how to get child statemented for aspergers? advice please

[stitch]

hi, im hoping the collective wisdom of moms here will help .
my friends son is believed to be asperger's. sorry i dont know the correct grammar there. but she is having trouble getting it on record that he is. school keeps thinking he is just disruptive. he has been excluded three times in four weeks for disruptive behaviour, including hitting a teacher. he is 8 and she is getting very stressed. educational psychologist observed a maths lesson, but he is an angel in maths as he is very very good at it.
and she cant apply to the special school she wants to as they wont consider appliccation unless statemented, and she cant get anyone to give her a straight answer on how to get this done.especially after the educational psychologists report
any advice would be very helpful please

Hi Stitch,

Simply put she will need to write to the LEA and ask for him to be assessed with a view to be statemented. She cannot leave this to the school to do because if the school do this and the LEA refuse there is no right to appeal. If a parent does this the decision not to assess can be appealed against.

Did the Ed Pysch feel that a statement is necessary, did the parent get feedback from the Ed Pysch?. If not she should have done.

IPSEA are very good in this regard - there are some model letters on there she can use and there is also a telephone helpline she can call to get further advice.

Their website address is www.ipsea.org.uk. I would urge her to contact them.

I would say that it can take a long time (up to 26 weeks - yes that's around six and a half months) for the statement to be issued. However, once the LEA have agreed to assess then a statement will follow.

Do you mean statemented or diagnosed?

thanks meerkat, ill pass the info along.
i dont know about the difference between diagnosed and statemented. surely if the doctor says the child has aspergers then that should be enough? but apparently the ed psych's report says that he doesnt think the child has aspergers.
just very worried about my friend as she is very stressed

Something which is worth knowing but which is seldom publicised is that it IS possible to admit a child whithout a statement to a special school. It is not done that often, but it is done from time to time. They call this admission an assessment place, and it usually means admission for 6 months, after which time parents and professionals meet up to discuss either reintegration into mainstream with help or permanent admission to special school. during the 6 months (theoretically) a statement can be sorted out if required.

I only know about this because I know parents who have had kids admitted this way. When I queried this type of admission with our local parent partnership officer, she initially denied this was possible, but later phoned to apologise and said that it was a valid admission procedure. Grrrr, I hate it when people have been doing a job for years and still haven't got a clue.

depends on who the doctor is. If its a GP then he's not been diagnosed. The best person to diagnose is a developmental paed, although clinical psychologists do sometimes. If he has been diagnosed by either of these people then the school and ed psych shouldn't be questioning it.

IPSEA can help with requesting a statement, but the first step may be to sort out the diagnosis (not officially necessarty for a statement but it would be easier for the LEA to refuse to give one without a diagnosis). Does she just want the statement for access to the special school? I don't think she'll be successful if that's what she's after tbh.