Challenging cuts part trois

We moved house on 17^th December – what a damn fool time to move!!  Not that you really have any control over that but suffice it to say we had a somewhat chaotic Christmas.  Hope you all had festive frolicks and are enjoying the yuletide break.

Ok so we’ve looked at legal duties and best interests (part 1); consultation and human rights (part 2); now we turn our attention in part 3 to the disability equality duty and a conclusion to the feature.

Disability equality duty

The disability equality duty is a duty on public bodies to have ‘due regard’ to a number of specified needs, including the need to promote equality of opportunity for disabled children. The duty applies to all decisions by public bodies, including those in relation to individual cases; see Pieretti v Enfield [2010] EWCA Civ 1104. So when (for example) a local authority is deciding what level of service it should provide to an individual disabled child it must consider the need to promote that child’s equality of opportunity compared with other children.

However, the disability equality duty also applies when high-level decisions are taken about the nature and shape of services. In discussions about the future of services to be provided to disabled people, public bodies need to be able to show that they have had the disability equality duty in mind at all relevant times. If they cannot, it is likely that, if challenged, the High Court will quash any decision taken and require it to be taken again with due regard to the duty.

It is important to understand that the disability equality duty does not require the public body to achieve equality of opportunity for disabled people – just to pay due regard to this need when reaching its decisions. However, it may be extremely difficult for a public body which is proposing a substantial cut to services which are valued by disabled children and/or disabled adults to show how it has had ‘due regard’ to the duty.

An important issue is when precisely in a decision-making process must a public body have regard to the disability equality duty. The Southall Black Sisters case (R (Kaur and another) v Ealing LBC [2008] EWHC 2062 (Admin)) shows that equality duties must be considered when proposals are drawn up. It is therefore unlikely to be good enough for a public body to commit to doing a disability equality impact assessment after a consultation – even if before the actual decision is taken.

The disability equality duty can be enforced on an application for judicial review by any disabled person or their family if they are potentially affected by the decision. The remedy will be to quash any decision taken without due regard to the duty and an order requiring it to be retaken lawfully.

Conclusion

The general duties set out in this article all have a role to play in challenges to cuts to services which benefit disabled children and/or disabled adults. Underpinning all of them is a requirement under domestic law and international law that disabled children and their families should be supported to live ‘ordinary lives’. Respect for the human dignity of disabled children and disabled adults is nothing less than what the law requires. Disabled people, families, local groups and their lawyers and advisers have the legal tools to ensure that, even in a time of intense pressure on public finances, the legal rights of disabled people and their families are respected.

Don't forget - if you need to challenge a social care decision through the courts in England and Wales, it is possible to bring the challenge in the name of the child or adult with autism.  An adult who is on benefits and children who are of course minors are likely to be eligible for legal aid. 

Unfortunately, the same does not hold for challenges to education :(  I guess the system would be inundated with requests for legal aid if it did.  If you need to challenge an education decision, these guys http://www.maxwellgillott.com/ are a good starting point.

Steve Broach practices at Doughty Street Chambers and also writes for the publication Autism Eye.  He can be contacted at s.broach@doughtystreet.co.uk Please put NNNJ in the subject line for any enquiries to him.

Best wishes to everyone for the New Year.

Challenging cuts part deux

Hellooooooooo again.  Here is part two of ‘How the law can be used to fight cuts to services for disabled people.’  Part one looked at introduction, legal duties and best interests.  Part 2 will cover consultation and human rights followed closely by part three on the disability equality duty and conclusion.  Over to Steve (in black type).

Consultation

Whether or not there is a duty to consult, once a public body decides to consult it has to do so properly. This essential starting point was made clear in R v North and East Devon Health Authority ex parte Coughlan [2001] QB 213 (Coughlan). In other words, whether consultation is a duty or a choice, once launched the standard and quality of the consultation has to be the same.

