Indie reports and tribunal - when to release them to the LA

[bjkmummy]

I now have just received DK report which confirms a dx of asd for my daughter - MS also dx her as well.

My dilemma is when to hand it over to the LA - I know the tribunal expect them to be released as soon as received.

The LA are fighting the NIL even though they have mS report now for about 6 weeks.They asked if I would allow another Salt report to be done and I replied straight away and asked why - since then heard nothing form the LA.

The La have to file their response to tribunal in about 10 days so I then get to see the reasons why they are defending it and which witnesses they intend to call.

I could send it to them now and see if it makes them concede (unlikely they will as already been up to the school getting all the documents from them and arranged for dd views to be taken)

Or wait for their response to come in 10 days time and see what their defence is then release it to them then. I'm not really into holding things back etc but just trying to see which is the best way to do this as my LA notorious for their tactics but I also want to do things the right way as well.

At our last tribunal I held stuff back because my LA are known for their dirty tricks!!

This time I sent everything I had at the first opportunity in the hope they would concede as we had one the first one on every count!

They havent conceded yet and I dont really have any fresh evidence other than the Dd3 needs all the provision on the NIL and is not getting it all and that there is nothing in the NIL to make the school provide it!!

Sorry if that is not very helpful!

i think sometimes I just over think things but how my LA behave makes me now question everything before I do it. LA have asked teacher to go again and teacher has said she doesn't want to but if forced to she will speak the truth so LA turned round and said we best call someone else! who they will call I have no idea as she is in year 6 so guess they are going to try and pre empt my secondary choice of school but ive not applied yet and won't until the last moment so that they cant try and pull that one - one thing I have thought bout - can the SEN officer/team have access to the secondary school application database to see which school I do apply for?

Be careful about sitting on reports as our first hearing was adjourned at the request of the LA due to our reports not being submitted until evidence deadline day. Yet at the next hearing the panel allowed the LA to submit evidence on the day, that they had sat on for a month !

If I remember correctly DK is a paed isnt she? is your dd currently under a NHS paed? How long do you have left until final evidence deadline? I would aim to submit the report 2 weeks before the deadline. However if this is a while since the date the report was finalised I would be tempted to ask the author of the report to make a few ammendments and so amend the date to be as close to the date of submission as possible.

With my LA, I would release the report ASAP and expect their response to take it into account. I know your LA isn't quite so straight up, though. My inclination would still to be inscrutable, though because the tactics of yours appear to be to put their hands over their ears and not listen to a word you're saying, and then leave everything to the last minute anyway. Give them no excuse for any of their assholery.

we have a long way to go before final evidence deadline - its way into December - I have to send my witness list at the end of oct and the LA have to respond with their reasons for defending it within the next 10 days. she isn't under a NHS paed but I did speak to her twins paed about it a couple of weeks ago and she has mentioned it in his report and she also knew who DK was which is amazing given we live miles and miles away in the sticks but DK reputation has followed up to here. if push came to shove with having both MS, DK and our indie OT report and they forced us to see a NHS paed it would likely be the one our sons sees and she would im sure back up the diagnosis. I guess that's the next game the LA could play is dispute the asd dx but even if they do that's not what my appeal is based on anyway - still leaves her years behind academically. we also have our indie EP report to go yet as well but that wont be until a while as we have to wait for a year to pass for her to be able to be fully assessed again.

think I will serve it on Tuesday after ive gone through the motions of jumping to the LA tune and having her views taken by PP - probably means SEN officer going to have to totally re write her response to tribunal. my indie EP is also pulling her hair out as well as she says its clear that she needs statementing and has no idea what game my LA is playing

as they already tried we want another salt report line will be interesting if they also ask a NHS paed to see her - seems an awful lot of time and effort for them at this stage when they could just do the decent thing and issue her with a statement

the report itself actually has no date it was written but does have the date she was seen so if I wanted to drag it out I guess I could but my gut I guess tells me to release it asap - the indie EP report is going to quite close to the final evidence deadline due to the dates she is being assessed. her teacher has now given me a list of all of the interventions she has at school and its most lessons = shes starting to really struggle now - she is starting to growl at the other children ??!! which makes sense given MS sharp says she has such language difficulties, we are having lots of tears, lots of painful written notes about how much she is struggling with school and the other children, she is worrying about secondary school - she is in such a small school and she cant cope there - all I can do is to keep evidencing it I guess....

I sent both Margo's and Daphne's reports with my 15 day response to his draft statement, before I had even appealed. Made no difference and the LA totally ignored them until the solicitors got involved collecting data for final evidence. They will probably dispute the diagnosis unless it has an official NHS stamp of agreement (not necessarily full diagnostic pathway/ADOS). Did DD see the comm paed whilst undergoing SA? What did this report say? My LA wanted the comm paed that had given medical advice to confirm/refute the diagnosis. Turned out to be very helpful as the diagnosis was confirmed. Didn't stop the LA EP from challenging the diagnosis and the LA rep and EP tried again to challenge the diagnosis at hearing though. When this failed all the fight went out of them and they conceded.

Community paed for stat assessment was a 4 minute phone call! She had seen her a couple of months beforehand for a triage appointment which was OT based really and not looking for signs of ASD.

The LA a month ago asked us to agree for the NHs salt to see her, we just replied and asked why they wanted the report as it would be the 3rd salt repor in 6 months and did they now accept they had failed to fully assess her as they had had all though the stat assessment process to get a salt report, they was already an indie report on the table from us so they could have that point reasonably asked for another report but chose not to. We are yet to hear anything from the LA since!

Dd gave her views this morning - dropped me in it by writing she wants to go to a specialist dyslexia school and she's looking forward to the visit next month! That the LA definately fighting it now then when it gets back to them!

MS has offered to come as a witness to the hearing. I guess the reality is that it doesn't matter when I give it as will make not the slightest bit of difference anyway! They will play their own stupid game anyway - think I will just serve it today and be done with it.

That's why I had Margo as a witness at hearing. She is better placed to refute any attempt to challenge her professional diagnosis (especially from an upstart trainee LA EP) and tribunal hearing is the right place to do this.

DS1 also had an LA SALT assessment (indi not NHS as he was not a current patient and there was not enough time for that route).

The LA still tried to challenge the diagnosis but I think the reason they were on to a hiding for nothing is because, ultimately, their experts agreed with my experts. I would say that you have to allow access (because you are confident that their experts and your experts will agree) but have a plan in case the experts disagreed. If I had not allowed access to their experts and so not given them a chance to confirm or refute, I think I would have had a harder battle... but seeing as the LA conceded on the day, perhaps that 'harder battle' would just have been waiting for a tribunal ruling before I 'won'.

I didnt say no to the nhs salt assessment just asked why. Dk was astonished my LA were doing it as MS report so detailed and said no nhs salt would be able to write such a detailed report. The LA will i predict show their hand shortly.