Never the twain shall meet
on 06 Jul 2006
It’s going to be a bit of a long one, so bear with me. We have spent the last six months unsuccessfully banging our heads against the education wall, trying to get the best placement for our daughter. Reassessing the situation we decided to look further at plan B, as suggested by the placement panel on 3 occasions. This is a school 25 miles away from home, and 35 miles away from our son’s school. One of our main concerns with this option was the distance, since there is a small risk that our son could be rushed to hospital at any point in time. But apparently the family’s needs are not important.
What changed our mind about this was the kind offers from friends who said they would help look after our daughter if our son needed attention. So off my husband and I trooped, open minded, to see the proposed school. This school is a mainstream school with a special needs base attached and both of us liked what we saw – the school was modern, the staff friendly and the children well looked after. The head did mention that we would need to make sure that therapy would be provided. No problems. After all, this is a unit for children with physical disabilities.
Hurrah! Problem solved. A tick on the list we thought.
Hmmm. On the way home we got a call from our sons school to say he was complaining of pain. So my husband shot off to bring him home and I was left wondering if this would work in a real emergency. Good thing we weren’t still at the other school.
Anyway, after much discussion we decided that we would send our daughter to this school. So I dutifully phoned the education officer with the good news and then phoned the head of therapy in the school’s area. This is where it all went badly wrong. Apparently, although we come into this schools authority for education, we are under a different authority for health and therefore therapy services. As a result our daughter can have a place at the school, but no therapy!! That’s a good recommendation from the placement panel isn’t it?
Back to the drawing board. Anyone know if you can get a benefit to cover the extortionate phone bills we have been getting lately?
What changed our mind about this was the kind offers from friends who said they would help look after our daughter if our son needed attention. So off my husband and I trooped, open minded, to see the proposed school. This school is a mainstream school with a special needs base attached and both of us liked what we saw – the school was modern, the staff friendly and the children well looked after. The head did mention that we would need to make sure that therapy would be provided. No problems. After all, this is a unit for children with physical disabilities.
Hurrah! Problem solved. A tick on the list we thought.
Hmmm. On the way home we got a call from our sons school to say he was complaining of pain. So my husband shot off to bring him home and I was left wondering if this would work in a real emergency. Good thing we weren’t still at the other school.
Anyway, after much discussion we decided that we would send our daughter to this school. So I dutifully phoned the education officer with the good news and then phoned the head of therapy in the school’s area. This is where it all went badly wrong. Apparently, although we come into this schools authority for education, we are under a different authority for health and therefore therapy services. As a result our daughter can have a place at the school, but no therapy!! That’s a good recommendation from the placement panel isn’t it?
Back to the drawing board. Anyone know if you can get a benefit to cover the extortionate phone bills we have been getting lately?
Write a comment
Required fields are marked with *. Links to other websites will be rejected.