Excluded at Seven Ch4 9pm

[HalfShellHero]

Anyone watching? Im hoping its a balanced thoughtful piece not a daily mail esque their parents must be crack heads! type programme..

In my school we don't have the room and by that I mean that we have no spare tables in the room and no space for a table to go, and IF we could fit a table in there he would still be sat by another pupil with no space.

This is why so many children cannot manage. Because they cannot be given what they need.

The school I worked at had a fantastic nurture unit for those children that found it hard to cope in the classroom. The staff who set it up worked so damn hard on it and really understood those kids. New headteacher and it was shut in a year. All that hard work gone to waste. All those kids forced back into something they can't cope with all day.

Jared is SO like my DS it's making me blub. He's a strapping 14 year old now but it really takes me back.

Have only watched the first part so I may feel differently when I've finished. So far I feel like there's been little explanation of what happened in the children's previous schools and what difficulties they may be facing at home. One child saying 'I got angry and hurt some children'. Almost implying that there has been one or two incidents which the teacher or school couldn't cope with and so have excluded the child.

I have taught several children like the ones in the program and the lack of support from the LA/ other professionals involved, even the school in the beginning, was shocking. One particular child swore on an hourly basis, threw chairs at other children, kicked, bit and slapped me and other staff daily. This went on for 6 months until he was finally sent to a PRU. Within 6 weeks he was on a phased return to my class. He was permanently excluded a week later after kicking a pregnant colleague in the stomach.

This pupil on a good day was friendly, loving and funny and I genuinely did what I could to support him and help him manage his emotions and anger. He had no medical diagnosis but a terrible home life. I had no specialist training (not even restraint training until 3 months in) and the school was not set up to deal with his outburst/meltdowns. He needed much more than we could provide.

Bit of a tangent but anyway, It's disappointing to read that many of you don't feel these issues are explored in the program. It sounds like a missed opportunity to highlight the difficulties teachers and schools face in providing the right environment for children like these and the lack of provision that is out there for them.

I apologize for the length of this post - It has been some years since I have posted on mumsnet; I used to be a regular on the special needs threads as I fought my way through the special educational needs maze with my ASD son then 7; my DS was excluded towards the end of our journey with the Welsh school system and I so felt for all these kids in the programme.
Like them my DS was supersmart – highly articulate and totally unable to cope in a class of 30 even with a 1:1 support because the staff simply did not know how to interact with him. He spent more time out of the classroom than in and leaned little to nothing in 3 1/2 years. He too was violent in his worst moments.
We went to the SEN tribunal and won after a full hearing on disability discrimination where I self represented against their barrister and legal team, to the ombudsman on failure to follow proper process in statementing and endless obstruction and delay in that process ending in a compensation award, exclusion, an exclusion appeal, appeal to the minister for education and finally just 4 hours per week home schooling. I can honestly say it was the most stressful period of my life and I still cannot forgive the toll on my child and on me by those who claimed repeatedly and sanctimoniously they acted in my DS’s best interest.
Fast forward 7 years my DS is now 14 and studying at a year above his age grade and at 14 earning college credits, is sociable and ostensibly a very ordinary teenager in so many ways ; I was lucky enough to be able to take him to the US and to a school designed for those kids that are not disabled enough for special school but simply unable to handle mainstream school.
I happened to be in the UK this week and watched this documentary and my heart went out to all these kids as I know mine would have been where they were or worse not in school at all if I had not left this country
In the US he has thrived, learned and grown. He is in a class of 11 kids all with a similar profile with a teacher and a TA. He sees a psychiatrist (not so often now) but initially monthly and a speech therapist weekly – not a TA executing a plan delivered by the speech therapist who assesses once per year but a qualified speech therapist with experience with his challenges every single week.
ASD and other disabilities that manifest in behavioural challenges and social difficulties do not disappear in a short stay – they need long term stable alternative teaching methods and environments. These children have been given a second chance but it likely will be fleeting and throwing them back into an environment that was not working for them before is not a solution.

