How long was your parental contribution to the statement

[mummysaurus]

Applying for a statement. LEA has not agreed to a statement yet but have asked us to complete our parental report.

So far my report runs to 9 pages. I need to ruthlessly edit but there are 30 questions in the guidance they've given us.

If there are any assessors out there reading this - does any of this get read or taken notice of anyway?

Can you tell I'm in desperate need of distraction from my ginormous essay on the life and time of ds?

My report at this stage was 17 pages of print. This is your one chance to tell the LA what you consider your DS's SEN to be, and it is supposed to be given equal weight with other reports.

As long as you make sure that your report is as concise as you can make it, with appropriate headings, so that they can glance through key points, I think you should write all that you need to.

I actually gave mine a contents page because they had broken the parts down into:
A. Early life

B. What is your child like now?

1. General Health
2. Physical Skill
3. Self help
4. Communication
5. Playing and learning in the home
6. Relationships
7. Behaviour at home
8. Activities outside the home
9. At school/early education setting

C. Your general views

1. What do you think of your child?s progress compared with

other children of the same age?

1. What is your child good at?
2. What does your child enjoy doing?
3. Is your child aware of his/her difficulties? Is there anything

that your child worries about?

1. Advice/reports from others?
2. What do you think your child?s special educational needs

are?

1. How, where and with what support do you think these can

be best provided for?

1. With whom would you like more contact?
2. What do you think are the family?s needs and your needs?

10. Is there anything else you would like to tell us about your child?

At least that way, they could look to the page straight away for the answer.

Bear in mind that you need to tailor your advice to suit your intended destination for your DS. So if you want SS, you need to basically show that his needs go beyond the provision of a MS school, subtley, and if you want MS, you need to stress his need for a MS set of peers, etc.

Our DD got given a SS place which I would imagine was largely due to my Parental Contribution, because most of the professionals were shocked that she had been given it (although now she has it everyone has said what a good thing it is ).

lou we were given a very similar set of headings. I agree- you should give as much detail as you can because this is the only way they will know what your child is really like. They are obliged to take the views of the parents into account. Don't feel embarrassed if it is long. When I was a SENCo my reports were always quite long too, but I never had a request turned down.
Get someone who knows your child to read it through for you. They might think of things you have missed out, or be able to point out things you could rephrase whilst still making the point.

Lou and ima - thanks for that. We had the same so it must be a standard form. I like the idea of contents page.

Thanks for the encouragement to put it all down - it's made me realise how important it is to give the full picture.

I think we should give M/S a go but we will need the right support including OT and I'm nervous of that being overlooked. I'm going to send in loads of reports I've accumulated and cross reference them all.