Anyone in (South) Devon with a child with ASD

[drowninginlaundry]

I need info
we are moving from another county and I need to find a school for DS1, we'll be somewhere W-SW of Exeter.
if anyone can shed any light on what these 'Communication and Autism Interaction Resource Bases' are that a number of primary schools have (eg Manor School in Ivybridge), I'd be grateful - I called the LEA but they were very vague.
Also if anyone has any contacts I'd be also very grateful, looking for an independent SALT & OT, and any info on parent support groups
thanks in advance
x

I'm in South Devon, but not Devon LEA (Plymouth)

The ivybridge unit is the one I know about. I can't tell you much about it though. Also there's a school at Dartington - Bidwell Brook. It takes a lot of autistic children - it's an SLD school though so might not be appropriate.

If you find an independent OT let me know!

Independent SALT there's one in Totnes- no idea what she's like but can get you her number. We used an excellent one for a while but I don't think she does any private work anymore.

How old is your ds? Which part of spectrum?

Parent support groups. There's an active NAS at?? Torbay I think. Also one in Plymouth but not much is going on with the NAS there.

If you hit the Plymouth boundaries can tell you more.

would appreciate any leads on SALTs!
I checked the directory for OTs and the nearest one seems to be Bristol and no Sensory Integration specialists.

DS is 4.3, due to start reception in Jan, his statement is for a mainstream placement with full time LSA but I think he'll struggle. What part of spectrum? I wish I knew! He is verbal, or sort of, makes single word requests and he can label all animals, colours and body parts but he doesn't have any functional language at all, receptive or expressive, so I was hoping for a unit of some description but that might too much to hope for...

I'll check NAS thanks!

By the way, thanks for the link in one of your previous threads to Dr Marion Blank. We have just sent our videos to her and if she gives green light we'll start the programme

oh wow- our stuff is being sent this week (will let you know how we get on with import duty). Would be great to do it together!

Can get SALTs name next time I'm in ds2/ds3's school (not every day).
I have heard good things about the Ivybridge unit.

I've heard good things about Bidwell Brook as well- and it seems to take a real range of children - from what I would call very high functioning to children like ds1.

There's donkey riding at Ivybridge for children with SN.

Yay for donkey rides! we'll be down next week for a couple of weeks doing recce (staying near Modbury) so I'll try arrange a visit in the school and check out the donkeys...

We are very excited about the literacy programme, I asked Dr Blank whether DS was too young but she said on the contrary. We should hear from her in a few days so I'll let you know

If you need a tutor I could introduce you to one (maybe 2)

If you want to meet up email me on nezumi35 at googlemail dot com (I think that's right-but tell me if you've sent something and I'll check.

you are so kind, thank you. Yes, I'll have tutors, send them my way

laudryfairy at yahoo co uk

We got an e-mail from Dr Blank and it's a green light so we are going to start when we get back from our holiday. Wow. She said that as DS already has some spoken language, it is highly likely that the programme will increase this. I just can't even imagine hearing him speak.

She made a couple of pointed comments about the importance of tailoring language in accordance with the form the programme follows, and that 'we make no requests for isolated labels' e.g 'what's this?' 'cat'. I had a long chat with her about ABA and she is quite critical about the way it teaches - or rather, doesn't - language. I've had those reservations for a long time myself and whereas ABA has done wonders to DS's compliance and imitation skills, after 14 months of full and part-time programme his language has not really come on. And this is a child who already had a small vocabulary at age 24 months so it's not that the seeds are not there. So it's time for a change, so your post was very serendipitous to us. I feel very positive about this programme, look forward to comparing notes along the way

DIL and JJ - I will be very interested to hear how your programmes progress as I have the same reservations about ABA and language with DS2. I'd be particularly interested to know how she gets motivation to speak going. Am very jealous of you moving to the South Hams DIL. We just spent a great holiday near Modbury - lovely area! (We are only two hours away up the M5).

sphil, I wondered the motivation issue myself. I don't think that the ABA principles of reinforcement and rewards are a no-no, whatever you try to teach, I am teaching DS piano very very slowly using colours, prompting and reinforcement - it's slow but we make progress!

But whether you should try to motivate speech with rewards is another thing, I also have my doubts about this which is why I'm dabbling with RDI & floortime. Dr Blank asked me why I want my son to speak. So that he can tell me what he wants or needs, I said. You already know what he wants, she said - which is true, I do, by interpreting his many non-verbal cues. But he needs to be able to be understood by other in order to be independent, so I guess that's why we try to encourage them (our kids) to speak. The goal of this programme, apparently, is to teach the child the language of others so that he is no longer an alien in the world - and for me that is a lot more important than how much DS speaks. The way I see it, if he understands language, 'cracks the code', he can be taught about the world around him. There is only so much that imitation and simple label language can teach. But if he can read a book about, I don't know, insects, that's pretty cool!

oh crap, late for OT session but I agree about South Hams - my friends in London with careers and lives rave about the Maldives or what not, but just take me to a beach in South Devon and I'm happy, thank you very much...

