I'll start with a little background history: Our son has autism and ADHD but was in mainstream school until year four. At the time, he was on 'School Action Plus' which is a step below a full statement. But because he was just about keeping up with the rest of the class academically the school would not issue him a statement, despite his having significant communication, social and self-care difficulties. He was deeply unhappy in a school system that was inadequate for his needs and we ended up making the drastic decision to home-school, for the sake of everyone's sanity.
Three years later and although home-schooling is working well for us, it does present a few problems. We no longer have as much access to speech and language therapy and educational psychology provision that was available in the school setting. We are essentially 'off the grid', which raises real concerns for our son's future, as he will not be able to continue in further education when he is older without some sort of care plan in place. With this in mind, we decided to apply for an EHCP.
The good thing about the EHCP is that it considers ALL of the child's needs and not just the academic ones, making it a better fit for our circumstances. Assessment was slightly different for us, as our son is not in school, so we were assigned a key worker from the local Special Education Needs (SEN) team to help us through the process and then had a visit from an educational psychologist to assess our son. Having no school staff to back up our application, I had to rely on letters from doctors and specialists - thankfully I had a whole ring binder full of them.
The application has to go through two panels. We got through the first one without any issues, and are currently waiting for our case to be heard by the second one. A draft plan has been drawn up by our key worker outlining our son's needs and the provision his school will have to make to accommodate him. We also used a third-party charity called KIDS to look over our application and make sure that the wording was acceptable. I would definitely recommend doing this, as their advice is invaluable and they have a LOT more experience in EHCP applications than I do!
So for now, it is a waiting game. Our draft plan is ready and we are hoping that the education authority can find an appropriate school place for our son. The sad thing is that it never should have come to this. If adequate provision had been made when he first started school, we wouldn’t be going through this now. It is a very stressful time and because our case is unusual, I have no idea how successful we will be.
My thoughts and best wishes to anyone going through the EHCP application process right now.
*Update- Our application was successful and now our son is in a special school that fits his needs perfectly. The process was tricky but I'm so glad we managed to succeed in the end.
Well done. Your experience highlights the need for parents to be informed of what help is available for their child/children in the first instance, followed by dogged persistence on their part in approaching the appropriate schools, authorities and organisations in order to get whatever help is available that is suitable and, preferably, tailored to their needs. Although it is a challenge, it is very important to get that help as early as possible, to create an awareness of your child's specific needs that will follow him or her throughout the education process and help to set him or her up for the furture. It's also very important to understand that much of the help that children on the autism spectrum receive in life is driven by dedicaded parents, who are usually in a better position to understand their children's needs than most "experts", although their input is also useful for the purpose of assessment and placement. I speak as a mother of a child who is on the spectrum and also has complex difficulties, having reared him at a time when very little was known about autism and it's variations and expertise was very thin on the ground, so I am very aware of the personal fight to get help that autism parents face on a regular basis.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. It certainly rings true. It's sad that so many times we hear the word "fight," in the context of getting help for our kids. It's a shame that people have to fight for help that their child should be entitled to.
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