ABA Statement funding for more than 39 weeks per year.

[boobybum]

Hello,

Can anyone who has ABA funded for more than just the 39 weeks a year of term time let me know what arguments you used. It seems obvious that we would need any ABA to continue during the longer school holidays otherwise there would be regression but I am hoping that you could let me know how you argued your cases.
Thank you.

Booby(LOL!) we tried and didnt get it. In the end we decided to do reduced hours and self fund during holidays.

Well Autism isn't only a term-time condition is it?

And good habits/behaviours for learning need regular undisrupted practice. By teaching in the holidays you will reduce the number of overall years the ABA is necessary as you don't have any learned lessons wasted by regression and required to be retaught.

Yup we got extra for the holidays in fact (16 hours a week normally, 25 hours a week for the summer holidays) and that was the exact argument (in fact we did not even have to make the argument as the judge said "I suppose you will be arguing that more is needed in the holidays to maintain progress and prevent regression", and I just said "exactly so"!).

We have 48 weeks (I know so lucky). We just had ABA recommendation for that. LA argued wholesale against ABA (saying it was rigid, abusive, expensive, unnecessary) and were so sure of themselves they didn't try and pick the argument apart eg by saying to tribunal if you do order ABA it should only be x not y. So when they lost they lost the whole shebang.
Since then it has come up at annual review and we've just said it's what he needs to maintain rate of progress. Progress has been really good but he's still well behind peers. When LA says we don't have to offer best education only appropriate, I say given he's still behind how can you argue it's appropriate for him to have less and let the gap get bigger.

From our point of view DS has made most progress in the 4 weeks each summer when he has uninterrupted 1:1 ABA and no school. It allows time to intensively target certain areas, it allows over learning, it means he makes some ground up on peers or at least doesn't fall further behind (because generally the gap is getting wider and if we stopped for 6 weeks it would be wider still). On a practical basis DS cannot cope without structure and routine, 2 weeks off is about his limit then his repetitive behaviours increase and he becomes more reluctant to engage or do anything not of his choosing, if he had 6 weeks off it would be like losing months behaviour wise. Plus if he wasn't in ABA he would need social care funding for 1:1 holiday club during school holidays (2 recent legal cases say other public costs can be taken into account when considering cost placements). But so far we haven't been pressed too far. If I had a set budget I would always choose less ABA year round than term time only ABA because of the downsides of stopping.

DS always starts in sept ahead on NC levels he was at in July, not because we work on academics, we don't, but because his language always makes a big leap over summer due to extra 1:1 time. He has same aba staff in school and out so it also means he's not coming in to a new class and new staff in sept. This makes up for the fact each new teacher takes about 6 months to get up to speed on DS, changing class is so frustrating not because it bothers DS but because we have to start teaching the teacher about DS (and autism) all over again (sigh)