multi disciplinary meeting - confused

[claw3]

Ds has come home with a letter in his book bag stating the school are organising a multi-disciplinary meeting and will inform me of the date.

Im confused!

1. Ds has never had a multi-disciplinary assessment, so who will the school be inviting?

1. Do you need to have a MD assessment before you can have a MD meeting.

The only person who has been into school is senior SALT to assess after Paed requested this.

One more question how is progress supposed to be monitored, are records kept?

For example if someone observes him, are they supposed to record it?

SEN COP 5:24 Record Keeping

"Schools should record the steps taken to meet the needs of individual children. the school's SENCO shoudl have responsibility for ensuring that the records are properly kept and avialble as needed. "

It contiues at 5:25 and 5:26

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Accurate
R = Realistic
T = Timely

The term SMART was introduced under Ministry of Defence initiative to improve MOD procurement back in the 1990's and seem to have been adopted more widely by Govt Dept since.

Hi just caught up with rest of this thread. Yes we met at Bibic. I'm not done with this road - we're battling away but a few months ahead of you. You have fantastic insight into your child, its obvious to all of us on here. It took me a while to feel confident speaking up against professionals - our nursery were in denial for a long time - then he got his diagnosis and 3 months later they are writing reports saying they alerted us to his ASD! I'd go in with low expectations. Perhaps just pick one target that you really want and see. You can only make the best of it until something else comes along. If you can get Parent Partnership to go with you, they aren't much use but might send a message to the school.

You could do an FOI request for his school records and see what they write to monitor progress. I'd try an internal complaint to Head and copy it to Governors and if you get a pants reply write to OFSTED. Or at least threaten to do so unless they start taking you seriously.

Having got 3 kids, I can absolutely promise you that NOTHING you are doing as a parent is causing your DS's problems, you were great with him.

I know a parent who had a similar experience - told she was a terrible parent, her son out of control etc. He had a breakdown at 10, ended up out of school for a year, tutored at home on advice of psychiatrist, who told the school if the child went back there they would make him worse! He got diagnosed with Aspergers at 10 - she had "known" something was wrong from age 2 but got told it was her not him. He's now doing ok in a SS, but only after nearly destroying him and his whole family. The school concerned is now the best m/s school for ASD, overflowing with 1:1 TAs - it has the same head, who I guess was humble enough to learn a lesson.

Wetaugust, you are brill with the all the relevant references, like an a-z of SN! Thanks very much.

Starlight, when i get 'he is doing fine' at the next meeting, i plan to put them on the spot and ask 'how do you know this'. They are not observing him or monitoring his progress, no records are kept. They are basing 'he is doing fine' on having a quick 'word' with his class teacher before the meeting. At least now i know how they should be monitoring i can question them about it. Yes i based my IEP on SMART (Wetaugust told me about this in November)

I agree there is no need for the silly academic targets to be there. When i asked why these had been set as targets, but not listed as concerns. I was told they were not concerned, which makes no sense what so ever! All their concerns are social/communication, yet their targets are academic. The things you mention are very similar to what i have asked for in my IEP.

Hi Grumpy, I phoned parent partnership and they were pretty useless, she didnt understand why i would want the strategies without a dx of ASD! I did phone SNAP on Friday and im waiting for someone to phone me back, perhaps they will be a bit more helpful.

The TAMHS lady who the school got to come in and see me, actually complimented me on my understanding of ds and his needs and told me i was managing his behaviour very well and to continue with the strategies i was using. The school looked pretty silly accusing a little boy with SN of 'sulking and wanting his own way'

Thats terrible about your friends ds. If ds's school refuse to put any strategies in place at this meeting, i will be taking him out of there. Ds is extremely passive and hates confrontation, which is why it is so out of character for him to refuse to do something, you would have thought 'alarm bells' would be ringing for them too.

Thanks i have lots of info for my forth coming meeting.

Ive just had my CAMHS appointment confirmed in writing. It is asking that all members of the family attend, is this normal?

The referral was accepted, after TAMHS (sub division of CAMHS)intervention in school. I really got the feeling that TAMHS was asked to attend by the school to make sure the problem wasnt with me!

Someone on here who works for CAMHS did say that it is normal for CAMHS to rule out bad parenting before they investigate further. Am i going to have to prove myself yet again before this is taken seriously or am i being paranoid?

Hi

Yes, our initial referral asked for the parents to attend. I understand it was to consider the possibility of alternative dxs before a child is placed on the 'official' SCD list.

I didn't find it an interrogation though it was a bit of a waste of time. The woman we saw was very complimentary about parenting.

It is just another gateway through which to jump! Probably mixing my metaphors there!

They are asking for 'all' members including my other children.

