Send in the City – Agreement to Needs Assessment Shocker
Send Crisis Bristol:
I have no idea why there is so much arrogance surrounding the general approach to Send parents/parents who have a child with Send. Their opinions are often disregarded by the We Know Best Brigade, be they in healthcare, social care or education.
There is no certificate or medal for being spot on every time. I told the secondary school SendCo in the summer that the first two weeks of term will go well then the cracks will show. I was right. I gave the junior school ten days until the school refusal started. I was right.
I don’t like the words school refusal. It implies the child is making a choice to refuse. What is really happening is a combination of fight or flight, anxiety, meltdown and inability to process the world or access education in line with their peers. It could be due to the stress of education, lack of access to the curriculum or the fear of what’s going to happen at school based on previous experience.
What I do know is that it will alternate between my two children. Once one is settled, the other seems to kick off, or the problems become more pronounced.
I can now no longer work full time. Last week I spent two days at the children’s hospital, over an hour on the phone to school on just one day, 30 minutes the next day, five hours doing Send related paperwork and forms, one afternoon visiting a different school, one day abandoning what I was doing and running back to school 45 minutes after arriving home, 30 minutes wrestling with a child in the playground who was too stressed to go in, one full day trying to integrate my child back into full time education, three hours supporting learning with homework and two hours trying to find a pair of compression leggings in Broadmead that ‘felt right’. That’s a typical week of additional Crisis Parenting that comes in addition to a typical amount of Send parenting which also comes on top of the usual amount of time parenting two children. It’s exhausting.
That’s why after finally managing to get my youngest child from the school gate at 8.15am and into class at 9.15am due to school refusal, that I knew I would march down to Bristol City Council’s Send team myself if they refused to carry out the requested Needs Assessment for and EHCP.
As it turns out, I received an email on the same day saying that they had agreed to assess. Mind Blown. I was already mentally gearing up to get the mediation certificate and go to tribunal.
That’s fifty per cent of the Bristol EHCP battle won. At the end of last week after a disastrous week of school, I also requested one for my son. He was turned down in 2016, along with most of the rest of Bristol by the sound of it. The result of this is that despite being incredibly speedy and bright, he slipped further behind with literacy and numeracy due to an inability to access school.
In Bristol, parents already know that if they don’t have to go to tribunal to get an ECHP, they definitely need to get legal support. EHCP wordings are muddy and non-specific, often not being of any use at all.
But most of us wouldn’t even get this far if it were not for the tireless support of other Send parents. The ones who also can’t work full time because their child can’t access school, or headteachers bring in unlawful part time timetables.
Bristol Send funding may have been saved for this year and next, but when it comes to supporting some of the most vulnerable children in the city, the fight must go on for years.
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