one to one support at mainstream am i asking too much

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hi there i have one ds age 4 starts school this september we are having a meeting at play school this friday and i just wondered am i asking too much to think he can have fullone to one support in mainstream school..

he has asd no speech little understanding but is a very pleasant little boy not aggresive at all and i feel he would benifit from going to our village school with the children he has been to play school with the headmistress is happy to have him but i know he will need full support play time and lunch time included is this too much to ask and will they tell me he should be at special school

sorry to go on so much

you haven't gone on at all....you should read some of my posts.

Does he have a statement? if not the school will probably start the ball rolling to get him one straight away. in this statement the LEa will decide how much extra funding the school will be given, this pretty much determines how much 1:1 he will get.

You are not asking too much, your asking for what your child needs. LEA's are loath to supply funding for full time 1:1 as they tell us that the child should be encouraged to integrate but they will take into account all the relevant inforation supplied with the statement application.

I can also assure you that if a MS school is happy to take your DS the LEA wont try and force you into a SN one.

thankyou mamazon yes he has a statement which i have took to the school for them to read they have just had a child with asd who went on to high school last year so they do have experience and the head mistress does respite care one in four week ends for a little girl with asd so they seem quite up on it just i do remember the ed pyscologist saying that if he needed that much help he should be in sn school now i didnt like her but i didnt know if she was right..

i was told by the communiy assesment team that my DS "would never thrive in a mainstream environment" the words are burned into my brain

but he is 6 and is finally doing...well he is ok.

He may need his statement revising as he will be going for a longer period i assume and so the school wil be able to file reports and ask for as much help as they feel they need.

Good luck with it, it sounds like you have found a fantastic school with a great understanding of your sons needs.

We tried it with ds1. We had a statement specifying 100% 1:1. I wouldn't have let him go to school without it (although they tried to get away with 0.8).
He sounded like your little boy at the time tbh. We had a lot of problems. How does your son communicate? DS1 used PECS, there was no-one in the school PECS trained. They had no idea how to react to him and he quickly went from the very passive, sweet little boy he was in nursery to having a whole host of challenging behaviours that I knew nothing about (until his private SALT wtinessed them and had a quiet with me- she said the school were escalating the siituations and I needed to act quickly. The problem was a complete lack of understanding about autism. After 4 terms he moved to a wonderful special school and has just flown, the quality of teaching doesn't compare.

In your situation I'd ask to see all potential schools (we were fobbed off and told we weren;t allowed to see special schools when ds1 was 4- absolute rubbish I know now). When you go round, ahve a look for children like your son, see how well they are integrated in the classroom, do they look happy? Are the learning the sorts of things you would like your son to learn.

At mainstream ds1 had an adult with him all the time. He was completely isolated within the school. He spent most of the time walking round the school, occasionally standing (alone with a helper) in the playground watching cars go past. I don't think he learned a single thing in his time there.

We went to look at special schools, in one children like him were kind of cordoned off, bloackaded into a corner of the room, we knew it was the wrong place for him.In the other, we arrived just as his calss was setting off for a trip out, The children were waiting nicely, the teacher had a clear system to encourage good waiting behaviour, there were visual timetables, the children looked safe. we chose that one and it's been great. He's actually far more includede now thatn he was at mainstream.

Which isnt to say that mainstream can't work, but I do believe if you have a child with very limitedf speech and language in particular it is a big struggle to get it to work. A child with limited speech and language will have very different educational needs from the rest of the class. You need to ask how they intend to include your son, how much training staff have (one day isn't enough), will they pay for proper PECS/Makaton training- impossible for an LSA without that. HOw many LSA's will they employ. What happens when the LSA is off sick (you getting asked to keep your son at home for the day- that used to happen to us- is completely unacceptable). Who will make the necessary recources, who will provide PECS books (when ds1 was in mainstream the answer to that was ME- now in special school they send me stuff home to help us out).

jimjams, you have just helped me so much with your last post, we have a meeting with the LEA next week over what school DS should go into and ive been looking for reasons for him to go to a special school, your post about being trained in ASD and what happens when the LSA is off sick is a huge bargaining tool for me to use thanks!!!

