EHCP - school requesting an early review

Biblioklept said:

Have you spoken to IPSEA? The school don't sound very supportive at all and there are a lot of red flags. 

The fact you've battled for years to get support and not they're claiming they can't meet her needs is concerning. Have they given details as to why they don't feel mainstream is right for her?

What is your daughter like academically at the moment? Is she behind? I do understand your concern but lots of special needs school do very well academically too as they're supporting children's other needs making it easier for them to focus on learning and learn in a way that meets there needs. 

Thank you, I have contacted IPSEA, waiting for appt. We have had one meeting where they say that she is spending more time out of class than in, because she becomes dysregulated, but I believe a lot of it is to do with writing and spelling, because she does enjoy other lessons, if she was better supported with speech to text or a scribe, I think these issues would resolve. 
I've started making appointments with special schools in the area, but only one offers students the chance to do gcse's, Academically she was doing much better last year, she working at expected, now she is only working towards expected and is expected to be lower in writing by the end of the year. Her reading age was assessed and 8.5yrs when she was 7, but now school says she is working towards expected, which is really frustrating.

L_Volunteer said:

Thank you for your post @dhalia. I can hear that things are difficult for you at the moment, constantly battling to get support for your daughter.

It would seem the wait between your daughter receiving her EHCP and her teacher receiving the EHCP is particularly concerning and this is understandable. It is a reflection of the difficult situation you are in and not of you or your daughter.

You mentioned that your daughter finally received an ASD diagnosis from Paediatrics. I am just wondering, how have you been finding navigating this diagnosis? We are here for you if you would like to share more with us.

Though, at the moment, it would seem you are mostly looking for advice. This is particularly in relation to mainstream saying that they cannot meet the needs of your daughter despite the EHCP having only been in place for 7 days when you were informed of this.

IPSEA outlines the following legal information around this circumstance:

"If a parent of a child, or young person, wants that child or young person to attend a mainstream setting, the LA can only refuse if a mainstream placement would be incompatible with the efficient education of others, and there are no reasonable steps the LA could take to avoid this (section 33 CAFA 2014). The degree or complexity of their needs or disabilities, and the suitability of mainstream, is not a reason in law for refusal of mainstream. This applies not just to attending a mainstream school or college but also to taking mainstream courses. This is an important right. The LA cannot send a child or young person to a special school when it is not what parents or the young person wants. This is true even if the LA view is supported by professionals. It is important to note, however, that this is a right to mainstream education but not necessarily a right to a particular mainstream school."

Based on this legal information provided by IPSEA, I am wondering if you would like to tell us a little bit more about how your daughter is feeling at the moment and what she is hoping for? After all, EHCPs need to be targeted towards the needs and wishes of you as the parent and your daughter as the child/young person. It sounds really miserable for your daughter that the support provision which legally needs to be in place is largely hidden from her access.

I am also hearing that a lot of these concerns are coming from teachers and I am wondering if you have been able to talk to the SEN(D)CO or senior leadership yet? These might be some additional options if not yet explored or fully discussed. 

I am also wondering if you would feel comfortable explaining your daughter's situation to her school? - for example, your daughter might be getting rid of her visual timetable because she doesn't want to be different to her peers. One reasonable adjustment could be putting the visual timetable on the main classroom wall as a whole class approach but with your daughter nearer to it so she can see it as and when needed, a more discrete approach. 

I hope this at least semi helps! Please feel free to keep us in the loop, we are all here for you and your daughter. This includes, but is not limited to, talking through your options with you as guided by you if thinking aloud helps. You don't have to go through this, or anything else, alone if you don't want to 

