If you have a very high functioning child with ASD what's in their statement?

[Levantine]

My ds is your classic masks at school and explodes at home child. He has a dx of depression and his mental health has imploded over the past couple of days.

I need to write our submission for his statement application but am at a loss to know what to ask for.

He definitely needs a sensory diet and regular sensory breaks. He could do with some SALT around social skills - his pragmatic language is on the first percentile. He is extremely anxious about writing and finds it hard to get things from his head onto paper.

What provision has made a difference to your DCs? School don't seen to be very clear about it. He is 7 and in year 3.

I have ds2's statement open because I am doing the parental views for his annual review and these are the objectives:

To feel safe in his learning environment.
To successfully manage internal or external stimuli including sensory sensitivities and feelings of anxiety and anger.
To develop flexible thought processes
To develop age appropriate social skills including adoption of socially acceptable behaviour patterns.
To learn from a broad and balanced curriculum and achieve his potential
To maximise xxxx’s potential to communicate and to access a range of learning environment.

The statement was written whilst he was still in mainstream although he is now in specialist school.

For both ds1 and ds2 reduction of the anxiety is key and that has involved:

Giving him advance warning of changes
Clear rules and consequences
Lots of reassurance that they are doing the right thing at the right time - verbal and positive reward system
Adult support in group activities especially unstructured times like breaktimes so they can intervene swiftly when things go wrong.
SALT - pragmatics session but also (and probably more effectively) support throughout the whole day.
Appropriately differentiated work in both the things they struggle with e.g. inference and the things they are good at e.g maths.
Small class size

Thanks that's really helpful. I am getting stuck on what extra support he might need over over and above the £6k they should fund but that isn't my business really. So the thing to do seems to be to go right back to the basics of what he needs in order to function in school

My ds is also 7, in Y3 and HFA. His statement is slightly different from the norm as we fought to get ABA in at the start, just when he started school, and he still has 25 hours support written in though he really doesn't need it, nor gets it exclusively (which is fine by me). It now has a management plan built in which should be followed by any TA, covering every aspect of his life at school.

The crucial things for me are all about the social interaction side. A statement doesn't just hae to cover any academic support, or just support the classroom, but also playground time. My ds is very sociable and has friends, but finds it hard (obv!) to interact normally, can overreact, misunderstand rules of games, etc. Our plan covers support for all of this, and not just someone following him around babysitting for signs of trouble, but proactive sessions during break times, with peers, working on key social targets. Almost like informal drama sessions actually.

He also does (or should have if school get their act together) have SLT to work on social skills too.

But presumably you've had EP and SLT reports? All their recommendations of course must go into part 3 too.

Our main Learning Objectives are roughly:

To develop effective communication system
Develop social skills including accessing greater range of social contexts, develop meaningful friendships, and appropriate social interaction with peers
Develop play skills, both symbolic and social
Self -help skills
Develop capacity to manage change and transition
Develop awareness of safety and environmental risks

So with ours, all of these objectives are broken down into detail, and everything is done according to a based behavioural management plan, based on positive-reinforcement (ABA) approach.

Sorry I've just re-read your op, think I've misunderstood. Is this your first request for statutory assessment, or have you had it? What stage are you at? Because if at an early stage, you don't need to go into full detail about what you would like to see in part 3 yet. The first step is getting SA, the EP, SLT reports etc. Then comes the fight!

Have you looked at IPSEA website? ACE is also good (if it still exists). Both give you the guide to each step, and have model letters.

And are you applying for statement, or is school?

In the middle of SA and writing parent statement. Met with EP but she saw him on a good day and didn't do tests that I had expected eg short term memory, so I don't think she was inclined to see much wrong. Kept saying I can only assess what I see . To be fair to her he was in a good phase having only been back at school a week, he doesn't normally deteriorate until much later into term.

I see what you mean now bialy - I am worried though that he won't get a statement as EP I think won't recommend. I was thinking I would put in everything now.

I do get that she can only assess what's there but I wasn't convinced she was looking very hard. DS is a great masker and really goes up and down in how he is

We got our own independent EP and SLT reports, though that was once SA had been granted. Would that be an option? The indie EP saw ds at home too, which was useful.

