Have a meeting with LA

[claw3]

LA have refused SA and have now phoned and requested a meeting with me on Monday. (I am taking it to Tribunal)

What can i expect?

Im assuming they will be trying to talk me out of SA, what kind of offers are they likely to make?

Claw I think the idea sounds total b***cks.

1. It puts you in confrontation with the school which is not good for you, your DS or your future relationship with the school. It makes it very adversarial.

1. It is the job of the professionals to go into school and observe what is happening in the classroom (not in a meeting) and say whether the school meets need or not. This is best done through a statutory assessment.

1. If the school does not back down and your stories reman at odds what is going to happen? Is she going to refuse to put it before panel until you both agree? Or is she going to decide you are lying?

1. One of the grounds for getting SA is that your DS needs are unclear (eg where evidence conflicts) and this is more evidence that SA is needed not less.

1. They can put extra support into place before SA, during SA and after SA. The SA does not stop this.

1. What reason has she given you not to do SA - what are the downsides - there are none.

1. Your point is that the school do not know how to assess your DS progress because they lack basic understanding of ASD. If they need to be questioned about how they have assessed your DS progress then surely this is best done by professionals eg Autism Outreach teacher or Ed Psych it is not your job to do this. You have brought your concerns to the LA attention and it for them to investigate and reach a conclusion. It seems to me the only way they can do that is by observing your DS in class.

1. To do an assessment they only need to think an assessment is probably not definitely needed. If there is doubt / conflict they should do it.

I cannot see that they can force you to have a meeting with the school while someone looks on. I really think that is an unreasonable request and I am quite sure you won't find it in the COP - section 7 says LA should work co-operatively with you and school when consider whether to assess. How hard will it be for you and your DS to have an ongoing relationship with the school afterwards if you have to publicly say how crap they are and then your DS has to stay there. Or worse you are branded a liar.

If the PP person is ok I would speak to her and say you have concerns that this will make things worse and be detrimental for your DS. If she doesn't back you / offer to sort it I would write to them and say you don't think its an appropriate way to resolve the conflict in evidence and a far more appropriate way is for the SA to go ahead so an independent assessment of the school's ability to meet need can be made and you want it put back before panel asap.

Thank you so much Agnes, i will sit down tomorrow and email LA and PP with your advice and ask some questions etc.

I seem to have so much happening all at once and with limited sleep and ds refusing to go to school etc, etc i really cant think straight (not that i would have thought of what you just wrote!)

Have to go ds is awake.

Thank you all so very, very much.

Have just emailed LA asking them to clarify in writing the purpose and intention of the meeting as per your advice Debs. Once they reply, im hoping i can then hit them with Agnes's advice.

Very good post Agnes.Good luck Claw!! Let us know how it goes. Nothing is ever easy is it?

Debs LA have replied to my email where i asked for clarification of the purpose.

"the purpose of the meeting from my point of view is to establish if there is any fresh evidence for me to take to panel to consider Jacob for a statutory assessment or whether the school can meet his needs within the resources available to them"

Time to smack them in face with Agnes i think

No Debs it is never easy, i naively thought when i first started on the SN road, that all i would have to do is explain and help would be forthcoming!

Had CAMHS meeting this morning, their advice about school refusal "take him in his pj's" I despair i really do.

Have EP this afternoon too. Everything is starting to happen all at once

We lead parallel lives don't we?? All our stuff is happening at the moment too. Fortunately, DS seems much more settled at school so we are able to venture away from the usual morning routine - a bit! He freaked this morning though as we arrived at school with the crowds (we're usually early or late) and panic set in! You can never take these things for granted can you?

I think you can hit her with Agnes' list. You can say you are not trying to be difficult but stress that a meeting like this with no one 'external' to oversee or manage it could be very difficult and stressful. You are trying to keep a working relationship with school and this is kind of setting you head to head with no facility for resolution i.e. no one is able to say 'I think x,y or z should happen' as a result.

I imagine that the points you have made to date are very clear and equally the school's stance is very clear.

Surely, if she is worried she doesn't know what is really going on she needs to identify the areas of dispute regarding progress clearly to both sides and ask for their comment to see if agreement can be reached. The fact is simply obseerving a meeting won't help with that unless the purpose of it is for her to see whether she believes one party or the other and that is very unfair.

There is a process set out by law and although mediation and attempts at compromise are to be welcomed, this is not mediation. The LA should be able to establish on the information they have got whether they need to investigate this child's needs further.

Have you spoken to IPSEA or ACE or SOS-SEN? I would. I have found ACE to be especially helpful in the past.