Hi, Thank you
Navigating the diagnosis has been ok, I think because the process has taken 2 years, we were pretty much on board with it being ASD, the first time it was mentioned in 2019 everything began to make sense. I think despite being signposted to different things it is genuinely difficult to find support, we are now on a waiting list for an ASD course, that we couldn't go on until she had an ASD diagnosis, we were told part of the pathway was to do the Triple P Parenting course - completely inappropriate for Autism and made us feel like the worst parents in the world because none of it worked with our child.
I've read the IPSEA legal information about keeping children in mainstream, but the school have said that they think it would be better for her to move to a special needs school, as although the decision is ours (parents) to make, if she stayed in school she would be at risk of exclusion for her behavior. Now, this is a grey area, as her behaviour, if she hurts another child during a meltdown, would be grounds for exclusion, but at the same time why has she ended up in meltdown. It's not much of a choice as a parent, we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where she is excluded from a school, and certainly don't want her to have hurt anyone else. 
The meeting we have just had was with the sendco, pastoral care and her teacher. 
She struggles in school with several things, transitioning between tasks - this is where the visual timetable comes in, but she doesn't want to be different and has apparently thrown it on the floor, there is a class timetable, but she is at the back of the class and can't see it (When she told us this, we had her eyes checked just in case, but she's no vision problems). She struggles to play when it's loud, too many people, when she's not in control of the game, she doesn't like wearing her headphones because no one else does, we have bought her earplugs, but she doesn't like how they feel.
She has a lot of sensory issues which we are hoping OT can help with, she hates getting dressed, brushing her teeth, brushing her hair, socks, seams, shoes etc. She's now going to school in black trainers instead of school shoes which has made mornings slightly better. She gets very anxious about things. We take her to school in the car now, as walking would mean we were always late, as she would refuse to leave the house, refuse to walk, get distracted on the way, has a huge fear of dogs, and has been known to jump into the road to avoid a dog on the pavement. It's easier to bundle her in the car if she is having a hard morning. 
She says she would like to be a vet or a doctor, but lately, she says she wants to be an archaeologist! She struggles with homework, she just refuses to do homework at all, during the school holiday I have managed to get her to learn her 4X timetable using youtube singalong videos which she loved, and we might also have solved her next spelling badge (most kids passed in term1) just by finding a way of making it more fun to learn and ditching the way school teach it. 
She has to do Times Tables Rock Stars - she absolutely loathes it. It has a timer and she goes into panic mode, and just can't do it as she watches the time run out, she has to get so many correct in a set time but gets way below the target, so has been stuck on the same section for 5 months. We recently discovered that the timer can be turned off by the teacher, it's beyond frustrating that this hasn't been done.
She gets upset because she cannot get her pen license for good handwriting, she hates writing with a pencil, and will always use a pen at home, but can't use a pen in class because she hasn't earned the right to use one! 
She says she doesn't want to go to a special school because she doesn't want to leave her friends, we have explained that she would make new friends and the school would have smaller classes and be more suited to her. Her current school said in our recent meeting not to discuss special schools with her, but we already had, as soon as it was mentioned, as we felt it was important for her to know what she was doing / not doing in school is going to impact whether she can stay there, in the hope that she might try a bit harder, and we don't keep secrets, but we've probably got this wrong too.

At this point, I don't know what reasonable adjustments we want in place, or whether they would make any difference now, or if school will just say they've tried that, as they seem to be saying. Although she has an EHCP we have no way of knowing if it's being implemented properly with the school saying they've tried this, they've tried that, it all feels very vague and not very measurable.

The first 2 special needs schools I have tried to make appts with have said that they don't think they would be right for her, because she sounds too 'high functioning' and they don't do GCSE's. There don't seem to be any schools with an autism unit attached that are genuinely part of the school in our area, There is one school nearby that shares its site with an autism school, but they don't integrate with the school at all, only at lunchtimes, and don't follow the national curriculum. There is one primary school that says it has an autism classroom, but we actually moved away from there when our daughter was 3 because it had a terrible Ofsted and a poor reputation, and looking at the Ofsted parent view it performs quite badly still although it has raised standards. She is in an Ofsted 'good' school at the moment but is that because school 'offroll' all the struggling kids (sorry, probably not true, but I'm frustrated). 

As an aside, the school had a jubilee party on the sports field, she was given a social story, and we talked about it at home, she was very excited. On the day, at collection, her TA said she didn't go to it, they had ice cream in the classroom because our daughter said it was too busy. That all seemed reasonable - until I thought about it, why wasn't she paired with a friend, taken to a quieter area of the celebration on the field, talked through it a few more times, as it would be anxiety holding her back, instead she sat out of a big event, in a classroom with a TA, it doesn't sound like inclusion, it would be a lot easier for her to just sit out of it.

I don't know what to think anymore.