Draft Statement in - Can you help me draft a letter?

[yomellamoHelly]

Ds's draft statement arrived today. (3yo; cp; not walking; just starting to crawl; non-verbal; v inquisitive; currently attending special school though can finally withdraw him now - my silver lining to all this!))

I've written this response. Could you please please please help me fine-tune it for maximum effect? I'd be really grateful.

Dear ...

Further to our telecon today I am writing to confirm our dissatisfaction with the draft statement for G that we received today.

We feel the therapy input should be in Part 3; not referred to as an aside in Part 6 for the reasons stated in our Parents' Contribution.

We are also concerned at the lack of a clear statement as to what the exact provision for our son should be in terms of therapy and 1:1 support. There will be no way of measuring whether G has had the help he is considered to need and we won't have any way to challenge it. Our concern is that in these "credit-crunch"ed times if there is no explicit statement that G requires x, y and z he will not get it and if he does not receive the help he needs he will not have a positive educational experience.

With regards to therapists, you:

• mention no numbers of hours spent working directly with G;
• make no mention of hours spent liasing with all the other professionals, attending meetings about him and writing the reports etc.;
• make no mention of time spent training non-professionals working with G;
• include the phrase "at the discretion of the therapist involved" and also refer a couple of times to the "monitoring" and "review" of programmes for implementation in the classroom. This all sounds like a very hands-off approach to us.

With regards to 1:1 support, you:

• give no indication as to who will be implementing these programmes
• give no indication as to that/person(s) background/training;
• give no indication how much time they will spend with our son working on these programmes;
• give no indication whether that attention will be solely fixed on him or spread across a group.

You say all these points should have been answered by the various contributors to this document for you to be able to include them in the draft. Can you please forward this document to these people and ask them if they can clarify these points?

You say that some of our concerns may be due to the fact that G has attended a special school to date so the assumption is that a lot of this is provided in-house already. In fact the level of involvement at [special school] so far has been less than we were led to expect. Our understanding is that this has been because he has no statement and the head has to consider the fair distribution of the limited "floating" resourses available to her. We now feel as if we are in a "Catch 22" situation!

With regards to Part 4 we again refer you to our Parents' Contribution for our views in full. We will add that [special school] have failed to work together with the [mainstream playgroup] staff to ensure they are both "pulling in the same direction". [special school OT] kindly helped settle G in on his first day but [special school] haven't had any involvement since despite [mainstream playgroup] trying to get the physiotherapists to visit. Therefore I see no advantage to G continuing at [special school] and considering continuing a part special school / part mainstream approach.

You say no-one will advise us where the best place for G is. (We understood differently and were open to a discussion.) Our preference would therefore be for a mainstream school if G's statement provides sufficient support for this to be a workable solution. We rely on this document to provide it! ... is our preference for September 2010.

Kind regards
...

Getting therapy hours and specific input down on paper is almost impossible on a statement. As I'm sure you are aware this is mainly because in most areas education and health are separate bodies, funded and managed separatley. Any therapist reading a draft statement that states specific hours or frequency of their input will ask for it to be removed. The best you will get is probably the standard phrases you already have (monitoring, review, at discression of therapist). There are a few egg shells on the ground between education and health about these issues.

If your sons is new to the school and has a new statement it is probable that the school will employ a new member of staff to work with him. Depending on the attitude of the Head and the relationship you have with him/her you may be able to be involved in the recruitment process.

A statement needs to be reviewed annually so even if it isn't quite 'right' now you will get a chance to review it in a year.

I really hope you get a positive experience at his new school. Good luck

With regards to your letter, it might help to add some phrases that you do want included. E.g For a trained member of staff to spend a minimum of 30 mins per day on G's stretches.

Hi

It's a good letter.

Only points:

be more assertive as in where you write "we feel the therapy" - change to "the therapy".

Remove anything that could be considered 'chatty' such as the refernce to credit- crunch etc.

Specific is the word you should use when stating that the help has notbeen adequately specified.

Remove any criticisms of the staff - you don't have to explain why you don't want a special school. They have to explain why you can't have a mainstream school.

You have a right to mainstream and the LA should contact the school of your choice to asceratin whether reasonable adjustments can be made by the school to accommodate your child. Just tell them the school you want and ask them to consult the Head re admission.

Sorry - not trying to hack it apart - it's very good - just a few suggestions.
Best wishes

Thanks for your advice JM and WA. Will alter it tomorrow and send it off (brain a bit fried now). Didn't realise about the education / health stand off. Guess this is why they can end up being a bun-fight.

Nice one Starlight [thumbs up emocion]

Thanks Starlight. Sent it all off at 5 tonight. Glad it's ticked off.
Have also withdrawn G from special school, requested upping of hours at mainstream playgroup, requested return of portage and got sossen on board!
And so the games begin .....

Starlight - All those thoughts have gone through my head too!
According to Sos!sen the person who wrote it is quite well known to them. Not expecting much out of the next 8 weeks tbh but I intend to be a pain in everyones' backsides for the duration of i in the hope it gets us somewhere.
Have logged on to tribunal thread already! Kind of knew I'd be there back in September having been given given a heads up on the quiet by the therapists involved.

Unfortunately making yourself a pain in the backside is the best way of getting anywhere near the help you need. It helps if you've got the Therapists on your 'side' as they shouldn't be being told by their managers to recommend as little as possible in their reports for education.

I'm glad you are ready for a fight.

Well today I got an ecopy of G's proposed statement. Also got guidelines from sossen on how to rewrite parts 2 and 3.
Have requested meeting with contributors to grill them on why they've said what they have too but reading between the lines of their response it looks like I've got to wait until Feb to hijack another meeting. (Blurb about extending 15 day deadline.)
Starting to wonder how close we are to having to shell out money we don't have on second opinions etc and whether it's wisely spent or not (i.e. do they pay attention when their employees are saying something different?)
Any ideas of what else I can do?

Okay. Is this another one for Sos!sen et al? Apart from not knowing who to ask for these also don't want to spend the money for the council to say they won't accept their advice or that we need another one as well for tribunal stage.