I’m in a somewhat complicated situation so I’m hoping someone here can help! Apologies in advance if this is long and rambly!
We’re currently living in NYC and have a 4 year old son who was diagnosed at 2y11mo with ASD. His main issues are with speech and language - expressive, receptive and pragmatic - and social skills. Coginitivey he’s pretty smart. He’s been in early intervention here since age 3 which has been absolutely amazing and he’s made so much progress. He’s currently in a special ed nursery of 12 kids/2 teachers getting speech therapy 3x per week and OT 2x. Still, he has a lot of challenges that were all working hard on helping him overcome. He recently had a full neuropsychological evaluation which showed an average to superior IQ but severe language delays (approx 2 years delay) He’s just been accepted into a phenomenal school here to start in September which has 6 kids per class and a full time speech therapist. It really is the perfect school for him and we were thrilled... BUT, and here’s the big BUT, we’ve been in an immigration turmoil for the past year where our green card application is almost certainly going to be rejected in the next couple of months which means we’ll have no choice but to move back to the UK probably by May/June (that’s a long story in itself but let’s just assume we’ve done everything we possibly can to fix it and it’s not looking good). We’re pretty devastated for many reasons, the main one being my DS’s education.
Anyway, I’m starting to make contingency plans for moving “home” (that sounds weird because NYC has been home for 8 years) and just don’t know where to start. It’s so overwhelming and I’m starting to panic a little. Luckily my husband and I are both teachers (maths/science) so we’re pretty flexible about where we move but would rather avoid London if possible. Let’s assume we are open to moving anywhere in the UK and our main priority is finding a good place for DS to thrive.
Soooo if you read this far thank you and here are my questions!!!
- I understand services vary greatly between LAs and also between individual school in an LA. How the heck do I decide where we should move to? Firstly which LA is “best” and then which school?
- I assume we have to live in the catchment area of the school we want him to go to so we’d have to move somewhere first and still not be guaranteed a spot because of the time of year (we’d be moving in May/June) and he’s due to start school (Reception) in September. Is there a way to get into an appropriate school and then move to the catchment area rather than the other way round?
- I assume we wouldn’t get any help in school right away until we go through the EHCP process; would they just throw him into a mainstream class and leave him to get on with it until we got a 1:1 approved? They thought terrifies me and wouldn’t be good for anybody - DS, the teacher or the other kids.
- Private school is an option for us; but I’m concerned that he wouldn’t be challenged enough academically in that setting (he’s pretty good academically, already starting to sight read and can count to 100+ etc). Are there private schools that focus on speech/language yet still keep up academically? I know that’s a major problem here in NYC which is why we were so happy to find the school he would be going to if we stayed). I looked at the ICAN schools and the look good but it’s hard to tell without visiting (oh, another problem is I can’t leave the country to do a whirlwind tour of schools in advance of our move because I would be barred from reentering the US!)
- Are private services (speech therapy and OT) available in most places or should that also be a factor in deciding where to move?
Thanks again for reading and for any advice.