Id have thought the TAMHS interview and the SALT report would have already established that it wasnt my parenting causing ds's problems, still i suppose a school telling them 'mother is insisting on all this help, when there is nothing wrong with ds' carries a lot of weight.

The referral was made before any reports were available. I will make sure they have copies of all the recent reports.

Starlight, it was months ago and she has referred us onto CAMHS and we dont see her anymore. I got the impression she acts as a referee between school and home. She was bloody useless she complimented me on my strategies for dealing with ds behaviour, but yet told the school she felt thier 'leave him to it' approach was good too!

She felt the conflicting approaches wouldnt do any harm and he would just have to 'learn' in school you just have to get on with it.

Bearing in mind the only mention of ASD came from me and no reports were available at the time.

So i suppose she was giving advice based on ds being 'normal'.

I think its a bit odd to ask your other children. I would suggest you ring them up and "clarify" and if they say we do want you to bring the others ask why - you can always say because you would need to get authorised absence from school etc. You would have thought if they had concerns re parenting they would contact school and ask how your other children were doing (are they school age?). I must admit when we were first referred I was all geared up to take my other kids school reports and prove what a great job I had done with them if they even dared to blame me.

letter states 'if possible we like to meet with all members of the family who are living together at home. We realise this can cause problems for those who have to take time off work and school, but we have found from experience that it is by speaking to everyone that we are better able to understand the difficulties and plan how we can help'

That reads to me we would like to meet all members of the family so we can decide if your family is dysfunctional!

Just phoned them and asked why they wanted the other children there. She told me the letter was 'standard'. I told her my other children would not be attending and if they felt after the 1st appointment that my other children needed to be, i would then arrange it.

Our appointment is with consultant psychiatrist and Clinical psychologist.

The purpose of the meeting is an initial assessment, they wont know the outcome until after the meeting! The other members are asked to attend because its a 'family' service. I have pointed out to them that the 'family' were not referred, only ds for likely autism.

Claw, we were asked to go and it didn't cross my mind to take DS2 but the report afterwards specifically pointed out that he wasn't there.

This made no difference to the outcome.

It's not just about bad parenting, I think they have to rule out other possibilities which may demonstrate the same symptomology (is that a word? )before they stick you on the long, long social and communication disorders waiting list.

Starlight, i cant speak to the people who the meeting is with, so have had to make do with the receptionist. Her initial response to the 'purpose' of the meeting was 'well you were referred and you have been on the waiting list'! I gave up.

You are quite right, im sure there will be no doubt in their mind after the assessment. As soon as someone who has any knowledge of ASD meets ds, it is obvious that something isnt 'right'. Not many 5 year olds can sit in total silence for an hour and half, not acknowledging anyone in the room, avoiding eye contact, nodding or shaking his head when pushed to answer any questions.

Or he could be having an 'over friendly day' where he walks in and hugs their legs and walks right up to their face and tells them a totally random piece of info.

Ds never does anything by halves, he is extreme to the extreme!

I will ask them to clarify the purpose of the meeting at the start and explain as you said. I can understand the need to establish whether bad parenting is present or not, but its wearing a bit thin now.

Debs, i know what you mean, whether its a word or not!

Ds has recently been for a genetic tests, so they can check those results if they are worried about it possibly running in the family!

Im just a bit pissed off, that we havent even reached the experts are convinced stage. Its just been one long, drawn out list of referrals to all the wrong people. Hopefully this will turn out to be a step in the right direction. Im just getting really impatient, its taken 3 and half years to get to this stage.

Don't take it personally Claw, it's just people who are not generally specialists but are rather generalists who do a bit of ASD, covering their own backs with elaborate systems of assessments.

The consultant psychologist who heads the ASD team who we saw on Friday said they were talking about identifying cases where they could speed the process up by dispensing with some of the levels of checking.

But the whole process is so subjective that there's never going to be a fool proof way of doing it.

Communication between experts and reading reports would also help to speed up the process.

If CAMHS had bothered to read SALT report, they would see that she has highlighted my concerns, with things such as

'ds is confused by instructions and explanations'

'no concept of before or after have been established',

'difficulties in understanding emotion based vocabulary'

'couldnt sequence 3 pictures'

'conversation skills remain quite limited and his ideas are very muddled'

Im no ASD expert, but the whole report stinks of ASD, why not just refer straight to the ASD team at CAMHS. The system sucks!

Starlight, starlight....now what would the entire diagnostic industry do then???

Actually, the one thing they go on is what the parents say, so I don't know what else they're arguing about

I agree. You go through that palaver to get the result you knew you were going to get in the first place. I suppose it is there in an effort to ensure some sort of consistency