Statutory Assessment: Parent Advice: ABA

[AngryWasp]

Hello,

I have to submit the parents advice within the next two weeks and we are hoping to get ABA - eventually.

Do I put this in the parent advice?

I'm guessing that I write down all of his needs, and then how I see them being met, and plan to put things that would lend itself to ABA being the only real solution so would appreciate any help with that, - but, do I just go ahead and blurt out that ABA is what we want?

If so, do I also write a wish list of other specifics i.e. SALT and OT?

We haven't yet actually done any ABA, but will have by the time we get to the tribunal.
I can blag my way a little saying that our home programme IS predominately ABA (it's a recorded list of taught milestones, but approach not mentioned).

Any advice would be invaluable at this stage about this or anything else experienced statementing people can suggest.

Many tia.

Starlight

I'd bloodly love it AW.

There are actually a lot of really excititng developments going on but it would not be wise of me to blurt them out on t'internet.

Oh Moodog, I do occasionally hear things, and it makes me sad tbh, that ds wasn;t born a couple of years later and will have access.

In Canada they've just started giving families of preschoolers $20,000 a year for therapy of their choice, and I believe there is a similar scheme in Australia too. It's coming, but we're slow on the uptake and my ds suffers . But we can't just sit around and wait can we?

When you said you'd love it, - you didn't mean me cleaning your house did you?

No, the other job.
I like cleaning.

AW,as Sam King said A change is gonna come.
Believe you me it is.
LEAs are shitting themselves because they konw that peopel will no longer tolerate an outdated irrelvant SN system.

The biggest factor in all this change?
T'internet.
Parents who fight and get what is needed tell other people and set a legal precedent. The drip drip effect.

Your ds will benefit from these changes.

As will his

Agree that it should be short, and easy to read. It's human nature to get bored easily by reams of text, particularly when it's in the Introduction, Key Issues, Summary, Conclusion type format. Mine was 2 1/2 pages long, large type face and lots of short sharp para headings - eg Behaviours/ Risks/ Speech. My opening para summed up the whole story, so that they very lazy reader got the point by just reading that and then the headings. At work, I used to go one step further and try and sum up whole message in the subject line of an email, for the really lazy reader who wouldn't even open up an email! I will see if I can find mine but have a horrible feeling it's not on this machine.

Yes.Summary good too which is about 2 sentences.Open secret in Health and Education that the only parts of reports really read are the summary and recommendation at very end.

They're doing a statutory assessment already, - Ed Psych bin and gone (she hates coming round coz I don't let her out of the door with my millions of questions - so doubt she'll be back in a hurry)!

Emailed her the developmental milestones that have been taught though but didn't tell her how they were taught, but she does know that DH spends 2-3 hours a night working with ds and has told us that she can see the evidence of it's impact but hasn't asked the method.

She knows that we know that national guidelines recommend 15-20 hours autism specific support and she knows that we'll be asking for something along those lines in the statement.

She 'might' put in her report the benefit to Ross of our home programme because she has been pretty honest and helpful in her report to inform whether to assess. She's my favourite person in the council actually and the one likely to represent the LA against us in tribunal .

How about asking for written version of comments made AW?
As Ed Psych makes them perhaps even write them down and say 'I'll be quoting you on that.I'll just read it back to you'

Or...emai lafter a home visit saying You stated that XY and Z.
Please confirm that this is the case.
Or....ask to see Ed Psych's notes made after home visit. You are entitled to see any notes of course. They won't let you take them away but will sit with you (and your rep) as you go through them and photocopy what you want.

Ah tis tricky, because I don't want to upset her or make her suddenly bolt and be defensive because she has been my window into the LA practices. It was her that told me the general set up for tribunals, - i.e. that they haven't had a legal bod representing them in a decade, and gave me the details of processes re funding cluster groups and referal panel policies etc. for children with SEN. Other people have been worse than politicians at giving me half-hearted dumb answers.

If I start quoting her I worry I might stop her talking.

Still trying to figure out how to respond to the HT's response to the IPSEA model letter. She replied to as if I was a 3yr old and I got no new information at all i.e. Q: what provision do you make for children with autism? A: Well the LA give us some funding and then we work out what best to do with it.

Fair point re Ed Psych.
She sounds ok.
Again, remember it is not sinister attempt to deny the best available intervention to your ds. They will genuinely believe that what thet offer is ok (I genuinely beleived the whole set up was ok a few years ago!!)

You could respond to letter using direct quotes from them and asking stuff about evidence based practice and so on (although I know they have talked crap to you about that before-such as misplacing data. Maybe cobble together that twaddle and sent it to them saying something like

'In your most recent letter you state that...however in light of our conversation on x/x/xx when you informed me that you do not collateo r analyse data from past home based interventions ete etc'

Get my drift

moondog That's been done already. The Poor Head of Service has written questions and letters from me to keep her going for a few months. In some ways I feel mean, because on the grapevine I hear that she is screaming at those above her about her lack of resources, but tbh my letters are actually very polite and reasonable.

I suppose she could use then as evidence when going to her superiors.

The stupid thing is, - they just had a JAR and SN came out as one of their weaknesses with autism in particular

Don't feel sorry, or bad or mean.

That's her job (one for which she will be renumerated handsomely, rest assured).

This is yours.

Off to a birthday party now

Keep at it.

Yay,- Got a letter back from one agency blaming another. Am currently writing to first agency to tell them that yet another agency thinks that it is their job to do something they haven't.

This is all good right?