Obtaining an educational statement from East Sussex

[imeverywoman]

Hi
I am interested in finding out what people's experiences are in obtaining a statement from East Sussex for their kids.
What was your experience?
Is their a difference between ease of obtaining a statement for boys v girls?
Getting a statement for a particular school. How difficult is that?
Has having s statement made a difference to the provisions for your child?
It's a wide ranging subject. Please tell me your experience as I am thinking of applying for a statement for my child. What am I in for? What are the dos and donts?
Thanks

To be completely honest I couldn't even get a diagnosis for my daughter while living in East Sussex & she had no support whatsoever in school because they refused to help without a diagnosis. After many years of fighting to find out what the issue was & being failed & fobbed off we took the drastic step of uprooting the family & moving county to start at square one again when my daughter was mid year 6. Her difficulties were spotted instantly as ASD within days of starting at her new school & she was diagnosed within months after a term at secondary school. She is now year 8 & school are applying for a statement for her. Better late than never. I suppose what I'm saying is, you will need to push hard to get anything. It all depends on if your child has a diagnosis or not & on the school for the most part. If its not working at school & they're not doing all they can to help your child then don't be afraid to move on. Good luck.

Thanks for that. We are going to try and get one for our daughter. But I'm not hopeful. I expect tribunals for getting the assessment done and if we get the statement, a tribunal to get our preferred school named to cover all the needs on the statement. So we are expecting a long and painful experience.

I live in East Sussex. We had to go private to get an ASD diagnosis for my son, who is now 14. Neither of his schools would ever apply for a statement, in spite of his obvious difficulties and inability to fit in at mainstream. Eventually, I applied for a statement myself and the LEA agreed, but by then there was a huge weight of evidence. Am now starting the process of negotiation over a suitable school.

It's an ongoing battle, I'm afraid.

LEA seem almost reluctant to accept anyone has any needs here. CAMHS appear worse than useless - they start you off and then disappear never to be heard of again (this has happened 3 times now, at age 6, age 10 and now 13) the lady from the small unit my daughter ended up at before Ive had to remove her and HE as an attempt to get them off my back implied that a private diagnosis was rubbish becvause you had paid for it so they would tell you what you want to hear.
Im fed up of the whole bloody lot of them to be honest.