UPDATE| ABA/VB in school

[salondon]

Hello all

I just wanted to update everyone on our statement situation and share some lessons learnt. First of all I want to thank every one on this board for all your help. I dont think I could have done this without you lot and Fiona.

So the background is that we have a non-verbal ASD 4y7m old girl. She is starting reception in Sept 2014. We started ABA/VB in Feb 2013 and self funded it. We then requested the LEA to provide ABA on the statement. LEA did not agree with our view that she was making progress on ABA and held the opinion that structured learning during school hours will be enough.

We ended up going to tribunal on that. Education other-wise at home and any education outisde of term time was rejected. In the hearing the current day care gave eveidence against ABA and ended making a fool of themselves by basically saying that even though they know nothing about Autism, never had an autistic or statemented child & can see progress in our daughter(she was getting 15 hrs/week of LSA support, which we were using towards ABA - this is the only sensible thing this day care had done so far), but dont agree with ABA/VB methods. The hearing was a long one and in the end it was adjourned because all the evidence could not be heard.

I had visited our school of choice in Jan 2014 and they had agreed to take us on with the condition that the statement should come with funding from LEA. I have no idea what that means. When the LEA approached them they refused to take us/ABA on. This was quite a shock to us. Most schools were refusing ABA/VB.

At the end of the hearing us and LEA decided to have a chat with the head teacher(who had come to the hearing). Thanks to the day care's evidence (which at that time seemed anti-aba) it became aparant to the head teacher that ABA is something worth looking into(I know!). Fiona spoke to the LEA, we did some iterations on the working document and finally got ABA/VB on it for 6 months(i.e. atleast till the next annual review). The head teacher has made it very clear to us that she wants to trial this. Now I know this is where the whole risk is. Our daughter has started in this school nursery with ABA support. The school can always say at the end of the summer nursery term that ABA isn't working and go against it in the bi-annual review. Fiona and other independent professionals we hired suggested to us that its worth settling and trying out for 6 months. I am not comfortable naming names here.. We are an Essex based London borough if it helps.

Lessons learnt:

1. Do not believe the LEA employees when they say you cant apply for the statement. Download this letter now and send it off recorded delivery.. The time starts ticking now...
2. Start collecting as much evidence as early as possible. Diagnosis has nothing to do with statement.
3. Minute every meeting.. I went with an i-pad in a meeting and kept minuting it.. Was very scary for a lot of people in that meeting and I kept on sending meeting minutes out. Copy everyone and their dog on minutes and clearly state actions and due dates. It does nothing more than send a message out that you are on the ball and will not let them get away with laziness.
4. Be friendly. Some of them are actually nice useful people. They wont usually say much against their employer, however, they will many times not say -ve things about your program either.
5. Find a friendly school ASAP. Took me a year to get here and looking back I dont think there is anything I could have done differently. I think the only thing I could have done differently,if at all, was to have my ABA/VB consultant visit the daycare more often. I did try to be honest. But that day-care mamager couldnt be arsed. (On that note, suprisingly he has asked my ABA worker to come and do 2 hrs/week with another serverly autistic boy!)
6. I dont think there is any point in hiding the fact that you are doing ABA. For some reason I did that and muddled everything badly.
7. Network and find out from other families what their experience was. I learnt tons by doing that.

That is all I can think of. IPSEA is a very good place to start

Thanks again. I will keep the group posted and keep posting questions(I already have one!)

Wow, this warrants an almighty bump! It's a tentatively good result, but people do seem to be opening their minds a bit, in the end, for all their protests. Hoping that the trial period does have a positive long term outcome.

Well done!

Not the outcome you wanted but a start. I don't know why schools welcome useless speech therapists into their schools then balk at ABA therapists. I'm sure 6 months is plenty to prove your point just get ABA staff to explain their thinking all the time. Schools are so often brain washed into child led play approaches they can struggle with adult led and tend to think poor child. So you need to explain and sometimes stand back and demonstrate what happens if you do it their way. Then they tend to catch on fast. Well done for hanging in there.

Well done salandon Your Dd is lucky to have such a great mum who keeps fighting for her and doesnt take crap off stupid people

Well done and thanks for posting useful stuff for other mums.

I found that once the teachers saw ABA working, and found having another pair of trained hands in class a good thing, they started being ABA advocates to the SENCO/head.

I always was fine if my LSA, say, took 2 or 3 kids off in a group with my boy to do something like counting: good for him in terms of group learning; good for teacher in terms of 3 less kids to watch.

Thanks everyone.

In our daycare also, the staff always loved my ABA worker. The management somehow didnt like it. I hope my struggle will help the other boy there now.

I don't want my daughter to have 1-1 alone all the time. There are times when she needs to be in a quiet area to learn and then she needs to be back with kids to apply that learning.

Yes Agnes. Not what we had hoped for. But Fiona said we should be reasonable and agree to a 6 mth review. I hope they will give us two full terms to prove ABA works and review us at Xmas and not before oct half term

You won't believe it, the school salt approached me in the first 10 minutes already! lol.

I am hearing more and more families are getting ABA albeit with a lot of fight. I think we are getting there.

Great news.
Agree with Agnes.
Six months should be sufficient to reveal the yawning chasm between ABA and the hard work of AB therapists versus the nebulous unmeasurable 'recommendations' of the play based brigade, which are,by and large, as much use as a chocolate teapot.l

And the good thing is if you show progress and they take it away they have to be able to match the progress, and will have to work to the precedent of measuring outcomes etc you have set up. So next time you went to tribunal would be 6 months good progress and then 6 months regression once ABA stopped. I am sure that's the reason we still have ABA because they know they can't hope to match it, or even come close so can't risk taking it away. If they took it away DS would go backwards and that would not play out well for them at tribunal. Chart everything, baseline, incidents self harm, aggression in school, social interactions etc etc. DS now has zero episodes aggression to others in about 2 years, take ABA away and give him choc teapot to look after him and it would be right back up. Try and get them to use p scales or pivats for behaviour and social so school have their own baseline separate from ABA against which to mark progress. LA will always treat ABA as somehow dubious and biased as they are being paid so it's important to get the school involved in assessing and measuring too as bizarrely schools views are given such weight.

That is very useful advice Agnes(see what I mean when I say I'd be lost without you lot).

I am sending this to my consultant NOW!

Just wanted to add one more point. This thread reminded me...

I wish we could have avoided the tribunal. We ended up spending ~£5K in reports which while useful, could have been avoided. That money would have funded a 30hr/week ABA/VB program for 2 months!

I got the impression that LEA don't want to be seen as 'dishing out' ABA/appropriate provision with a fight

Well done! I came across an Ed Psych who worked for the LEA who totally changed his mind about ABA over the time he worked on my daughter's case. It can happen sometimes ....

If anyone wants a quick, easy guide to ABA this booklet could be good

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/sh/cqsdqqhw5rrqo9b/-whr9Nw2hF/ABA4ALL_DrsLeaflet.pdf?dl=1&token_hash=AAGrsQJ8kdo2Ql8uNPY30JEwqjA70c7cU0GOi9RlO88H-w

That's great Sickof!!