe autism and language difficulties. He has full-time ABA support in and out of school and still attends school part-time. The mixture of 1:1, small group and whole class works for him.
We are in process of moving him from a mainstream school which took the view educating him was the 1:1's job and not the teacher's (his teacher rarely spoke to him and didn't have a clue what his targets were and never provided any individualised work for him), to a school which does seem to understand there is a requirement to provide an individualised curriculum to some children.
The idea he will be isolated if not doing the same work as other children is one we come up against but more in the context of the teacher not wanting to be bothered to provide a different curriculum for him. So they say if he doesn't do speech marks when the other children are he will be socially isolated and not included. When we say rubbish he can have social interactions about passing the scissors and children don't talk about work all the time anyway. The old school kept giving him the same work and left his 1:1 to try and pull something relevant from it - but that led to him not learning because the work was not the right next step for him.
So it is a tricky business finding the right school. We have decided to stay with mainstream (for now) as he is bright and able and ahead in some areas (reading, maths), he does really benefit from being around nosy, bossy, social NT children who persist with him. But thats not to say in 2 years time we may feel the gap is too wide and he isn't gaining as much.
I do like that mainstream school is preparing him for the real world. I think SS would not challenge him as much, not just work wise but in tolerating the noisy, busy world around him. He copes well at school and has few sensory issues and is gaining from being around a mix of children and learning to cope with the unpredictability of it. The alternative here though is not ASD specific but generic LD SS. If we had schools or units for HFA I may feel differently.
If you go for mainstream then you do have a legal right to that but I would suggest really sussing out their attitude to SN as on paper our first school looked fine, but turned out to be anything but. Asking to see (anonymised) targets sheets etc for other children with SN in school can be useful to see how often they are updated (weekly, termly etc)
The thing about mainstream with a unit attached is your child should be able to spend a % of time in each???