parental contribution to statement

[nuru]

Have been battling with this most of the day (in between grumpy children and dh!). Have got to 5 typewritten pages and still not finished.
Am worrying nobody is going to read it - and if they do that it won't make any difference anyway. Any tips on making your point without being repetitive or any insight into how these are treated by the LEA bods would be appreciated!

It is a nightmare - I still shudder at the thought of the statementing process.

We only had to do ours the once as ds2 was awarded a full statement the first time but I would try not to make it too long. You don't want people just skim reading it.

We did it as bullet points and then went into more detail under each one, this avoids repeating yourself too many times.

You just hope that the people reading will actually take in what you are saying don't you?

Good luck with it.

we broke it down into general areas of difficulty such as social issues, coordination issues etc and then, like slightlycrumpled, used bullet points with further explanation where necessary. I don't know what difficulties your child has so can't say much on the specifics but with DS, we have behavioural issues which are 'saved up' from school and only vented when he is in the safety of home - so we decided to explain this and mentioned the treatment he had had to help him overcome this and the limitations of the improvement even after the treatment.

Good luck and HTH.

Thanks for the replies!
Bullet points is definitely a great idea - I've just printed out a draft and it just looks like a thesis at the moment!
Dd2 has Down syndrome and is just coming up for 3 - so the statement is aimed for when she starts school nursery in Sept. She has difficulties in just about every area of development so it's trying to get all that in, and also to try and get across the difference there is going to be between her being in the safe understanding home environment and the big nursery school environment.

nuru My ds has di-georges syndrome and actually alot of his difficulties are very similar to Down syndrome. To be quite honest our paed wrote such a brilliant report that I'm not sure how much ours was taken into account.

I took extracts from letters from paed, ed psych, senco etc from previous visits and made them my own. These people are used to providing reports on the children and they tend to be slightly less emotional.

Good luck with it, I hope all this effort brings the desired result.

I'd agree that the Statement J got was largely word for word what the professionals had said (cos parents are too stupid to know their kids, dontcha know ) and in J's case, the Ed Psych report.

But a couple of my lines got in...and the bullet point thing is a great idea.

I would say also though to justify all the provision you are asking for e.g. in J's, most of mine was about his safety due to violent/ impulsive behaviour, so everything I said e.g. he needs full time 1:1 support was then justified in the sense of what would happen if he DIDN'T have that support.

HTH

Golden rules is to specify and quantify. Make sure they do the samee.
No vague stuff about 'needs access to' 'regular monitoring' 'omgoing support' unless of course you trust them to supply.

I trust noone.It's easier that way.

nuru

Would agree with the others re bullet points and keeping it short; my LEA would never read anything like a 5 page document (its too long besides which they adopt a MEGO expression at such things - my eyes glaze over).

If the LEA do come up with a draft statement do check parts 2 and 3 with a huge degree of caution. These are the important parts of the statement document. Specific and quantifiable provision as Moondog rightly states is the only acceptable thing here. Anything vague and woolly is worthless to your child.

IPSEA and or SOS;SEN can help with these aspects of statementing.

www.ipsea.org.uk

Thanks again for all the really helpful comments. They all make a lot of sense.
So I think I'll go back to the drawing board a bit and put everything into bullet points - but have lots of bullet points!!
I think what I'm wanting to stress to them is the amount of input we've given her at home - all the professionals keep saying is how well she's doing - but imo that's because she's had pretty much specialist 1:1 for 24/7 so far from us. So of course we want her to carry on doing as well as that when she starts school.

Interesting comment about this report also being looked at when it comes to appeal - will keep that in mind.

Thanks for the comments re looking at the draft statement when it comes - have already been in touch with IPSEA and will definitely be running everything past them - but will also probably be back on here for all you words of wisdom...