I need as much advice as possible please

[shazzarooney99]

Ok to cut a long story short I have an 8 year old who is incredibley violent, has sensory processing disorder, speech and laungage issues, Hypercussis and suspected Asd we are awaiting someone to say he actually has Asd.

Anyway we have our first Taf in December school havent actually old me when, but school have taken my son off his Iep? now i dont know why they have done this and dont understand it.

School know my son is always threatening to kill himself and tried to, Cahms wont do nothing but they say its Asd associated and not a mental health issue.

My son has huge anxiety about going into school, whilst in school they tell me he copes well, he will not use the school toilet and gets stressed going into assembly although this is a recent thing. Teacher is for pushing him into assembly so it does not cause anymore problems for me, however its causing huge issues for my son who is now going through lots od anxiety and wont even play for his football team.

School are buying in a private Ed pych who wont come in till January.

My points are shouldnt my son still be on an Iep if not why not?

We have never had a Taf before because i diddnt sign a Caf for years due to being uneducated, so what do i do?

How do we resolve the toilet issue?

And what should my next move be? My son has been in the system since he was years old.

I'm not sure how I can help but I couldn't read your post without offering some support. I know how hard it is to have a child that is being physically violent at school and it is heartbreaking when your child is feeling so low about themselves that they threaten to harm themselves. I agree that your son needs support now and like you I can't understand why he has been taken of his IEP - surely he needs it more than ever right now?? I am not sure what a Taf is, I assume it is a Team around the child meeting, but I may be wrong. If it is then this is when the teacher and anyone else involved with supporting your child will meet with you to discuss how best to meet his needs, what targets to set and agree a date for review - amongst other things. This is when you need to raise all your concerns and ask exactly what can be done to support your child. Have the school excluded / suspended him for his violent behaviour? What support do you think he needs? What is likely to reduce the violent outburts? What do you do at home that 'works' - when you share all this with the school you can work together to find a consistent approach to managing your child's behaviour. Good luck and I just wanted you to know that you are not alone. I have two boys with ASD. My 9 year old son was violent at school in the past (around age 5) but it has improved greatly. He will occasionally get into fights or hit others (as most 9 year old boys do) but in general he is much improved. He still has problems making friends and is bullied by boys in the other year 5 class and his self-esteem is still very fragile, He too threatens to harm himself when he is feeling very low. So from one mum to another I know how you feel. Best wishes - try to be kind to yourself xxxxx

Thanks poulet, I have a few thing in place at the moment whih was reccomended on here xxxx A diagnoses wont change him your right.

School havent said anything about the toilet, i will ask about the disabled toilet so thank you.

Im not worried about the assembly its my on that is and they are making him go in, but its causing my son huge anxieties and he kicks off about going to school.

As far as im aware i have saw nothing about targets and tracking for my son, so i havent a clue whats going on, thanks for the amazing advice once again xxx

Yes your son sounds like my son, i have had to push and push and push and push my son to ask for time out when hes stressed, hes done it twice in two years as he wont ask.

same as when he struggles with work, ive said and said and said to ask for help and aparrently he eventually did and was told to stop wiening.

I have often thought about changing schools to be honest, but the trouble i if i do im worried my son will want to go back and that would cause problems, do you know what i mean?

Dont get me wrong, school do have him in a sensory group once a week even though he is following a sensory diet and only getting that short bit in school once a week! and they have him in a chill out group for 15/20 mins in the afternoon but thats it.

Op you can write to CAmHS and ask them to clarify their stance as well as point out to you where in the diagnostic criteria for ASD, trying to kill yourself is written.

In our experience the way forward is to apply for an EHCP plan. As this will mean a proper assessment of needs, additional support being put in place and the possibility of a specialist school setting if things continue to deteriorate. For ds1 behaviour at home improved rapidly as soon as his needs were met at school. We still get the occasional meltdown but nothing like the frequency we were getting when he was in mainstream.

We did have CAF's (I think we did anyway - they kept changing the acronyms so am confused what we did and didn't have). In our experience they were not terribly profitable as the professionals that were needed e.g. CAMHS did not tend to turn up. I do know that as soon as the social worker teams took responsibility they rapidly disappeared much to the annoyance of school etc.

In all honesty we have not had that much help from CAMHS although they did strongly support in writing the need for a specialist school so I guess worth pursuing for this alone. They would have given some CBT type therapies to my two but mine were too stressed by the time we saw them to stay even in the same room as the psychiatrist so it was a non-starter. Medication for anxiety works for some but was a disaster for ds2 as it made him worse.

P.S. If CAMHS continue to refuse to him & he is continuing to make suicidal threats take him to A&E and ask to see the duty psychiatrist. Actually telling CAMHS this is your next step was in our experience sufficient to get an emergency appointment.

Forgot to say my two have never been able to ask for time-out. ds1 enlightened me recently that because it was out-of-routine and against the rules it caused more stress than it solved. What works better for him is distraction within the classroom - preferably challenging mathematics problems. It does need the teacher to be aware of signs e.g. body language, rocking on chair, chewing on clothes etc that your ds is stressed and intervene at this point. The key point to remind school is that if a child has social communication difficulties they can't rather than won't ask for timeout independently. We asked repeatedly if time-out could be role-played at a time when they were calm so it became normality but no school ever did this for them.

Oneineigt ive already had him to a&e because oce again he was trying to kill himself, i was told we would be reffered for respite and they would talk to the people at their end, all i got was another phonecall from Cahms telling me that wed agreed he needs an Asd assesment and there was nothing they could do.

His last teacher was very aware of how he was and could tell from his face, but its not the case with this teacher, and also theres a boy whos bugging him, its like this morning he was kicking off in the playground (my son) and this kid comes up and says "ha ha ha ha" so i said to the boy "i will be telling the teacher" anyway the family learning mentor was there and my son said i want to kill myself! she took him in with me and had a word with him, then i left.

Everyday we are getting "i feel sick, i feel poorly!" ive not been in work for over two weeks now and i cant see how i can go in when hes like this, my partners been poorly for a while and i have not much of an income at the moment and its getting worrying with christmas comming too.