Split school placements anyone? SN and MS

[DJAngel]

We are wrestling away with our LEA re statement for dd due to start school in September.

We have opted for a split placement between a SN school and a local MS school, but this seems to be causing the LEA a big headache - although we've been told other families have done this in the past.

They are stalling on the issue of 1-1 support, saying it's hard to put it in the statement when she'll be in two settings. Both schools agree that they want a 1-1 person to go with her into both schools who is employed by the SN school which sounds fab but at the moment the statement doesn't commit to 1-1 at all just saying stuff like..

' will have access to individual teaching and small groups and ... support required at meal/snack times..'

She will not cope at MS school without 1-1 at all..

Time is getting on.. Worrying a lot about it all of course so any ideas experiences very welcome..

There is a trend/wave of LA's deliberately misinterpreting the Lamb Inquiry report and 'pretending' that it states that specifying 1:1 support isn't helpful.

This isn't true, but LA's are trying their luck before it gets into case law I think.

You need to pin down the 1:1 time, and the rest will be easy.

FWIW, we are asking for a split placement (home and school) and the 1:1 will be employed by us, and then invoiced to the LEA.

Where in the country are you?

The LEA is West Sussex.. Any one I've spoken to locally has had problems with them.. We've been advised to focus on the health and safety issue re 1-1.. We have had a 1-1 support at a mainstream nursery funded by PreSens Team.. Her issues are no different now if anything MS school setting will be more challenging for her.. Impossible without 1-1 supervision.

Interested in your plans for a home/school split.. Great idea to employ them yourselves? Didn't know that was possible? What ratio will you be having in your split?

We want our dd to go half time for the whole of the academic year at least but was told by the school (MS) that she'd have to attend full time at the beginning of the term in which she is 5.. early april - so that means after Christmas.. I'll be challenging that as she is so exhausted and still sleeps in the afternoon ( on anti- convulsants so this makes her tired too..) She is so anxiously clingy to me as well it will probably take until Christmas til I'll be able to leave her!

Hope they will see sense and agree to half days.. Haven't started that battle yet!

ANYTHING is possible. We're also going for holiday tuition - lol.

The trick is to prove that it is the only way to meet your child's needs 'adequately'.

The first thing to do is decide how many 1:1 hours your child will require over a school week (i.e. a full-time placement) and then get that specified in the statement but be very careful about wording.

Things such as 'LA will provide funding for 30 hours 1:1' is not the same thing as 'x will receive 30 hours 1:1' iyswim.

When did you receive the statement?

Oh and it's full time the term after there 5 know because I used that same thing to keep ds at sn nursery extra term while waiting for speech unit placement.rather than sending him to ms emergency placement for term and I got Lea to refund transport costs to
Think cut of date is end of March

Got the proposed statement about 5 weeks ago and we submitted nearly 40 amendments but they have not accepted this 1-1 issue.. Speech therapy issues are still being argued over too.. Then we got people who wrote original reports to submit an add on to confirm 1-1 is required. We have an informal meeting now with the LEA on tuesday..

Ok make sure you take notes of who's to do what then write main bullet points get everyone to sign . Think mine were

,,,,,, from Lea to ring transport

...... To chase ot

...., to speak to school

And a date was agreed whilst was there to go by

I then sent a full copy of notes from the meeting asking if anyone else needed to add or change anything to pleSe let me know and could they confirm receiving them

There now part of my evediance to Tribunal regarding Ot