Even if there is no specific duty to consult on a particular issue, disabled people’s organisations, parents’ forums and other local groups may well have a legitimate expectation that there will be consultation about changes to important services. The recent Building Schools for the Future case provides an example of a failure to consult at all amounting to an ‘abuse of power’; R (Luton BC and others) v Secretary of State for Education [2011] EWHC 217 (Admin). Once consultation begins, Coughlan makes clear that four things must be in place to make it lawful:

1) Public bodies must consult in good time – so that responses to the consultation can still genuinely be taken into account before the final decision is made;

2) There must be enough information so that people responding to the consultation understand the proposals and can make an informed response;

3) There must be enough time for responses. Whether ‘enough’ time has been given will be judged by the court, if the consultation is challenged, on the facts of the individual case. However, for example, a very short consultation over a school holiday period in relation to a service used by disabled children is unlikely to be ‘enough’ time;

4) There must be genuine consideration of the responses – not just ‘lip service’ paid to them.

If a particular consultation does not match these requirements, any child, adult or family potentially affected by the proposed changes can bring an application for judicial review to challenge the consultation. If the court agrees that the consultation is unlawful then the court will quash it and make the public body consult again – and do it properly the next time.

Human rights

The most important human rights in the context of cuts to services are those protected under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into English law through the Human Rights Act 1998. Article 8 requires respect for two distinct but linked rights, the right to family life and the right to private life. The right to family life is simpler to understand; respect for all types of family is required, but the right to private life is particularly important for disabled people.

Private life includes a person’s ability to function socially (R (Razgar) v Home Secretary [2004] 2 AC 368, speech of Lord Bingham) and a person’s ‘physical and psychological integrity’ (Pretty v UK (2002) 35 EHRR 1). In effect, this means that disabled people have a right under article 8 to services and support to enable their personalities to develop and for them to function socially.

Article 8 requires the state not to ‘interfere’ with a person’s right to respect for family and private life unless that interference is ‘in accordance with the law’ and ‘necessary in a democratic society’, which means proportionate (see below). Any decision to cut or withdraw services that support a disabled person’s ability to function socially and/or their psychological integrity is an ‘interference’ with that person’s article 8 rights. For this ‘interference’ not to breach article 8 and be unlawful it must meet these two requirements. To reiterate, any cut to a service to disabled people will breach article 8 unless it is (i) in accordance with the law and (ii) proportionate.

For the purposes of article 8, the ‘law’ includes not just legislation but (for example) statutory guidance. This means that a breach of (for example) the Framework for the Assessment of Children In Need and Their Families, which requires disabled children to be assessed and provided with sufficient services to secure their well-being, is likely to result in an unlawful interference with a child’s article 8 ECHR rights.

Even if all the relevant ‘law’ has been complied with, the final test under article 8 is whether the decision is proportionate (‘necessary in a democratic society’). The key judgment here is the speech of Lord Bingham in an immigration case, Huang v Home Secretary [2007] 2 AC 167. Lord Bingham emphasised that for a decision to be proportionate it must be no more than necessary to accomplish the objective. So in the context of cuts, if other less drastic steps could be taken to achieve the necessary savings then the decision cannot be proportionate and therefore the proposed cut would breach article 8. Furthermore, Lord Bingham added in Huang that the ‘overriding requirement’ of proportionality was ‘the need to balance the interests of society with those of individuals and groups’. The ultimate question under article 8 in any cuts case therefore is whether the wider economic interest justifies the decision to withdraw or reduce services to vulnerable people.

What about a situation where a disabled child or adult is not yet receiving services? There may then be a ‘positive’ obligation under article 8 for a public body to show respect for the person’s right to family and/or private life through providing services. This is particularly so for children if such action would ‘enable family life to continue’ (Anufrijeva v Southwark LBC [2004] QB 1124, judgment of Lord Woolf).

Bringing a challenge under article 8 requires a person to be an actual or potential ‘victim’ of a violation of their rights; section 7(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998. This is not supposed to be a high hurdle and any child or family who are or may be directly affected by cuts would be able to bring such a challenge.

I know it’s a bit dry – but worth knowing about so parents and people with autism (in England and Wales) can see what their legal position might be in the event that they have to challenge a decision on cuts to services.  A friend of mine who runs a support group is finding that more and more adults with autism are coming to him for advice when their Direct Payments have been cut.  Local authorities have been trying to change the assessment criteria for social care services – proposing to help people in the ‘critical’ category but withdraw services from those in the ‘substantial’ category. In Kirklees, a neighbouring authority to me, a legal challenge was brought on behalf of three residents (two with autism), following poor consultation (as outlined above).  The Council settled the matter (by reinstating services to those meeting the ‘substantial’ criteria) before the matter went to court.