I'm not anti ABA although we have never really tried the real thing - the ABA at nursery is very ABA lite. However we have an SN Nanny who uses natural life speech encouragement with DS1. DS1 loves garage doors and checking if they are 'ocked' /locked. She has used this interest to teach him colours (well blue and green anyway) and types of door 'ooden /wooden and to recognise that 'handle' is not just the door handle on the garage, it could be a handle on a house door so he is learning to generalise a bit. DS1 is overly compliant anyway so he doesn't need ABA for that, that might sound good but it often seems that he doesn't understand that instructions can be ignored. Anyway this MB program sounds interesting so I'm looking forward to hearing more about it.

Ah DIL - yes some of the same problems as we've had. One of our biggest problems is that I'm sure ds1 has some quite major gaps in his language which it sounds as if she deals with (rather than ignores and assumes it will come).

It does sound as if quite a few children have responded to her program with speech- although she said ds1 was unlikely to be one of them - not sure whether that's or Anyway we have for a long time thought that ds1 is very unlikely to speak so it was actually reassuring to have a professional talk about that - rather than say that every child will talk if you do x, y and z (with the inference being that we're just not trying hard enough).

Am rushed off feet today but will email you tonight with tutors details.

Oh something semi heartbreaking in ds1's report as well. Often at school they divide his class into activities for the more able children and then ones for the less able (this will be in terms of children they can work with in sentences as opposed to single words etc - will reflect children learning to read vs those that aren't on reading books etc)

Anyway it says in his report that he will now often refuse to do his work (in the less able group) and instead insists on working with the more able group. They think he perceives the other work as too easy and apparently he's really pleased with himself if he keeps up. It says 'He so much wants to be one of the more able group that he has played a game of 'frustration' with a class mate recently, taking turns and pressing the pop up dice. We placed a favourite toy next to him to help him stay on task but there was no manic rushing around between turns and he was really happy with himself!'

Since looking into the typing I've done a lot more of telling him that I know he's clever and that I understand that what we see isn't what is going on inside etc and a lot more talking to him approx age appropriately. I wonder whether that's led to this requesting the more difficult stuff.

I think talking to him at age appropriate level is a great idea. We were told by Professor Gillberg who diagnosed DS1 not to assume that he doesn't understand just because he doesn't respond. He put a lot of stress on this point so we've tried to keep it in mind.

Sensible prof cyber.

I've emailed my tutor to ask if I can pass her email details on DIL (I'm sure she'll say yes but I feel I ought to check iykwim- she's new to us).

thanks jj
I emailed you contact details of a private OT in Plymouth, she doesn't have a sensory integration room with all the equipment but she's making enquiries to see if she can find one.

I booked a visit to the Ivybridge School for week after next. I spoke to the teacher and nearly started crying because she was so nice. A new experience to me, we pretty much gave up on schools here in London and decided to either home ed or move.

Oh JJ - that story about DS1 made me well up! Z, one of DS2's tutors, is always telling him how clever he is - 'I know you know this' is one of her favourite phrases. She also 'interpretes' his speech and replies to him using age appropriate language. I have to admit, I used to find it annoying - thought she was living in land of fantasy - until Growing Minds told me how great it was, how positive for his self-image etc. And I can see that now.

Have emailed you DIL. And need to email you sphil

We moved down from London too dil (Bromley).

GM are into talking age appropriately aren't they. I still find it hard to do tbh. I try to take some time out every now and then just to sit down and chat. He seems to respond well.

wow you guys have really given me some food for thought here re: age appropriate talking. So far the advice given to me has been to use simple phrases - having said that, this has come from the useless PCT SALT who hasn't really come up with much beyond 'oooh he's such a visual learner'... if I could get a pound every time someone said that...

I think tbh you can do both. We have to use simple phrases if we're trying to teach DS2 something, but I think sometimes it's just good to chat away as well.

I get that about 'a visual learner' too - and the funny thing is that DS2 isn't really!

I agree - we were also told to repeat simple words over and over for learning purposes but not to give up on normal speech either - you do both. I wouldn't mind all this 'visual learner' stuff if it was based on observation of DS1 - proving that he has learned x,y,z visually but it's not, it's just a cliche from a book. Our new SALT got lost last week trying to find the nursery so not a visual learner herself then if she couldn't use a map or sat/nav.

snigger at your SALT not being a visual learner. DS actually does seem to be a visual learner though - as noted by experienced private SALT - certainly he has found PECS very helpful indeed for word retrieval/increasing sentence length.

DS's private nursery were nice but useless - liked to baby him, get him to hug them a lot - whilst at his school nursery (combined with reception class) they treat him in a far more age appropriate way IMHO - which he seems far happier with.