How often do you see the autism advisory teacher?

[grumpyoldeeyore]

DS is 3 and we have been nominally under the Autism Outreach advisory teacher service since July. The teacher has seen DS twice - but both times were really to talk to the adults (nursery and us at home) she hasn't worked directly with DS or tried to assess his abilities. We then got a TA from the service who came to us 2-3 times and did "portage" for 1/2 hour and then she went into nursery twice and "observed" them. The TA left in November and we have heard nothing since. Our draft statement says we see them weekly (ha ha!). Which we did initially - for umm about 4 weeks, then nothing. They also did one evening autism awareness training session in nursery.

Had DS gone to the special school nursery (where the teacher is part of the advisory team) they would have observed him for 6 weeks to assess him and then drawn up a programme of work to address his deficits. In ABA we have supervision fortnightly.

From LA team, we have no assessment, no programme, no input into IEP and currently no workers.

Is this typical?

For those of you with statements, how many hours of advisory teacher time is specified?

Hi Grumpy, we are still waiting for ASD Outreach in school, so cant help you im afraid.

Although i recently found out that you dont have to have an ASD dx to be referred as the school were previously told by ASD Outreach. All you have to have for a referral from school is social and communication difficulties identified.

Not much help to you, but may be of help to someone else.

This is for both boys, sods1 10,AS/ HFA, in MS and ds3, 6, Asd in a SNU.

The answer is never.We wereinvited to acoffeemorning once but toddlers weren'table to go so i coudln't make it,otherwise no viosits becuase (I am told but I have been told somany lies) once you have sen a behaviour advisory teacher (in yr1 fords1,so poor we complained) you are not eligible for outreach.

We've nly just gotthem to put asd on ds3's sattement (was social etc etc before),I will be asking for this at the next review though. I do actually know the local one by sight- ironically, ds1's friends Dad.....

It used to be once a half term, then once a term but we've only seen her once since Sept.

It's not actually a qualified teacher here, but she knows a damn sight more than any teacher I know (including me) so who cares?

She's either in school or comes to the house every week. At one point, it was twice a week (when things were very bad and the school were trying to get rid).

It's because J is so borderline re: mainstream/ special that the LA would rather put lots of relatively cheap resources into supporting the school to keep him than put him in special school which would be £££££.

She is good. Has helped with a lot of home behaviours as well, and J worships her.

Starlight - they said that? How awful. Agree with you about underqualified and enthusiastic being better than someone who thinks they know everything but has crap expectations.

Js statement specifies that his TA must be someone who has undergone at least 5 (I think) days of training re: autism and also some ADHD training. It also specifies restraint training and says that they must have had some experience of working with autistic/ ADHD kids.

Now, I don't think J's current TA has most of that so I was and first of all, but luckily just made the school send her on a few days training before she started with J and she is fantastic. The autism outreach person did a lot of work with her too.

grumpy, if the Statement says it must be weekly visits, it must be weekly visits. Write to the LA and remind them of their legal duty to arrange the provision in the Statement.

The first behaviour adviasory teacher we had advised locking ds`1 up.

He was moved elsewhere apparently shortly after, and known to SNAP.

The second was awful; she acted in palceof ed psych to do the assessment on ds3. She denied any issues,advised us not to apply for a statement for severalmonths and said she could gusrantee he was not asd. She sent letters out stating all that without any contact details so we could not query it; we complained to the Assembly member (like an MP in Wales) and it was amde official, at the resolution meeting she sat grumpily and said wasnt her fault secretary left info off (she had signed it), and that the fact that the assessments wereclearly above ds'slevel(he couldn't do them now, 3 years on) and the tests being carried out ahdn't ben witnesed by anyone at all at nursery was coincidental' at this stage ds3 was a hardly verbal (maybe 10 words?)non toilet trained 3.5 year old.

The instructions on when to apply for a statement turned out to coincide with her retirement date .

I got a bit of flack from schoolteachers for daring to complain about her (oldmates apaprently) but sometimes my inability to pick up on thingslike snide comments for 40 minutes after the comment is amde is a benefit LOL, teahcer gave up and thought I didn't care. Unusually forme though I am still absolutely certain I was right to complain about her, and things didn't get any better afterwards wrt to the school,although we did then get a statement with specified provision, even if it has had to be upgraded a few times since including SN provision placement.

Oh and TA's at ds1's school didn't receive training as Head pulled funding after it was arranged. Luckily his current TA is very good and knows about asd from friends etc, and indeed is seeming to get somewhere with him, but before that the extent of their bility to cope seemd to be displayed in a consant whining of'ooooohhh pleeeeeeease ds1 dont do that '

We're doing ABA so not bothered if they come or not - I am deliberately not chasing them so it looks worse for them at tribunal, but I just wondered what was considered an adequate service. Oddly just after I posted this i happened across our earlybird teacher - who would have been the only member of the advisory teacher team I would have wanted - and she said we should be seeing someone at least weekly for 2+ hours. It just seemed so odd for the LA to state weekly I wondered where they had got that from.

I suppose they will show up once we get the final statement then!

No guarantees-both ofmine are statemented.