Been refused Assessment for Statement

[misscutandstick]

Letter came on Friday to tell me we had been refused an assessment for a statement. NO worries, we can fight that battle too. In fact the ed psyche is coming on Friday, in the home (what happens then? its the first time we will have met and shes coming to chat about both DS4 who has ASD and DS5 who has complex issues.)and i have details of our MP too.

however on the refusal letter it states:

"...DS5 has been allocated ADDITIONAL FAMILY NEEDS funding at the HIGH LEVEL for his admission to Nursery, which the Panel agreed is appropriate at this stage..."

studying the special needs booklet for statementing for parents:

"...ADDITIONAL FAMILY NEEDS - THe county council gives a sum of money to each FAMILY OF SCHOOLS. The family of schools consists of a secondary school and its feeder primaries. The actual amount of money allocated depends on the number of pupils within the family, the national curriculum attainment levels and the number of pupils receiving free school meals.

The money is given to named children who are placed at School Action or School Action + or have a statement of special educational needs. MOney should be used for individual children although it is up to the individual schools to decide how the suport is used for the pupil. The amount awarded for an individual pupil is usually for an academic year."

So in practicalities what does this mean?

does he get a 1:1 until ive sorted his statement out or not? 'amounts' or 'hours' is not stated on the letter, I understand that the SENCO is looking into how much class help it is... but who gets it?

It's a tricky one and a grey area and every place is different.

A Statement is needed if a school can't meet the child's needs from its own resources. In the good old days, schools were only expected to resource a School Action Plus child for say 2 hours a week. So if a child needed more support than that, they were entitled to a Statement.

Now, in my area, schools are expected to resource/ fund up to 25 hours from their delegated budgets (which means the LEA gives schools extra money for SEN than they did before). However, the extra SEN money is A) not ringfenced, so schools can spend it on what they like and B) is not actually based on how many SEN kids there are, but on something random like deprivation. So a deprived school will get £££££££ for SEN and can probably fund those 24.5 hours but a leafy suburb school might not actually have enough money to do so.

In a way, systems like this additional family need// Enhanced School Action Plus funding (or whatever it's called in various areas) is better because in theory, needs can be met more quickly without the need for loads of paperwork that a Statement requires.

But the stuff your things says ("The money is given to named children who are placed at School Action or School Action + or have a statement of special educational needs. MOney should be used for individual children although it is up to the individual schools to decide how the suport is used for the pupil. The amount awarded for an individual pupil is usually for an academic year") is crap becaise it is up to the schools so there are no guarantees and also because you'll have to fight your case each year.

I don't know your DSs. The school may well meet their needs from this SEN budget, in which case there is no need for a Statement technically. Once you've found out what they'll provide without a Statement, you'll have a clearer picture.

But I would always push for a Statement if you think needs might not be met because it gives you a legal guarantee and can't be removed on a whim.

Sorry it was bad news, by the way.

misscutandstick

Would not think any one to on esupport will be forthcoming short of a statement being in place. Its another example of SEN funding being done on the cheap and this does not help children at all.

Basically your LEA like many others these days has gone down the "devolved funding" route. They've basically said to the schools, "here's some money, now its your problem to sort out". The letter you've received is BS and is something that should also be pointed out to IPSEA.

This is one of the issues that IPSEA is campaigning against on their website as devolved funding schemes are not without their difficulties (as givemesleep has rightly pointed out).

Good on you for planning to appeal their crass decision. Do get your MP on side as well.

This is worth a read as well:-

www.ipsea.org.uk/PDFs/Briefing%20Challenging%20SEN%20Delegation.pdf

Attila - any ideas why IPSEA have stopped publishing stuff like that on the website? The news bit's not been updated for ages!

just a quickie - and i probably know the answer!

On the letter for the refusal it states that DS5 has "...severe and complex needs..." surely if thats how THEY see it, why was he NOT awarded the right for an assessment at least???

On the letter for the refusal it states that DS5 has "...severe and complex needs..." surely if thats how THEY see it, why was he NOT awarded the right for an assessment at least???.

The above is why he was refused.

You need to talk to IPSEA asap re this matter.

Think this could well be cited as an example of "blanket policy"; this is illegal as well (see page 4 of document earlier posted). This is an example of what LEA's do, they are trying to dodge their statutory responsibilities here.

Appeal their crass decision and get IPSEA and anyone else you can think of (particularly your MP) on side. IPSEA are highly busy as well so would not think they get much time to update their webpages.