Thinking of moving - your experiences of local education & Health Authorities please

[Lauree]

I'm thinking of moving out of London but I'm worried about losing all the help my DS gets now.

He's 5 years old in a fantastic mainstream primary with a low incidence statement. We have great support from local paeds, GOSH, local hosp, and all the other community services, SALT, OT physio orthotics etc. We live in Hackney, and have found it brilliant for services, I just don't really want my son growing up in an inner city area for much longer.

I've noticed that some people are finding it really hard to get the services they need in certain areas... so are there any good new stories out there? or health warnings for that matter. . .and, if you have moved area, how did you find out about the level of services available before you moved?

All advice gratefully received x

Bump.

Hertfordshire is completely out for you.

I think Surrey is a struggle.

Where were you thinking of moving. Possibly Waltham Forest is better. Islington might be an option?

Suffolk coastal is fantastic, great choice of small m/s primary school with great 1to1 sn support.

Avoid nottinghamshire statements are notoriously hard to get hold of. And it depends on your paed as to how much imput you get from services

Whilst we do have lovely clean air, if your a hayfever sufferer, it really is extremely dense on the pollen front.

Buckinghamshire isnt that far out but feels vastly different and the services are fab. Have been amazed by the input from the various professionals!

Hi,

Would not move to Essex; they are tight fisted with provision.

Certainly not Herts either; IPSEA get more complaints about this whole county's lack of SEN provision than anywhere else in the country!.

I think in Berkshire, once we actually got the ball rolling (which took a bit of pushing) the services have been pretty good.

Once they actually decide that something is needed we do only seem to have to wait a few weeks for it. The childrens center here was great, and there is a lovely sn childrens playground in Slough. WCS seems very fast, OT great, Physio good. Gets seen by the Ed Psych regularly.

We lived in Croydon before and jsut seemed to sit on waiting lists forever, and didn't get seen by anybody in the year we lived there.

We're Surrey. NHS is patchy: I find consultant and GP care excellent but therapy provision woeful. LEA not too good, SS dire. Google "Surrey Joint Area Review" to see what Ofsted thought of the overall provision for disabled kids in the area. Poor.

The way SS explained this to me at a seminar thing the other way is that Surrey is broke. It's a very big county (in population terms) and as it's nominally "affluent" they get little central funding. But they have a huge elderly population and providing services for them eats up a big chunk of their budgets.

Avoid Herts especially the 'affluant' areas! But if it has to be Herts not the west!.

We're in Surrey too, have found preschool services to be excellent - outstanding in fact. However we are now moving to the school provision and things have slowed down. Ds is in an excellent unit in a mainstream school but statment that was is place previously has not been updated ins pite of repeated requests etc. Therapy provision is good in the unit but still only amounts to 15 hours of Ot and year and 15 hours of physio which I don't think is enough but is better than a lot of places.

I moved completely out of london when my dd2 was 18 months. I was very well prepared, made sure I had:-

Complete medical files to physically hand over to new GP
Made sure all OT,Physio, SALT had contacted new counterparts in new area, in some cases already made first appt.
Made sure all GOSH depts had our new address and got them to give me contacts in new local hosp.
Transferred all home equipt ownership to new authority (had some trouble with this one, didn't want to move without support chair, ended up with GP telling social services on phone that he was advising me to go to newspapers over my treatment if they didn't comply - they did, promptly)
Got portage to transfer info to new portage office.

Most of the services we met up with after moving were impressed by the service we were getting: my homework definately helped.

It can be done smoothly and efficiently if you make it!

We're in Gloucestershire and have had great access to services. We've had no trouble getting OT, physio, speech therapy and paediatrician at all. I've been told we have been really lucky and it would make me very reluctant to move areas now we have all the support we need.

We have a local village school which is very small and has very good pastoral support although not fully wheelchair accessible due to age of building.

Depends on how far you want to move from London though but I do personally like being out of the city!

advoid north east essex it is a fight for everything

Completely different subject... But is there still a market in Hoxton??
I worked there when i was 14, just wondered!

Well, if you fancy a different country, South Wales is OK .
We're in Cardiff and I've come to appreciate that we have it much better than most , but still have had to fight as my DS is so little, for SS help.
NHS services are good (tho waiting lists still too long for a very impatient me ) and complaining gets you EVERYWHERE!

Rightyho! based on this very unrespresentative and totally biased sample , I'll be getting the map and pins out.. This is very early stages in my 'let's move out of London' thinking, and it's good to have some feedback....and it's good to hear it can be done smoothly with a bit of effort (actually it sounds like meltedmars put in a ton of effort - well done to you )

Good recommendations:
South Wales (Friends who did loads of research on Primary schools also settled just outside Cardiff)
Gloucestershire
Buckinghamshire
Suffolk
Islington (was thinking of going a bit further than that!)
Hackney (where we are now)

Might be lucky in:
Surrey
Berkshire

Might not be so lucky in:
essex, Hertfordshire, nottinghamshire

thanks for all your comments....

and yes there is still a market in Hoxton; in fact Hoxton is now highly trendy and arty, with loads of late night bars and art galleries opened up over the last few years... nothing like it used to be when a visit to the Jazz club on Hoxton Square (was it the bass clef??) felt (to me at least)like a trip out into the wild and desolate east ... (ah.. just realised that you could well be loads (potentially the kind of load that if it was on the back of a truck it would need a police escort) younger than me and this might not be news )

Moved from Essex LEA to Thurrock LEA which is also in essex. found Thurrock to be so much better.