When to call in the legal eagles?

[AndieWalsh]

Situation has broken down, really .

School cannot promise they will not continue to exclude DS (5 yrs old, AS). SA is ongoing, but decision to statement unlikely to come through before end of summer term and I already know we will have to go to tribunal to get the LEA to agree to the type of specialist support we are asking for. School are starting to make 'mainstream not appropriate' type noises. LEA Exclusions Officer is 'looking into the situation' (ie. they are all scarbbling aroundm contacting their Unions, contacting their bosses, trying to cover their backs).

I am so fucking fed up with this. Is it too much to ask that my son is supported in attending school - some school, any fucking school, five days a week. He has Asperger's. he isn't a monster.

I have spoken to IPSEA and ACE and SOS:SEN. I have poured over the SEN COP, bits of the Ed Act and Disability Discrimination Act, and am about to go throigh the stuff NAS have sent put on Exclusions. But I am tired. I am spending every bloody day all day formulating responses to their crappy arguments 9the latest one, that they are persisting with, is that DS needs to do reduced hours because he is 'tired'. NO. He has ASPERGER'S. More rest will not make this go away.

Sorry for rant. Thinking of getting a solicitor involved at this stage. Just wondering if anyone has gone down that route? And whether I should wait until the proposed statement comes through (which I can guarantee 99.9% will not be adequate), or start the ball rolling now.

Thanks, Starlight.

I thought this was probably the answer. I just feel so angry that for the rest of the term and possibly beyond that into the next academic year (depending on how long it takes to get a satisfactory statement agreed for our son), he faces exclusion on a regular basis.

I really want to wade in heavy handed with some sort of Erin Brockavitch moves .

We cannot afford to start throwing money at the problem, so legal advice would be a last resort I guess. But I am getting to the stage where I am spending most of my days researching this and it is really disrupting our whole lives as a family.

Stroppy bitches of the world unite, I say!

And thank God we are stroppy. I cannot see how my DS would have any chance of a decent education without my stroppiness.

I just cannot seem to switch off. It is one meeting or phonecall or email after another, and I am so paranoid now (through bitter experience) that it means printing out another email or typing up yet more notes to put in my ever-increasing file of 'evidence', and then researching yet more stuff to quote back at the school/LEA...it is neverending!

I feel like I am about to morph into Michael Douglas's character in 'Falling Down'...

Have to now go off in a bit and fill out a mammoth form to prove extenuating circumstances for why I cannot complete my last assignment and exam for my Masters. More evidence to collate ,shoots self in head>

Andie - it's hard work. I remember posting letters hot off the printer at 2am so they'd catch the mroning post

I did engage a solicitor. He fired some shots over their bow and reminded them of their statutory responsbilibities. He laos redrafted the Propsed Statement. We didn't need to go to SENDIST (but not because the LA backed down) but he would represented us there if necessary.

My advice would be the same as the others - wait until you've got a Proposed Statement. TBH the solicitor didn;t really help very much - by that time I'd swotted up on all things SEN so knew my stuff but he did have SENDIST experience and was able to point the way to specilaist private sources that would have attended SENDIST and provided good reports i.e. Private Ed Pysch, Clinical Psych

I felt, like you, that I had exhausted the charity experience i,e, IPSEA, etc and was spending too long each time queuing to speak to them and having to restate the problems each time. I needed someone on side who was familiar with our case and who I could easily contact.

For 8 months worth of sniping at the LA we paid about £3k - and that was quite a few years ago.

Best wishes

Thanks both of you. It's consoling to know others have been through it / are going through it.

WA - thanks for the insight on the solicitor thing.

The difficulty I now face is trying to prove that a 1:1 teaching assistant with a day's training in working with children on the spectrum (which is the best I think we can hope for from the statement) isn't enough. He needs a specialist assistant or teacher to remain in mainstream. I have to now find out if this is even remotely feasible. Special school provision is totally inappropriate where we are. DS is extremely high functioning (academically), and there just isn't anything set up for that kind of child that I know of

In a strange way I think that all the fighting has been keeping me sane, as stressful as it all is. Now that it is dawning on me that there is not much I can do until the proposed statement comes through, I feel full of frustration and rage. I can just see the next couple of months stretching ahead, with the school phoning me in the middle of the day to say DS has been excluded and I have to come and get him.

AndieWalsh, I feel for you. We are all fighting for our children, each and every day, yet it feels so lonely which is why MN is so important.

I think, sadly, you are right about having a massive fight on your hands to get a specialist assistant or teacher for your DS. It would open the floodgates, and the LEA is likely to see the difficulties of ensuring that they can maintain that in the eventuality that the staff member resigns, etc.

Would you be satisfied with regular input from the specialist services, or do you feel that your DS would only cope if he had full-time 1:1 support from a specialist?

Call the LEA officer and ask him/her if he will give the school some emergency funding whilst the statement process is in place.

My son who is also 5 is having 1-1 in the afternoon until his statement is sorted funded by the LEA.

DS falls into the similar "mainstream not suitable but too bright for special school" category, too. He is much older though, so residential is now an option for us (no suitable schools within daily travelling distance).

Generally the solutions that I've heard of are:

• Split provision (some days in mainstream and some in special school)

• Unit provision (special unit attached to mainstream)

• Flexible schooling (part home-ed, although you say you want him in school 5 days a week)

• Inedependent special schools (which can sometimes offer provision for academic AS pupils - may not be one in your area)

Are any of these options open to you?

I have used legal help and it has definitely helped my sanity. I'm a single parent, so no support system behind me. I also have other issues including anxiety, which was the biggest barrier for me in defending DS's corner. I can do all the reading up and writing letters etc, but I would be letting DS down if I tried to do the confrontational stuff myself. I think that I do have a good knowledge of SEN COP/case law and I still do a lot of the legwork, but having letters written by a solicitor makes a huge difference to how the LA respond. It's made it much more of a tactical game too - which my solicitor is, of course, much better at than me because of her experience. I think I've been given less of a runaround than I might otherwise have been.

I agree that you could wait until the proposed statement, as suggested, but you could start researching firms now and asking about costs. There is a list of solicitors on the NAS website and one of them says they have reduced rates for those who just fall outside the legal help scheme (you'd need to be on a very low income for legal help).

I'd also check the listings on Legal 500 and Chambers.