We do dont we, we always seem to be in similar situations and our ds's do seem very much alike in many ways!

I think varying things a bit, with only a bit being very important. Ds can handle dad picking him up from school every now and then, but if dad drives a different way, he freaks out!

PP is going to be the 'external' person and wants to meet beforehand to discuss an agenda.

I am tempted by the meeting, as school also fall back on 'we dont have the resources to do x,y,z' when forced into a corner. But as others have said it could well backfire, not that school could prove that i am lying, but that school have not used all the provision already available to them.

Will give IPSEA a ring, just takes so long to get through to them and i seem to be here, there and everywhere at the moment. What with appointments, building work going on. Exams and parents evenings and option evenings etc for my older boys.

I will make time tomorrow.

As a professional I would be horrified if emails I sent to parents regarding cases were cut and pasted onto the internet and I would certainly no longer wish to communicate with them any further electronically. I think it is really inappropriate to cut and paste from professionals emails and post them on a messgae board. How would you feel if a professional wrote a report on your child and then decided to cut and paste it onto a message board, or if they did the same thing with your emails?

You the numpty LA person then?

Welcome to the board londonone.

I think your comparison is unfair. As a teaching professional, you are under a duty to keep such emails confidential and it would, therefore, be entirely inappropriate to post as you suggest.

A mum has no such duty of confidentiality to a teacher.

This is a support board not usually accessed by those on the main boards - e.g. the AIBU crowd where I think I have seen your posts before. As such, we consider ourselves able to open up in a relatively safe space amongst 'friends' who like to share and help each other with the problems our children face.

I am not sure why you chose to visit the SN board. You are, of course, free to do so and we welcome you here. I am sure as a teacher, you have valuable insights to share. Or perhaps, you were looking for advice. Do please post and ask for it and we will try to help. However, I find this particular post unhelpful and judgmental and not in keeping with the environment this board is proud of maintaining. We are very different to the other argumentative boards so please remember that when jumping in with both feet.

If you have a point to make, make it with due respect and endeavour to be supportive.

Just trying to give another perspective. What a pity you are not able to understand that.

I should have said .... A mum has no such duty of confidentiality to a teacher or LA rep

Please go away and pick one of your usual snobby judgmental fights in AIBU.

If I remember rightly, you consider yourself incredibly intelligent...what a pity then that you are not able to understand the difference between posts on a support board and professional duties of confidentiality. Or between raising a legitimate point and having an unnecessary dig at a mum struggling to get support for her child.

Debs if you look at the other posts I have made on SN you will see that I have actuallybtried to post help about LA processes etc as that is something I am part of. I think it is a real shame that you cannot see that although a parent doesn't have a duty of confidentiality it is not appropriate to cut and paste emails sent in good faith onto message boards. By all means paraphrase but I feel cutting and pasting is not on. I for one will now think twice about communicating with parents via email. I understand that many people on this board feel huge anger and animosity towards LAs abd the SEN system and believe me I can understand that. However that does not mean that parents are simply beyond reproach. I use this board as a valuable resource to help me understand parental points of view but I feel that simply shouting down anyone who says anything even mildly critical is not altogether helpful.

debs we were cross posting my last but one comment was to abatinbunkfive not to your comment. See my messgae above and I hope you have the good grace to take back your comments.

Good reponse Debs. I have posted on the SN boards about situations that would identify my DC to professionals involved in their care. As a parent I find the support invaluable and couldn't care less if an involved professional (I wouldn't name professionals on here of course) saw the posts, why would they have an issue with this unless they had something to hide?

you are not being shouted down - you were extremely patronising in response to debs40's post of 18:51. Has an LEA Officer been named on this thread? If not then there is no 'breach of trust'. I speak as an LEA Officer with a DD with SN.

There is no difference between quoting someone word ofr word and copy pasting, either are allowed by a parent looking for advice. A teacher or LA bod would be breaching confidentiality. It isn't rocket science.

Deb you put it very well.

You gave no other perspective, you just wrote something that makes no sense for the sake of nothing other than to provoke a reacxtion, i'm sorry i gave you one tbh.

lononone...read my post. I asked that you raise a legitimate point in a more supportive way.

You responded in a typical off-board AIBU manner with a patronising 'what a pity'.

If you want to post, great, please do. But remember that these are emotional topics and isolated parents post on here desperately looking for support they can't get elsewhere. It doesn't help when someone jumps in with a 'how dare you post in this way' type response. What is the difference between cutting and pasting or paraphrasing?

Starlight that is what I was trying to say but you were more eloquent!