We have battled for the last 3 years through infants and into year 3 at junior school, to get support for our daughter.
Our daughter received her EHCP on 17 Feb 2022, her teacher claims he received this at Easter inset day, 25th of April 2022.
Our daughter finally received an ASD diagnosis from Paediatrics on April 26th 2022.
School Senco called on 10th May 2022 to arrange a meeting to discuss our daughter because they feel that they could no longer support her needs, and started talking about special schools. Our daughter had been ill and missed 3 days of school, and so her EHCP plan had literally been in place for 7 days before this phone call.
We had the meeting on Thurs 19th May, We forwarded 4 pages of questions before the meeting, a few of which her class teacher started to answer, but the meeting turned into a discussion about the impact of our duaghters behaviour, that she is spending more time out of class with her TA; blowing bubbles, feeding guinea pigs, going for walks, than she is in the class because she becomes dysregulated and can become aggressive. They said that they often take work out of class because she is dysregulated but often she won't do it (we guess because she's dysregulated and needs time to calm down, or they are trying to get her to write).
They said they want to see how things go and then call an early review of her EHCP, with a view to her moving to specialist provision and that we need to start looking at what school we want to send her to. The school says that although her EHCP has only formally been in place for a few weeks, they have tried all the strategies in it since September and none of it works. When asked about alternative methods of recorded writing, they simply said they had tried that - our daughter doesn't recall using speech to text, and we are left questioning how often these methods have been tried and what methods?
Although school says they are on our side and they will support us and that our daughter might turn a corner, it really doesn't feel like it. She is so turned off by the classroom now, as school sits her at the back of the room, on her own with a TA sitting next to her, she often asks why she's not allowed to sit with other children. She says she can't see the board, she can't see the visual timetable, etc. School says they gave her a visual timetable and she knocked it off her desk (We suspect because she doesn't want to be different - but now she can't see it at all). She is also very distracted by everything that is going on in the classroom. The school says they have tried her in different seats in the classroom. She also has one-to-one lunchtimes, with one other child, because she has struggled socially with the lunch club in particular with one child (but the school says she has got upset with other children, though no incidents have been reported to us), so she doesn't get to interact with other children so much, and not with children that she would consider friends. We are struggling to see where the inclusion for Sen is, but the school says that because she has 1:1 TA support she is being supported.
Our daughter has had an initial occupational therapy appointment, and we talked extensively about dysgraphia and dyslexia, with OT saying that from the handwriting sample they can see she is significantly impaired compared to what you would expect from a child her age - formal tests will be carried out as she is still undergoing initial assessment, with another appt next week. We have asked every year since foundation for a dyslexia test, and in juniors have asked for a dysgraphia test but nothing has ever happened, to the point that in the first few weeks of juniors her teacher said she had no problems with writing. They also claimed she wasn't masking in school, until January when she stopped masking and the school asked what had changed at home!
We are now at a point where we don't know what to do, We obviously want the best for our child. We feel like school has failed her, but we don't want to move her to another mainstream primary if they don't help her and we end up in the same situation. she also moves to a new classroom and new teacher and hopefully new TA in septemeber and things might be different again. We fear putting her into a special needs school will mean the end of any real academic progress for her, and will significantly impact her life chances.
any advice much appreciated