Because the people who brought the challenge were vulnerable adults receiving state benefits, they were eligible for legal aid, so the challenge didn’t have a financial cost to the family.  Worth remembering!!

Challenging cuts to services: using the law

Steve Broach is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers. Before coming to the bar, he was campaign manager for the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign. He previously worked for the National Autistic Society and TreeHouse, the national charity for autism education (now called Ambitious About Autism).  On top of all that, he is a totally fantastic chap and a real autism and disability hero, who most definitely has his underpants on over his trousers ;-)

I am reproducing here an article he wrote in the UK’s Law Society Gazette, entitled ‘How the law can be used to fight cuts to services for disabled people’.  The piece is long, so will be covered over 3 blogposts.  It will look at: introduction, legal duties and best interests (part 1); consultation and human rights (part 2); disability equality duty and conclusion (part 3).

Introduction

Disabled children and disabled adults need significant support from public bodies to help them lead ordinary lives. These groups require both specialist and targeted services and flexible universal services which can be adapted to their needs.

The past decade has seen services for disabled children and disabled adults improve, albeit patchily, under a focused programme of investment. A key example of this is the Aiming High for Disabled Children programme, which led to over £800m being spent on improving disabled children’s services during the last spending review period.  However, it is precisely because of these large sums that disabled children and disabled adults are likely to be hit hardest by the coming cuts to public services.

This was made clear at last week’s National Autistic Society professional conference in Manchester, where hundreds of delegates from all over the country expressed serious concern about the future of services for children and adults with autism, from specialist education services to services helping adults with autism to enter employment.

I am concerned here with some of the general legal obligations which may be used by disabled children, disabled adults and their advocates to resist spending cuts. And it should also be remembered that where a duty arises to provide a service to an individual, compliance with this duty is likely to be necessary regardless of whether there is sufficient money in the budget. Decisions by public bodies that run contrary to their statutory duties, for example to slice a fixed percentage off the allocation of personal budgets in adult social care, are highly likely to be overturned by the High Court.

Legal duties

There are four key duties that can assist in fighting proposed cuts to services for disabled children and disabled adults:

      1.  The duty to ensure that children’s best interests are a ‘primary consideration’ in decisions affecting them and that public bodies carry out their functions having regard to the need to safeguard and promote children’s welfare;

      2. The duty, if consulting on a proposed change to a service, to do it properly;

      3. The duty to respect disabled children and disabled adults’ human rights, particularly their right to family and private life; and

      4. Section 49A of the general disability equality duty in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, to be replaced from 1 April by the public sector equality duty under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

Best interests

One of the central obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 3) is that in decisions affecting children, their best interests should be a ‘primary consideration’. In ZH (Tanzania) [2011] UKSC 4, a case involving the proposed deportation of a mother to Tanzania when her children were British citizens, Baroness Hale stated that while all other considerations could outweigh a child’s best interests, ‘the important thing…is to consider those best interests first’.

In the context of cuts to disabled children’s services, the ‘best interests’ duty requires the impact of the decision upon them to have been the first consideration in the minds of the decision-makers. Any decision to cut services without children’s best interests being a primary consideration is therefore potentially unlawful. The requirement to act in children’s best interests could be enforced in the courts by the child, their parent or another person close to the child.

A key route under which the courts can consider whether proper regard has been had to disabled children’s best interests is through section 11 of the Children Act 2004, which requires public bodies to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in carrying out their functions. Public bodies are not required to actually safeguard and promote children’s welfare under this duty, but they must consider this issue when reaching their decisions. Any decision to cut or withdraw a valued service to disabled children which does not see an alternative service put in place may be open to challenge under this duty on an application for judicial review.

Please stay tuned for part 2 on 'consultation' (i.e. a public body's duty to consult properly over proposed changes to services) and 'human rights'.  If you'd like to receive a notification email when the next blogpost is posted, please enter your email address in the 'follow by email' box (top right).

Advice on special educational needs

Another guest blogpost - this time from the organisation Independent Parental Special Education Advice (IPSEA) with some fab information about what IPSEA does and how they can help families of children with Special Educational Needs.

