How does the school 'use' hours allocated by statement?

[MeAndPiglet]

Hi All, please help me as I am new to the statement arena!
We have just received our provisional statement for my ds who will start reception in Sept, and who has a severe speech disorder. They are saying they will allocate him 11 hours of additional support a week. I have learned from this forum that I will need to pin them down to confirm these as 1:1 support hours, however my question really is do I get any input in what they do with this time?

As he will be only half day Sept-Jan (as our school has a delayed start for summer babes) he is actually only gonna be in school for 2.5 hours a day which means he should in theory have a constant support person for the term. Will this person just follow him around all morning 'facillitating his interaction with his peers'? or can I request they spend some of the time on SLT exercises? And then in Jan he will obviously have help for a much smaller part of the school day..how do you make sure the person is there for the right part?

Also do I have any input into who they hire? I know this sounds very naive but obviously the right person would make a huge positive difference to him whereas the wrong type of person would be, well, less helpful. Has anyone ever considered applying to be their own child's LSA....I feel like an unqualified speech therapy assistant most days and would obviously know how to help him better than some...not exactly encouraging independence I know but there is a certain temptation.

Thanks for reading this far...I know you lot know a lot about how to get the best out of a statement, please share with me if you have the time.
Thanks in advance.

no, you won't have any say on who they hire, but you should encourage your slt to be actively involved with setting targets for his iep, and for drawing up slt activities to be implemented during school. some of ours was done as small group work, some 1-1 it was fine.

have you had transition meeting from nursery to school yet? this will give you the opportunity to ask all sorts of qs with the new head (and hopefully class teacher before september).

i wouldn't imagine they'd give you the job lol - they'd have to pay you, and you have to do it for free at home .

dd2 had 15 hours. in actuality, as another little girl had 15 hours, the two of them shared a full time 1-1. (so, 1 -2 really, but easily manageable.) it depends what other support staff are in place at school, and how the school are planning on implementing the hours tbh.

thanks madwoman...cant say I'd be rushing to apply for the job just sometimes get lost in fight the cause for my little man!

We are lucky that he is ina combined foundation unit at the moment so his setting and teachers will all stay the same throughout the transition and through reception. This is a big plus for him given the vulnerability he feels with his lack of speech.

I think the cynical side of me worries that his 'person' will just become another classroom assistant (is that a terrible thing to think!?) especially as in a nursery setting the kiddies do just grab any available adult for help or play.

More worried about Jan as then he will just have the 2 hours in a full schhol day which doesnt seem much really...all very scary for me as I am his permanent interpreter(sp) at the moment.

different schools have different theories - in nursery dd2 had a specific 1-1 keyworker who was effectively her personal slave - it wasn't very healthy tbh, although worked v well in terms of therapy. (the slt trained the keyworker in makaton, and it filtered through the other staff/ children) and she was able to get a grip of some of the physio/ ot stuff. socially it was a bit of a disaster - dd2 thought she was off to spend the day with x, not to play with her friends/ peers or anything else.

for yr r the ft lsa post was a job share, so it meant that the two ladies could cover each other etc (so not a disaster if one off sick) but still meant that dd2 had a fairly rarified air

this year started with a total mish mash lol, which has been a lot healthier in terms of social interaction. sooooo many things to take into consideration! i tend to let them get on with it unless there is a specific issue now...

(the 'new' lsa doing the slt groups at her new school was the cleaner until christmas... even dd2 thought that was slightly odd. in the end i shrugged and ignored it, how do i know she wasn't a fully trained slt who couldn't get a job?!)

You need to run by your provisional statement with ipsea or sos sen or ACE.

Offering 11 hours in funding terms means that they just give the school 11 hours worth of funding, but there is nothing to tell the school how to fund it. They can fund it on paints if they like and just say that it was to do some kind of group interaction paint programme which will benefit your ds.

Do run it by the charities.

The Speech Therapist should have done a report for the statement and spelt out what SALT provision was needed and specified level of input. My statement says SALT will set and teach nursery staff language programme and they should deliver it daily for 20 mins a day, she will oversee half termly. Should be other recommendations re other needs eg social skills, play skills etc or whatever the issue is. But they could use some of it for prep / meetings and not give 11 hours face to face time a week. If there are set things you want in each 2.5 hour session I would talk to the school now about it and then try and get it written into the statement. Also make sure the IEP sets targets which can only be achieved by the programme you want. Make sure SALT is in Part 3 of the Statement not Part 6 or it will not be enforceable. Do you want 1:1 time with a speech therapist? If its not in the Statement you won't get it

yep ds had 27hrs of support but basically wasited lovely lsa but useless no experiance no access to courses and as ds is passive got used elsewhere in class