Peed off (work related)

[Rebecca85]

First, apologies. This may turn out quite long, and will probably only make sense to those who work in a school anyway.

The school's regular ed psych is on long term sick leave, with no supply cover (instead the other psychs in the area are picking up extra cases). As a result, there are very few new cases being seen. We have 3 quite urgent cases. One is a girl who will shortly be moving to secondary school, and functions around the level of a 5 year old child (academically and behaviour/emotionally). The second is a 6 year old boy, who functions at the level of a toddler, the only difference is he's toilet trained! The third is only 3 or 4, and is not yet in school. She has cerebral palsy, cannot walk unaided and is not toilet trained.

Our SENCO had to present just one case to the ed psych. She chose the young girl 'because she has physical needs'. Yes, but how can a child who is not yet at our school take priority over the others? And her physical needs would not be addressed by the ed psych anyway. And since she has an actual diagnosis, if the parents requested a statement, it would almost certainly go straight through with no contesting. The other 2 are going to have to fight for every last bit of help, the one with cerebral palsy will get it offered automatically almost.

I'll tell you the reason(s) why that girl was picked. 1) when she does start school, she'll be in the SENCO's class. And 2) she doesn't want to have to deal with a child in nappies. In fact, the consensus in the staffroom was that she should not be in mainstream school because of that. Yet yesterday, the same people were saying how the local special school just 'babysits' the children, and there are no academic challenges for the kids there.

I'm afraid our SENCO just pees me off big time! If my Crohn's got worse and I had accidents, or needed to wear protection, would they consign me to the scrapheap too?

 

[tiloah]

I'm afraid this didn't make a ton of sense to me but it sounds very unfortunate and stressful and I'm sorry to hear it. What does SENCO stand for?

 

[xJillx]

I can kind of understand where you are coming from. It doesn't make sense to me either. I used to be a teacher and often was frustrated with my child study team (I taught several inclusive classes). I didn't understand the decisions they made sometimes. Also, my biggest issues were mainly with the fact that there were so many students with special needs that the department were too disconnected from the children and lacked involvement. I often felt the children's needs were not being fulfilled, and it made me very frustrated and helpless. But that's another issue...

 

[Rebecca85]

Thanks guys. The SENCO is the school's special education needs coordinator. She has the responsibility of organising (or trying to) the appropriate support for the children with special educational needs in school. They don't necessarily have any level of expertise.

The ed psych is an expert in the field. They are trained psychologists and can assess children with behavioural or academic difficulties, and suggest remedial work, other support to help the child, and can help to diagnose a child, to make their difficulties 'official' so the child recieves the appropriate help.

Jill- we do not have many students with SEN at the moment. We have 3 students in the whole school with statements (the top level here, it means that the child's needs are so severe or complex the child is unable to attend a regular school without significant adjustments being made). And each class has on average, 3 children who have slight difficulties, eg needs speech therapy. Generally the teachers sort out these children, the senco just oversees.

One of those children moved from another school with a statement already in place. Getting the statement is the hardest part of the process, hence why I'm annoyed that the senco isn't at least trying to get statements for the two delayed children. Basically, to try not to spend unnecessary money on adjustments, the authority will try to deny the child has a problem that severe, and say they just need remedial work to catch up. Obviously, no amount of remedial work is going to 'cure' a child with cerebral palsy, which is why it's much easier to get statements for children with actual diagnoses.