My DS is planning on psychology or veterinary medicine as a college major and will be able to live an independent life – so many of these kids may not, will age out of any social support and be dependent on elderly parents or may end up in the criminal justice system. This is tragic for them and for their families.
I am not a neglectful or disinterested parent nor did I lack discipline; I was a parent that had no idea what ASD was about. Unluckily for my county council I did have legal training and access to legal resources and learning. Nonetheless at the end of it all having won at every stage to force provision I could not fight any more. Leaving the country was the best and only option for us. We are now applying to become US citizens and the US has been very kind to us.

I so wish I could face the director of education for the county council where we lived in Wales just one more time and show him how much my DS has achieved just by being in the right environment and with understanding and the right teaching methods. I wish he could visit the school where my DS has found peace and understanding, social acceptance and academic excellence. That place in between special and mainstream that sadly just does not exist in the UK.

I watched this tonight, I agree that it didn't really provide and insight into what Roseberry did but I like that it explored the children's personalities and showed them to be children who are not just 'naughty'. Welled up at the part where wee Adam got sad because the sheep rejected the lamb. I think it spoke volumes poor petal. Thought Harvey was a very scared but very bright little boy.

Adam showed the very real impact of divorce on children. It saddens me when parents divorce not because of an abusive relationship, but simply because they " fall out of love" and they the adult " deserve to be happy".

Adam showed the very real impact of divorce on children. It saddens me when parents divorce not because of an abusive relationship, but simply because they " fall out of love" and they the adult " deserve to be happy".

I do not agree with this. We can have no clue to the background of the divorce in this case and how the fall out was handled. We don't know what else is going on at home and he is clearly a very sensitive child. I know many children in families where there has been divorce, who are functioning well and minimally affected.

Sorry And, but I don't see at all where you got the idea that Adams issues were the result of his parents divorce.

Seven: that's a huge assumption you're making.
It didn't say why Adam's parents were divorced.
It didn't explore Adam's reaction to the divorce.
It did at one point suggest that spending time in two different houses could be unsettling but again didn't explore this deeply.

The thankfully now outdated idea that parents should stay together "for the sake of the kids" regardless of how unhappy they are, is likely to do just as much damage as parents divorcing!

IMO the whole program was very superficial

The program absolutely explored Adams reaction to the divorce, his distress at misding his dad, how unsettled he was, they he pushed around from one house to the other.
And no,children do better where parents stay together if if they parents are unhappy providing there is no abuse and they do not convey their feeling to to their dc.
Children did do ask to be here therir happiness and wellbeing is more important.

Children are like sponges of the atmosphere around them

Do have a source for that seven?

AndNowItIsSeven
The program absolutely explored Adams reaction to the divorce, his distress at misding his dad, how unsettled he was, they he pushed around

The program showed his response, gave a reason a promptly moved on, as it did with all the other children.

It raised far more questions than it answered.

And IMO it would have been good to give more depth to why the children were there, what strategies they used, how the children progressed and even better would be a follow up program on how the children got on when they returned to main stream education.

In fact the whole program could have had many more more episodes.

I think they were trying to steer away from 'must be the parents innit' narrative a lot of these programmes lay on thick but i agree i was left with more quedtions maybe more a balance is needed.

I think they went too far the other way in terms of not wanting to point the finger at the parents. It would have been nice to hear things from their point of view I think. Might have answered a lot of the questions raised in this thread.

I agree delete wasnt that imformative

Just watching now and utterly agree with Henrietta above. It's so frustrating to see the improvement and know that the child will go straight back into the situation which they couldn't cope with in the first place.

Heartbreaking and makes me so glad that my son is now in a special school,

I watched it, as I do with lots of these programmes, to see if I could learn any new strategies for working with these kind of children. I didn't learn anything apart from the fact that a small group of children and plenty of staff seemed to be beneficial.

I was a bit at the boy who said he had been permanently excluded for tipping a desk over and hurting somebody. If that happened in my school, I doubt if he would have been excluded at all. Our LA wants to become a zero-exclusions LA and closed its only school like this.