Hi all, this is my first post in here and I'm hoping for some advice/information/hand holding.
My ds2 is 6 years old and in Yr2 at school. Throughout Yr1 he really struggled to keep up with the work and his teacher was utterly useless, just wrote him off and stopped trying with him. When time came to move up to Yr2, he was placed into a smaller class for children with varying degrees of SEN and he has absolutely thrived. His teacher is one of the SENCO and she 'gets' him and how to get him to focus. He's been on a School Action+ programme all year and it's worked really well for him.
At home, he's always been a delight if a little scatterbrained, forgetful, clumsy and generally a bit away with the fairies. It's just always been his way and we didn't think much of it beyond remembering to be patient when it comes to him getting his shoes on the right feet, making it along the school run without falling over repeatedly - you get the idea!
At our first parents' evening a couple of months ago, I had a great chat with the teacher about some of his ways and she filled me in about stuff he does in school and between the two of us there appear to be a lot of flags for ASD behaviour (the teacher also mentioned dyspraxia). The more I read about it, the more I'm kicking myself for not seeing it in him before, particularly as his nursery school referred him to a SALT when he was 3 and mentioned ASD then. I shot them down and thought they were being over zealous.
Anyway, since the parents' evening I've been passed from pillar to post about getting the ball rolling for assessment. The teacher said they were collating a portfolio of evidence to pass on to the head of the SEN department but that I could go to my GP for a referral to the Ed.Psych., which I did yesterday. The GP, however, rolled his eyes and said that referrals have to come from the school and all he could do was give me the phone number for CAMHS, but they probably wouldn't help until ds has been assessed. Very helpful! I went back to the school with this information and they said they can't do referrals, it needs to go through the GP!
All parties seem to agree that there's enough evidence to warrant assessment for ASD, but nobody seems to actually want to get things going. Is there anything I can do to help? I tried ringing the Ed. Psych. but was told they only do assessments for pre-schoolers and ds would need to be seen by the community paediatrician instead, so I called them and they echoed what the school said about the GP needing to refer us. I am banging my head against the wall!
Thank you very much if you've managed to read all this. I would be extremely grateful for any information and advice.
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Going round and round in circles to get ASD diagnosis.
19 replies
SmiteYouWithThunderbolts · 16/02/2013 09:33
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PolterGoose ·
16/02/2013 09:48
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