"It’s hard to know where to start…
My autistic daughter told me one day, “If anyone had been through what I had, they’d be dead by now.” There is a reason for these words you see, because she has been the victim of bullying in school for over half of her life. Her being bullied became a culture in school. Bullies used my daughter as their source of entertainment: to see her shut down, bang her head repeatedly against walls and they knew that she couldn’t go to get help so they would often get away with it. She would bottle things up throughout the school day and tell me at home time then I would report things to school. One day, I went into school and was told I couldn’t just turn up and expect to speak to someone without an appointment!
At one point, I involved the police because school denied that anyone went near her when a serious incident took place. The police ended up treating that very same incident as a sexual assault. We’ve had Local Authority professionals ask if this is the right school for her instead of ensuring she be kept safe and addressing the bullying. My daughter is bright, she is academic, but unfortunately the right school for her and many others like her simply does not exist in this area. She won’t change school or home school.
My daughter has Selective Mutism which means she is unable to speak in certain situations, especially in the school environment. She often freezes due to anxiety and struggles to communicate in other ways too other than showing her distress through the use of self-injurious behaviours. She used to think that SHE would be expelled if she told school how she felt. She has lost trust in others and regularly questions the point to life and talks about suicide. She says nobody understands her or how to support her.
Even with an EHCP in place for a number of years that I requested myself and which took almost a year to finalise with provision to provide continual adult supervision throughout the day to keep her safe, the bullying didn’t stop. A number of families with pupils at the school contacted me with serious concerns telling me that some staff (who were supposed to support and keep her safe) were, in fact, in different rooms and that my daughter was left unsupervised; some staff were reported as looking on whilst bullying happened yet did nothing to intervene, and one TA responsible for my daughter’s care was reported to have walked past my daughter who was banging her head at the time in distress and left her in a corridor without support.
A professional report recommended that my daughter have one TA to build trust with. The Local Authority have not put this provision into her EHCP because school refused to follow the recommendation. Last year, my daughter had ten TAs before it was finally reduced to six.
She has been called ignorant by a teacher for not being able to answer and threatened with a sanction. She was then asked to leave a room by herself to compose herself where she banged her head repeatedly. She has been repeatedly pulled whilst shutting down and then held on to by the arm and taken to her next lesson whilst distressed. This totally ignores professional guidance to not approach her from behind and to seek consent before touching her.
Despite regularly reporting incidents to the school and Local Authority, and even having meetings with the Director of Children, Families and Schools, nothing changed. Despite a formal complaint response acknowledging the Local Authority was at fault which resulted in injustice due to delays in provision, nothing changed for so long. Me involving the Director of Children and Young People’s Specialist Services a few months ago has started to make a difference but, quite frankly, the damage has been done. We were ignored for so long and the safety of my daughter was neglected for years. It is clear that she now has PTSD which I have been asking professionals to assess.
Almost 3 years ago, EHCP provision included Inclusion Practitioner support for anxiety and “associated behaviours”. Nobody put in the referral to the Inclusion Practitioner and the support was taken out of her EHCP at her annual review, without her having received it. I had to ask for it to be put back in. Just short of 2 years after a referral should have been made, she finally received 2 or 3 sessions but they had to stop because her anxiety was too high. The EHCo refused to include support for OCD saying she didn’t have an official diagnosis despite my daughter struggling daily and having traits that are evidenced in professional reports so used the vague terminology “associated behaviours”. It was catch 22 because, despite asking the LA, nobody would refer her for an assessment to diagnose OCD.
Another professional even told me they don’t diagnose OCD in children in this area.
I asked the LA at mediation for a sensory integration assessment as an unmet need. They refused to refer telling me there was “no professional evidence and no evidence of need”. There was and it was clearly written in a number of LA commissioned reports. I typed up the evidence and they suddenly changed their minds saying they had received new evidence. This evidence they had all along.
After 3 attempts of trying to get help from CAMHs following GP referrals, my daughter was seen during 2020. Their approach purely focused on talking which didn’t take into account my daughter’s difficulties with Selective Mutism. Those sessions stopped prematurely and no alternative approach to take the pressure off talking was offered. Recently, I asked a few LA professionals how to get an assessment for OCD and PTSD. They said contact CAMHs Contact Point. I phoned them and was told my daughter HAS to speak to them or else there is nothing they can do. She has now been put on a waiting list but has been told she will have to speak.
Despite asking the LA many times to refer to Speech and language, they never have. A LA formal complaint response even told me that they could have referred. I have referred her myself to the Speech and Language Service twice. The first referral resulted in a recommendation in 2020 of an iPad in school. School told me the other day it has just arrived! Following my second referral and 5 years after being diagnosed with Selective Mutism, she is finally going to receive some targeted support.
Despite the LA telling me in two formal complaint responses, lessons will be learned, they haven’t been. 4 months after her annual review, I am awaiting her final EHCP. I have sent them a long list of provision they have missed out from professional reports. I have been asked by one professional to send their input to the EHCo. Why is that my job? My son’s review meeting was also 4 months ago. After 12 weeks I had not heard a thing about whether they would redraft his plan. I contacted them and, within hours, I received a letter telling me that they needed to redraft and that there are significant changes to be made. As the new term is about to start, I have not even received his draft EHCP. 3 EHCos overseeing his case have left this year. His transition review is this month and I have tried several times to chase up his EHCP but still nothing.
I have waited almost a year for a response to my LA Stage 2 formal complaint. The Stage 1 formal complaint response claimed my daughter was receiving support from a professional which was not true because a referral hadn’t even been made to their team; there was no accountability, and it even blamed COVID for some pre-COVID events. The LA used the excuse that they could not respond to certain parts of the formal complaint because some staff had left. Do the LA not keep records? The LA claimed that a delay of 10 working days was appropriate when describing the failure to refer my daughter for a Sensory Integration Assessment yet difficulties were evidenced in reports back in 2017. I sat in a meeting 2 months ago that was supposed to go through the Stage 2 formal complaint response and was suddenly told during the meeting that the LA were not happy with the response a senior member of LA staff had written so they were going to look at it again and send it to the Director of Children, Families and Schools. We are still waiting and the wait time does not reflect what I was told in the meeting. The two senior members of LA staff in that meeting didn’t even know which funding level was attached to her EHCP so I had to tell them."
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