Speech Delay and special needs

[BlueberryPancake]

I'm not sure if I just want to vent off or if I'm really cross. I have a 3 year old who has a severe speech delay, and we applied for him at the CoE school where his big brother has been accepted to start reception in September.

Before applying, I enquired about any special support for DS2, who has been assessed and followed by speech therapists and psychologists for months, and there's no delay in his general development apart from poor social skills and severe speech delay.

So anyway, in parallel to that he was refered to a school about 15 minutes drive away that offeres fantastic s services specifically for children for speech delays, and we were offered a place (that happened on Thursday last week).

This morning, I called the CoE school to tell them that DS2 will not be going there in September and in terms of their admission process, they will not keep a place open for him for when he is ready to reintegrate regular nursery (which is what I had hoped for). And if I want a place for him in January, I will need to reaply and no special case or priority given to him. They refused to make any exception or make special effort to discuss with me his situation, and I found them very rude and unhelpful.

When I asked them if any provision would be made, their answer was 'has he got a statement of dissability' well no he doesn't because he is not dissabled, but he has an identified and severe speech delay. Maybe I'm unreasonable to expect them to make exception, what do you think? Does he fall in a category of special needs because he has the speech of an 18 month old child at 3 years and 3 months?

I don't knoww what to do. TBH, I have found the support staff at that school to be very unhelpful and rude at times. Maybe it's just me who has too high expectations.

I think that, strictly speaking, the school was within its rights to tell you what they did. I agree they could have discussed this with you more sensitively though.
A statement is for special educational needs, not (strictly speaking) for disability, and it does sound to me as if your child falls within that category. If you read some of the other threads about statements, you'll see that it may be in your child's best interests to apply for one. The other school seems more clued up on this, and they may be able to advise you on this point.

the wording statement of disability would ring alarm bells with me, in that it shows the support staff don't have a great awareness of SN/SEN! the correct term is statement of educational needs as sc says.

I'm not entirely sure whether school is right or not - am pretty sure in my area that if a child goes to a language unit at school age, they would have a theoretical place at a m/s to be integrated to further down the line - also bear in mind some m/s schools would be part of a split placement - but not sure if this would apply to nursery age or not.

If your DS is still likely to need any extra help at school age, then only a statement is a guarantee of that as it's legally binding.

ds si of to speech unit and down here been no mention of ms though know one of the dc spends time in the ms with the unit rather than own ms .But then again could be because widely accepted ds will not go into ms

Do you normally get a statement of educational needs before a child starts school, or is it arranged by the school once the child has started?

Don't wait for the school to do they have no tight of appeal if turned down apply yourself ,ds gad statement for preschool now has even tighter one for school

Oh and chances are your ds might even need statement after leaving speech unit could then get into school that way