help please....ASD Need to find best school

[nutmeg]

Hi,
We are trying to find a school in London that we be great for a child with ASD. He has no real behaviour issues, no stimming but he has no language and other indicators (poor eye contact/ no pointing etc.... We could go mainstream achool with LSA but I wondered whether there were any units specifically for ASD. iS Treetops recommended? We are starting the Statementing process so I need to find somewhere quick.

Hi nutmeg. I don't know a whole lot about this as my ds is not school age yet, but I think a lot will depend on which London borough you are in.

I think it will be more of a struggle to convince your LEA to pay for a school in a different borough. You could try phoning your LEA to start off with and finding out what specialist provision they have.

It does depend on where you live as most LEA's will not want to fund out of borough placements if possible.
Where in London are you?

I'm in Lambeth. Are there times when you can persuade the Lea to go out of borough....I have heard of it occasionally. I would really like to see a great environment anywhere so that would give me a benchmark on what to look for more locally.

I forgot to ask his age.

The schools I know are The Link in Sutton which is a Primary and Secondary.

Linden Bridge in Epsom. These are both special schools.

Bromley has primary age units attached to mainstream schools of which Alexandra Infant(Beckenham], Poverest Primary (Orpington) and I think Midfield (Orpington) are ASD specific.

I know that sometimes boroughs do pay for our of borough placements but it can be a fight to get them.

There is also The Spa School Bermondsey, but I think that is secondary only.

Also think that The Millenium School,(Greenwich) has an asd unit atttached to mainstream.

Hope that helps a bit.

Do you mean TreeHouse? That is where my son goes, I cannot fault it and I'm a fussy cow! You could look at Rainbow which is in Wandsworth and on the TreeHouse model but is only primary. I think there may be a Lambeth child at TreeHouse, I could find out. There's definitely one from Southwark and one from Tower Hamlets, several from Camden (inc DS), several from Haringey (same borough as school), a couple from Brent etc etc. SO it can be done.

Thank you for all your suggestions. I have heard of Treehouse. Ds is ASD but is, apart from very weak language, pretty mild. No behaviour issues as yet. Would somewhere like Treehouse be good for that? If so, I would definitely like to see it. Equally the schools in Wandsworth and Greenwich.

have you spoken to the ed psych. I'm not sure how it works for non-lea schools like treehouse and the spa school- but we needed an ed psych to organise our visits to special schools.

i think- and davros will correct me if i'm wrong treehouse deals with the severe end of the spectrum and the spa school takes quite a wide range from severe to high functioning.

TreeHouse has a reputation of only taking children at the severe end but I think that's a bit unfair. The parents who started the school have severely ASD children and so the school is heavily identified with them. Also, LEAs try very hard to get children to fit in elsewhere before they will consider TreeHouse so they DO often get children that other schools can't deal with. BUT a lot of the younger children are verbal, not many behavioural problems etc. I would recommend going to look, they have open days which are posted on their website, no need to give your LEA any warning, best not to until you've been imo.

We went to look at Millennium (Greenwich) for dd. They do have an ASD unit there. Though don't know anything about it.

The school itself is very 'open' and modern with a good atmosphere. A parent showed me round and she was glowing about all the teachers which I guess has to be a good sign.

I just phoned up and asked to go and have a look but if you wanted to spend time with the SENCO (who runs the ASD unit) you would probably need to make an appointment.

can't believe all you people who can just go and look. We have a real battle to get too see any of the special schoools round here that's how ds1 ended up in mainstream initially- we weren't allowed to go and look round specials- the ed psych wouldn't give her permission!

I am really shcoked that you needed permission to look at schools, jj. We were guided by the LEA and Paed as to what type of school would be best but you made appointments yourself and could name your school, although you may not have been able to get a place at your chosen one.

Nutmeg Even if you live too far from The Link and Linden Bridge, they may be worth looking at. They were suggested to us as suitable for our ds who at four had little langauge and no big behaviours.

The Link takes children with asd but also children with language problems.