I think getting school on side is crucial to you - the LA will take their view seriously at this point so if they say they need additional support for him that'll be very helpful to your case. And it isn't just academic support - anything can be a barrier to learning, including motivation, anxiety, language understanding, behavioural difficulties, sensory difficulties, anything that requires differentiated teaching (eg difficulty in organising and processing thoughts on to paper as you said above).

At this stage you probably don't need to specify in detail what support you think he needs in detail - rather, you could provide a list of all the difficulties he has arising from his asd, and how these are impacting on his participation at school. Go into detail about them, but it's not just down to you to list what he needs to support these needs - that's where EP, SLT etc come in, they're the experts! The important thing at this stage is that you give a full a picture as possible of his difficulties - once these are recognised and accepted, the draft statement will then set out how they mean to support him to help with those difficulties. That's the stage where you will negotiate on the amount and type of support he has. First step is getting agreement that his needs cannot currently be met by school alone.

His difficulties don't just men those at school - you can easily demonstrate that anxiety due to needs not being met at school is having an effect on him at home. Just the fact that his mental health has deteriorated so dramatically since going back to school is an example.

Are you applying, or is school? And are they backing you up on his need for support?

that's so helpful, thank you. We are applying but school supports the application. Can't stretch to indie EP unfortunately.

I sat down and wrote four pages of parental input last night and feel quite a lot more positive. He is very sociable but the chasm behind him is so enormous. It is so clear when it's all written down and so the general kind of support he needs becomes clear too.

One last thing - what sort of length should the parental submission be?

As long as it needs to be! Is is a Statement or EHCP you're applying for? I don't know the process for the latter so can only tell you what we did for a Statement four years ago. But school should be advising you in any case?

When we did it there were three stages:

1. Request for statutory assessment - this was about two pages briefly summarising his difficulties in bullet points. We included a short report from nursery.

1. The LA agreed to carry out a SA. This was when they got their EP and SLT to assess. Nursery did a full report, and so did we (form SA2). Just had a look back, and our report was 15 pages! Is this the stage you are at? Ie has the LA agreed to carry out SA? Our report at this stage went into great detail about every aspect of his behaviour, impairments, difficulties, interaction, communication, independence, etc etc - anything about him that needed support. We didn't specify at that stage what support we wanted (except references to the ABA programme we were doing), just more a description of everything about him.

1. Once SA finished, the LA agreed to provide a statement, and prepared a draft one. That was when we got our own EP and SLT reports, but in our case we only did it because we were appealing the contents of the statement to get ABA in it. This is the stage where you get to have input into the level and type of support ds will get, and where the negotiations come in!

HTH.

DS (9) is very high functioning (independent dx AS), in mainstream without a statement.he is good at school and explodes at home (although he is really calming down with age). He is very sociable but like yours his mental health suffers as a result as it can be so hard for him to process all the social info. He has an IEP but no statement. What I ask for usually is: structure ( general timetable) and announce change to timetable when possible, he is allowed to exit the classroom for timeout when necessary and allowed the use of computers at lunchtime. I also ask for lots of hard rewards and positive reinforcement on all aspect of school life. I do CBT with him which seem to help. Can somebody explain to me how SALT help with social skills and when it becomes a necessity to apply for statement ( we have secondary school lurking!) ...sorry for highjack OP!

Don't worry about hijacking Molly, I would like to know the answer too!

That is so helpful bialystock. Thank you.

I submitted all our reports when we applied for statutory assessment - should I put them in again?

It is a statement we are applying for as was set in motion last term, but they will convert it it EHCP if we are successful apparently

I think as part of the SA process itself, the LA will ask school for a report. I might be wrong, but AFAIK they don't officially take any reports provided at the first request into consideration when doing the SA. They probably read it, but I don't think they officially have to consider it as part of their assessment, so they'll probably ask again.

But in case they don't ask again, even if school just give the same report they gave the first time, I'd enclose it again with your SA2, just to make sure they have to take it into consideration. Make sure you see a copy of the school report beforehand too, if you can, to make sure it covers everything. It's depressing, but you need to present the worst case scenario, so don't want any platitudes from school like "he seems a happy boy and has friends" or the like.