(sorry for the hijack )

i can explan quite clearly what happens when the LSA is off sick....nothing. at best they bring in a different TA who has no idea of DS and his difficulties, shre makes everything worse, DS kicks off and gets excluded for the week.

oh good luck Jenk! Also ask if they employ more than one LSA can they afford to train all of them. DS1 had an LSA when he started, they trained her by sending her on a weeks course. 2 weeks later she left (her mother was taken ill). He had new LSAs - no money left to train them. In 4 terms he got through 5 LSA's. Not one had any PECS training. One decided to play the martyr role, another had an autistic son and used to walk me to the car and say "please get him out of here, their attitude is awful", another was the head's son, and another was a dinner lady! The only one who had he faintest idea was the mother of the autistic son, and she spent her whole time falling out with the school because they were telling her to do things that she thought was cruel so was refusing to do.

Everyone said when ds1 awitched to special that everything about me changed and that I no longer looked ill.

I remember it being one long battle. Life is so much better now. Sorry that's not very positive, but I do think that unless a mainstream school carries a lot of experience of ASD you will be struggling, particualrly if a child is non-verbal, or (maybe for the case of Jenk) highly anxious.

if i did send him the ms school and after a period of time i wasnt happy i could then send him to a special school couldnt i?????

Have to agree with much of what jimjams says.
My DS2 has a statement for full time 1.1 in mainstream but he is HF/ASD. He does not have speach issues.
I am having problems making sure that he gets all the help he should (but that is a problem with the way his school works) and most of the staff have hardly any training about how to work with children with an ASD.
This year it is working because he has a very good teacher and TA, but last year was very difficult and I do not feel confident that we will not have problems in the future.
I think you need to know all of the options available to you before you make your choice.
I think mainstream can work, but in many cases it does not work as well as it should.
The school you are thinking about does sound nice though.

You can swap to special if there are places. Of the 2 special schools we looked at one was able to swap kids around to give ds1 a place (hoorah it was the one we wanted), the other would have been able to offer ds1 a place after an 8 month wait (which worked in our favour as we didn;t want it). I have a friend who had to fight for 3 years to get her son out of mainstream into the ASD specifc school she wanted (due to over-subscription of the special school).The situation will depend very much on your local area.

he needs help with everything eg nappy changing but the school have said this isnt a problem they have a proper changing room i do just feel personally that ds would be better of in a school where i know the parents of most of the children and he knows the children. where as the special school is 30 mins away and he has made such progress in certain areas and i feel this is from being around other children who follow a routine and it sounds stupid but i was hoping if he was around children who could talk and that do talk to him ( even though he doesnt answer) that it would help..

now i just feel confused and stupid for thinking this but i just want what i thought was best for him...

thanks jim jams the closet asd specific school is an hour and a half away so i wouldnt want him to go there the sn school that is 30 mins away is a mix of children with all aspects of special needs...

It can work, and if they haven't passed out at the mention of nappies it suggests they may well have the right attitude. How much your son will learn from the children around him depends really on him. When ds1 was at mainstream he couldn;t imitate, so what the other children were doing was fairly meaningless (of course the problem he;s now at special and can imitate is that he can copy all the challenging behaviours ) A little girl from nursery did go to mainstream with him and she was very sweet, she used to look out for him. You may ask the questions and get answers you are happy with. i would ask them though.

Fio makes a good point as well. At ms ds1 had no hands on SALT at all (one visited, left a programe), His school now has an onsite therapist. He also gets hydro, sensory sessions, music therapy and riding for the disabled. It's worth finding out what the whole package would be in the different schools.

Ds1's school is SLD/PMLD so mixed needs but its organised in a way that each child has their own individual timetable, so it works very well. Good provision doesn't have to be ASD specific.