Send in the City – I Must Not Tell Lies

Send in the City – Send Support in Bristol Secondary Schools

Having a child with Send and no EHCP made the Bristol school allocation process a rather stressful one.

Having settled on our nearest school and after a lengthy meeting with the SendCo, I felt that the school would be perfect for meeting my child’s needs. They totally seemed to understand autism and the adjustments this would require.

We managed to get a place through the first round of allocations and met up with the SendCo again to talk about adjustments.

The SendCo seemed really clued up on neurodevelopmental difficulties and disabilities and made lengthy notes about everything that needed to be put in place for the start of Year 7.

At the end of the summer term, the SendCo retired.

We are now less than three weeks into the new school year and it has become painfully apparent today that nothing was put in place at the start of term at all.

Things came to a head this morning. The day started off badly after my child had an autistic meltdown on the way to school. Despite leaving with plenty of time to arrive at school, we ended up being 20 minutes late, not a bad result for a historic school refuser.

I had called the late phone number to explain what was going on prior to arrival.

Upon checking in, my child was informed that he had a Red Card Detention for being late. He became distraught again. At this point, I informed the member of staff that she was penalising my child for being late due to his disability and I would be coming down on the school with the full force of the Equality Act should he be forced to do a detention.

Sound like an overreaction? I had sent two emails to the school in the previous two weeks asking them about what support was in place to help my child deal with these kind of situations.

During the course of the day, it became apparent that there was none. There was no support in place at all.

At break time, my child phoned me in hysterics, unable to talk or to describe what the problem was. He eventually – through huge sobs – begged me to come and get him.

Trying to liaise with staff to sort the situation out became quite difficult. I was eventually phoned by the Year 7 Learning Coordinator, who henceforth became known as Delores Umbridge.

She actually wanted to discuss an incident that occurred on Friday afternoon. Prior to this incident, my child had fallen over in a line-up for PE. After being sent to the back of the line, another child Draco, who used to deliberately wind him up in Year 6 started making fun of him. Struggling to deal with the issue, my son told him to “shut up.”

It was at this point the PE teacher took him outside the hall and proceeded to shout at him really loudly. I’m fairly certain that of all the methods of communicating with a disabled child with a communication disability in school, shouting in their face is not the best one. There’s more than a grain of truth in the old joke, those that can’t teach, teach PE.

So the tension between my child and Draco ramped up further at lunchtime. Draco called my son a f**k, f****r, b***h and c**t. It turned into a fracas.

With her sing-song voice that teetered on the edge of a laugh, Delores Umbridge took great delight in telling me about how she had dealt with the incident this morning. My child was in more trouble than Draco. Absolutely my child shouldn’t lash out, but if you are going to call someone a c**t, there are going to be consequences.

What she didn’t tell me, in her cheerfully dulcet tone, was that she asked my dysgraphic child to write her a report about exactly what had happened. When she read it, she gave him another piece of paper to rewrite it without lying.

Now perhaps she hasn’t met many children with Aspergers, because all I can say is it’s harder to get children with this condition to lie and stop telling the truth. Yet, here was a member of the teaching profession calling him a liar when he was doing anything but. Let’s hope their safeguarding  procedure is a little more watertight when a child makes a disclosure.

The phone call did not go well. She seemed to have no idea my child was having a meltdown somewhere in the school because nobody had put any support in place. I repeatedly told her I was coming in to sort support out now. I don’t think she believed me, but then, I don’t tell lies either.

To their credit, the school managed to find a member of the Send team and we did have a lengthy discussion about what support needed to be put in place. It was retrospectively quite frustrating because I had already had that in-depth conversation and I know full well that the lovely Year 6 teacher we had left behind had definitely done the same thing.

I’m really cross about the whole thing. I’m cross with the council that my child never had the EHCP he desperately needed. I’m cross that several of us had spoken to the school at length about what support needed to be put in place. I’m bloody livid that a member of staff called my child a liar. I’m so angry that because of the lack of support put in place in those vital two weeks that teachers now probably think my child is a trouble maker rather than a completely unsupported child with a disability who was left to flounder.

I use the word slapdash very often these days. Bristol Live even quoted me saying this directly to Bristol City Council at a full council meeting.

But it’s true. It’s a slap dash approach to supporting children with Send that runs through the rotten core of education. Parents have to be an absolute pain in the arse to get basic adjustments put in place. It’s not fair on families and it’s not fair on our children who we are trying to support.

This is just one day in the life of a Send family. It’s not even a particularly remarkable one. But it’s true. And as Delores Umbridge would have us write, I must not tell lies.

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