Can anyone help with where to get funding for equipment at school for child with disabilities but no EHCP please?

[moosemama]

Ds2 (13) has Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder. He managed really well until his hormones kicked in and since last September he has suffered multiple dislocations and other injuries (including an accident at school which was due to a combination of his condition and the seating in science/dt labs not meeting his needs) had a reoccurrence of severe gastro issues and developed what is believed to be dysautonomia in the form of POTs, which causes him a lot of distressing symptoms, plus means he passes out regularly. His attendance for this year is 50% and he and we afe desperate to stop the same happening next year.

It has been one hell of a year, but we have had excellent Community OT input, plus outpatient joint OT/Physio sessions at an excellent hospital and he is now under investigation for the gastro and autonomic issues and this week we had an email saying they wanted to get specialist seating, as recommended by Comm OT in place and needed to measure him up. Great news!

Not quite, today I have had a call to say school thought OT were picking up the bill OT thought school were and the outcome is there is no funding for it. Given he is supposed to be also getting a tablet and keyboard and a fee other things, this is not looking good.

School want to apply for an EHCP, but our LA is ridiculously backlogged. (My eldest has a statement for ASD, his transfer to EHCP meeting was mid November and despite chasing, we still haven't even had a draft.). So even if he gets one, which I doubt as I know our LA, it won't be in place before January next year.

Is there any other way to get hold of funding for children with physical disabilities that do not have an EHCP? I seem to recall hearing about a specific LA fund for this purpose, but can't remember the details.

Most LA's have some sort of fund for emergency medical funding and the like. Your LA statutory assessment service should be able to advise how the school can access this. If they can't help , write to the Director of Children's Services about it, and then they will sharpish ;)

Thank you. I think that must be the fund I heard about. I did suggest it to school, but they said they are certain there is no funding without an EHCP.

I think I will give them a call. I need to chase ds1's EHCP, again, anyway.

The problem is, he has already had a serious fall, resulting in 6 weeks off school, due to the seating in certain lessons and we can't risk another, so he has been missing out on those lessons altogether since the beginning of this year.

With an issue like that, if you are not getting anywhere, your MP might well be able to raise the case for you. The school won't necessarily know about other money available, it's not exactly publicised, but I've never worked in an LA where there isn't such money available. Making a parental request for an EHCP can also be quite effective in triggering a response as they have to reply within statutory timescales ( which they should do, even if they are behind on transfers).

It actually says on our LA's local offer that if a school can't provide what a child with complex needs requires to access education effectively from their SEN budget and the child doesn't have an EHCP, they can apply for funds from the LA's High Needs Budget. If I can find that, you'd think the school SENCO would know about it, but clearly not.

Timing, as usual is so bad, school breaks up on Friday and from past experience, I know nothing will happen till September now.

I am going to wait and see what school come up with in the email I was promised later today and take action from there. I will probably end up making a parental EHCP request, I have done it before, albeit for a Statement, when ds1's primary school decided to play silly beggars and do thing like 'lose his school file'. We got SA and a high needs statement on the first application doe him and we have a lot more evidence for ds2's issues than we did ds1's.

It's very different approaching it from a physical disabilities with no learning issues point of view, than an SCLD and mental health point, as I did last time. I do suspect he has some degree of processing issue and possibly some apd as well though, so now might be the time to get everything properly assessed documented. If only we didn't have so many hospital tests for him to get throuh already over the next couple of months.

Sorry, just realised I am warbling on, thinking out loud.

Get the EHCP application in - don't wait for the school. It doesn't matter if your LA is backlogged, they are still subject to the statutory time limits, and they have to complete it within 20 weeks (though if you start now they will have a bit more time because of the school holidays).

And for your oldest child, you need to start threatening judicial review. There is no excuse for that sort of delay. There's a useful information sheet about JR here - www.sossen.org.uk/information_sheets.php

Thank you Ceto

You are absolutely right, I know, this is on me to kickstart, but they have had the upper hand for the duration of the delay, because I have been in and out of hospital, lots of inpatient stays, bluelighted in via A&E several times, etc, so have really not been in a fit state for the oast few months. Had my surgery two weeks ago and am recovering, but still not strong enough for the battle and now I have two battles on my hands.

I haven't applied for an EHCP myself, as I am pretty sure they will refuse to assess. School have made lots of reasonable adjustments, but none that have cost them, so they can't really claim to need additional funding for him. I have been pushing for a formalised IHP, but he doesn't even have one of those, afaik and I have asked repeatedly. The pastoral team I deal with are lovely and really care about ds, but they aren't aware of all the politics and funding fights around SEN, so tend to believe what they are told by the SEN Leadership team, who are very evasive and keeping us at arms length. Fortunately, our lovely OT made the referral to the physical disabilities inclusion team (which is something school said they would do, but didn't) and if they are anywhere near as good as the SCLD Inclusion Team they will be a really good ally.

We threatened JR to get the LA to finalise ds1's Statement, because they were using every tactic in the book to try and delay having to pay for another term. (Just got them to finalise a few days before the start of the summer holidays, when they obviously wanted to push it into September.) Threatened JR by hand delivered letter at 10:00 am one day and had finalised Statement in my hand at 9:00 am the next morning.

We do need to get on top of it all, but it feels like such a lot, given my current state of health. Between the two boys and myself we seem to spend most of our time at medical appointments at the moment.