Sorry for this lengthy post but I am really struggling to know what to do to help DD (12) and am worried that things are going to go very wrong for her if she goes to our local secondary school.
DD is currently awaiting a neuro-developmental assessment but waiting list is "lengthy". A psychologist we saw privately after she started experiencing a lot of problems coping at school thinks she is showing autistic traits and recommended that we ask for the neuro-developmental assessment.
We are in Scotland and she is currently in P7. Problems started showing at school in P5 and became very bad in P6 - although she is generally OK at home and in after-school activities, at school she started becoming very distressed, hearing voices (which told her to harm herself and others, although she has never done this with exception of scratching her arms when she is distressed "to take her attention off the voices), was very stressed about going to school and taking ages to recover every afternoon after school, and had problems sleeping. She had problems making friends and felt that her classmates thought she was "weird". She also had very low self-esteem. There were problems of her being bullied in school, with the bullies also causing problems outside school for her. She is also very sensitive to noise, and got upset when there was poor behaviour by others in the class. Academically, however, she has always done well.
Primary school 1 organised a Child's Plan but this was very vague and not implemented. As situation was rapidly becoming worse (leading to more distress, having to sit outside class and/or having to come home because of levels of distress), we took things into our own hands and were able to get her transferred to a much smaller, quieter school (primary school 2) in our area where she has flourished academically and socially. The problems she experienced in primary school 1 have pretty much vanished, and she is now a happy child who enjoys school and is getting on really well.
Unfortunately, we now have to contend with her move to secondary school, and we believe very strongly that our local catchment secondary is not going to be suitable - we have been to see it and know that there are problems with poor behaviour both within school and on the way there/back home. In addition, she will be back with the children whom she had social problems with before in her former primary school, and the bullies who caused problems at school no 1 are either now attending this local secondary or about to transfer there.
The local secondary school is also noisy, with cramped corridors and narrow stairs to contend with when changing classes, all of which I think she will find difficult to deal with. It is well-known as a place with lots of behavioural problems (academic achievement is also very low). When I raised concerns with a senior member of teaching staff there, his proposal to deal with any problems she may have with noise/poor behaviour by other children was to send her to a different classroom "where the special needs children go" whenever she wasn't coping. I do not feel this is a suitable arrangement because she will be missing out on teaching and classwork, and I don't want her to reach the situation in the first place where she needs to be treated differently from the rest of the class, as, with the right environment, we have shown that she does really well without special arrangements. The answer to noise when changing classes was for her to leave each class 5 minutes early - again, I want to avoid her having to miss 5 mins of every 40 min class, especially at the end of class when instructions about homework/next day's class will be given out. I feel that our experience with primary school 2 shows that she can cope really well in a calm, well-ordered school environment but that our local secondary school will not be able to provide that.
We visited two other secondary schools locally last term - both of which we thought would be fine for her, although one appeared even better than the other. We requested last term that she be placed in one of these which we felt would be ideal for her in terms of environment and the supportive ethos of the staff we spoke to. The education authority have, however, rejected our request without giving any reasons. We have been told that we need to make an out of catchment request but that it is unlikely to be successful. Our first choice secondary has since been capped which I think means that our chances of her getting in there are zero. Our second choice has not been capped so there is still a chance she could be accepted there. However, we will not get a decision on an out of catchment request until the end of April, and the authority will not allow her to attend any transition activities at an out of catchment school in the meantime, saying that she can only attend the transition events at our local secondary. Her child's plan states explicitly that she requires an extended transition to prepare for secondary - this is not happening even re our local secondary.
We seem to be stuck in no-man's land. We don't have a formal diagnosis of autism. GP tried to refer her to CAHMS for her distress but CAHMS declined to see her and referred us back to the primary mental health team (whom we saw while she was at primary school 1 but who have been pretty useless). She doesn't have learning difficulties (although her learning was clearly being severely affected when the school environment wasn't right for her).
Do we just have to apply for an out-of-catchment request and hope for the answer we want in April, accepting that, if she does get in there, she will have missed out on the transition arrangements she needs, or is there another route we can try to try to get things sorted out more quickly?