The good and bad things going on at school

I’ve not been putting much on here for the last month or so, and I will talk about why at a later date. Today though I wanted to share with you the good and bad things going on at school. Jack and Lily both went back to school happy enough, but now as we start to settle into the routine of being back at school. The little cracks start to appear.

To be honest, on the whole Jack is doing really well at school. He’s doing some really good work, he’s maturing as a person, and he’s becoming more involved around the school as a whole. Whereas previously he’d mostly stay in his class room, even at dinner time. He still eats his dinner in his class room, where he usually has a friend stay with him. He took his and his classmates plates back to the dinner hall, when they had finished last week. These are the tiny things that in normal circumstances, wouldn’t mean much. But us, and families like us, are massive.

Confusing Jack

There has been one thing that has annoyed me a bit though. One of Jack’s obsessions at the moment is something from Minecraft called SCP’s. It is videos made using minecraft, and the scp’s are mostly monsters. Jack wants to research about the SCP’s during his time on the computer at school. Some of the images he finds have scared the other children, so he was rightly told he couldn’t look for them.

What school did was create a list of safe SCP’s he was allowed to research. Jack was happy with this compromise, and was sticking too it. He then went on the computer and found the website blocked, when he searched for the SCP on his safe list. The school have blocked the website as it’s unsuitable. I have no problem with that, but I do have a problem with how they’ve gone about it.

They should have blocked it from the start, and they definitely shouldn’t have come up with this safe list. To then go and block it. It left Jack very confused, and unsurprisingly caused the first major meltdown he’s had in months. Long term it will be for the best, but it’s caused him to become unsettled, when he was doing really well. Which is disappointing. Hopefully it’s just a small blip, and things continue to go well.

Bigger problems at Lily’s school

On the surface Lily’s return to school is going really well. She says she doesn’t want to go every morning, but her friend comes and walks to school with her. And she goes happily enough, and comes out of school at the end of every day smiling. But a closer look reveals all is not as rosey as school would like everyone to believe.

We err promised when Lily started at the school last September, that we would work towards a Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) for Lily. Obviously Covid happened and we didn’t get far with that, in the last school year. We had a multi agency “child in need” meeting, through a zoom call. These have been in place for a few years now for Jack, but now include Lily as well.

The question was posed to Lily’s headteacher, what is happening about an EHCP for Lily? He said they would be working towards applying for one later in the year . Which we were happy enough with. Then then next day we get and email from the SENCO from Lily’s school, which basically said they have no intention of applying for the EHCP. Instead they want to apply for non legally binding support, where they will get funding, but it has to be re applied for every year. There’s no legal requirement that the funds even have to be spent on Lily. But most importantly, when it’s time for thinking about secondary school for Lily, we will have nothing in place for her to have extra support. The school are simply taking the easy option for them, but it the right option for Lily.

Apply ourselves

We will be going down what will be a very lengthy process of applying for the EHCP ourselves. Already we have had some great advice and support from Social Media and the local community. We would like to thank everyone for that. I am going to use this platform to share the experiences we go through with this. The number of people we have already met who have been through this, or are in a similar position just locally has staggered me. Not to mention the people all across the country, we’ve heard from on social media.

So if we can share this journey and help the people who go through this after us, in any way at all then that would be great. So this has been the good and bad things going on at school. People often say it must be difficult being a “special needs parent”, and I always say that it is. But it’s hardly ever because of the children. As always, thank you for reading.

Dad Does Autism