IEP?

[BouncingOn]

Slightly unnerved by a call from DDs school today. She transitioned to Junior school in September and it's gone fairly well. She has some physical difficulties and some other issues for which she's been under the peadiatrician since birth but generally she copes ok, I'm used to her quirks! At her previous school we had a meeting just to outline her needs but that was all. Her new school rang to arrange an IEP meeting for next week- I thought they were a thing of the past? I was caught off guard so I didn't ask any questions, which is annoying me now.

Can anyone explain what to expect?

Under the 2001 Code of Practice, every child that was on the SEN Register had to have an IEP, and the document was provided by the CoP.

since the Children and Families Bill of 2014, there has been no 'set document'.
Some schools devised their own
Some LAs worked together on devising various support plans
Some schools decided to keep calling it an IEP.

Whichever the school has done, it still needs to record the differentiation it is putting in place, and how your dd makes progress with the additional support / differentiation she is getting.

It might be that the Infant school did have one, and just never invited you to a meeting - in which case the Junior school will review how she has got on with those targets, and decided if:

a) she has made so much progress she no longer needs a Plan
or
b) she has done well, and achieved those targets, but still need support - in which case you will set new targets together
or
c) She has not made very much progress, despite being given additional support, and (together) you will need to look at what additional support could go in for her.

If, for some reason she hasn't had one previously, then the Junior school will write one for her, with your support.

Ideally, there will be you, the SENCo and the class teacher or maybe a LSA if she has one (?) in the meeting. In reality, it is more than likely to be just you and the SENCO. She will sort all the paperwork. (you should get a copy once it is written up).
The new CoP is also very keen to 'hear the child's voice' so some schools invite them in to the meeting, others talk to them beforehand as feel a meeting can be a bit overwhelming.

She (together with you) will set targets that you both believe your dd can achieve in 3 months time, and it will set out what they will be putting in place to help her achieve that.

Thank you very much for your comprehensive reply, I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that. I suspect there probably was a formalised document at her old school but she achieves well so I'm wondering if there was little point to have any further formal meetings. She's having weekly input from the healthy family team (?) at school now, so I wonder if that's also prompted something. She doesn't have a LSA or any special measures/adjustments in place at present either.

I'm going to take a little list of points that I think are important but I'm not sure there's much they can do due to the nature of her difficulties. She is concerned about her handwriting, which we always knew would be more challenging for her so I think this would be a reasonable and measurable target to address. Is there anything I should be asking?

Thanks once again.

You're very welcome.

I don't know who the 'healthy family team' are, that must be a local thing rather than national. So, if you aren't sure who they are or why they are working with her, you could ask them to explain.
Re the handwriting, You could ask if there are some adjustments they can make - maybe a writing slope or a pencil grip or different style of pencil. Or potentially are there any exercises she might do to strengthen her grip or something ? (Difficult to know what to suggest without knowing her, obviously).
I would take the opportunity to confirm how they think she is getting on in all other areas - fine motor, gross motor, social, speech, spoken language, understanding of language, content of writing, maths skills, etc etc.
I hope all goes well

The healthy family team are the school nurse team (but I always get the name wrong- it's something like that!). They have workers who do specific pieces of work with children and see if issues can be resolved at universal services level, and if not, they refer up. I'm hoping not, we've just started climbing down the ladder (hence my confusion around why this is happening now?!).

Yes, I think she'll need some extra support wrt handwriting. Her OT when she was younger suggested she'd need to be referred back when she was older. Her fingers bend all the way back in the wrong direction and at every knuckle, it's oddly fascinating.

They didn't highlight any issues at parents evening. She achieves well academically and has settled at the new school. Speech is an ongoing issue, completely capable and has an excellent vocabulary but freezes and is unable to talk in some situations- this hasn't happened in her classroom though so far, which is reassuring.

Sorry, this is turning into a brain storm! I'm taken aback that when she was much younger and I was physically having to carry her out the house to get her to school, there was no support. She now has 4 diagnoses but is coping well and is very happy, and we've got people wanting to help. Very odd.

Thanks again for your help, it's helping me to think!