Independent Parental Special Education Advice – known as IPSEA

I asked Jane McConnell, Chief Executive of IPSEA, to tell us about their work. Jane became an IPSEA volunteer 10 years ago.  She has been a paid IPSEA staff member for the last 7 years.  She has a 12 year old son with complex SEN.  Jane has overcome several substantial hurdles to get the right education for him.  She has firsthand experience of what thousands of parents have to go through. 

What is IPSEA?

IPSEA is a registered charity providing free and independent legally based advice for parents whose children have SEN / disability. We have been supporting parents since 1983. IPSEA covers England and Wales. We use highly trained volunteers to deliver all our advice and support. We offer more support to the most disadvantaged families. A small team of paid part time staff co-ordinate and train our volunteers.

What does IPSEA do?

IPSEA advises families whose children have all types of SEN / disability, including behavioural problems, communication difficulties, learning disabilities and autism. IPSEA often helps families before their child has even been diagnosed. IPSEA’s legally based advice gives parents the confidence to exercise their rights. This basic understanding of the law equips families to be more involved in the decisions that affect them and helps them to avoid future issues. IPSEA helps around 3,000 families each year - thanks to our dedicated volunteers and supporters.

How can IPSEA help me?

IPSEA offers parents the following free services:

·        Website with over 80 resources

·        Free phone Advice Line for parents who are in negotiations with their local authorities, but not in a Tribunal situation

·        Local rate Tribunal Helpline advising parents who are taking a case to the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Tribunal

·        Tribunal casework support for those who need extra help

·        Monthly walk-in advice clinic in Saffron Walden

·        IPSEA on facebook and Twitter

Common problems

Many simpler and common issues with the SEN system can be resolved with the help of IPSEA’s on-line resources:

·        Understanding SEN jargon

·        Common problems when your child has SEN but no statement (cases 1-11)

·        Asking for a Statutory Assessment and getting the provision in place

·        How to handle a refusal to assess

·        Difficulties during the assessment (cases 12-15)

·        Issues that arise when you receive the proposed statement (cases 17-26)

·        Getting the final statement right (cases 27-30)

·        Common problems when your child has a statement (cases 31-40)

·        Appealing to get the secondary school you want  

·        Exclusion fact sheets

·        Home/school transport

What parents say about IPSEA

Our website has quotes from parents we have helped. We survey the parents that have used our services to ask them for feedback. Their feedback helps us improve our services and secure the funding we need to keep them going.

Using parents’ experiences to influence change

IPSEA gathers evidence and uses it to lobby for changes to current legislation. We also attempt to correct the practices of local authorities whose policies are not in line with legislation. 

1,039 people took part in our SEN Green Paper survey.  796 of them were parents of a child with SEN.  They agree with IPSEA's strong belief that parents' views need to be listened to and respected by the professionals responsible for assessing and educating their children.  Without this basic respect, mistrust builds up.  This can have a detrimental effect throughout the child's education. 

IPSEA works constructively with the government. We were particularly pleased that the new administration activated the right of parents to make an appeal to the SEND Tribunal if their child’s Statement did not reflect the needs of the child.

We gave evidence to the parliamentary education committee on the SEN Green Paper. We also successfully campaigned to protect legal aid for SEN appeals.

Keeping IPSEA going

It costs IPSEA around £30 to provide telephone advice to a family and around £300 to provide a tribunal caseworker. We appreciate all the donations we receive. You can donate using PayPal or debit/credit cards. You can also set up regular donations.     

IPSEA is always looking for more volunteers. You need to complete our training first. This training is very thorough so we ask you to commit to actively volunteering with us for at least 2 years.  "I enjoy the feeling of empowering parents - talking them through their problem and sending them off with a clear plan of action" says one of our experienced volunteers. 

And back to me - what a really extensive range of services :)  I wish us parents of special needs kids didn’t need to use them….but great to know IPSEA has got your back when you do.  Thanks for a really informative, helpful guest post.

Unconditional love: Gentle Teaching

I'm in blue type here, as there's going to be two of us in this blogpost.

I am lucky to be part of an international community of RDI Consultants and trainees, many of whom are qualified not only in RDI but also in other complementary approaches, methodologies and professions.  We have Educational and Child Psychologists, Speech and Language Therapists, HANDLE Consultants and autism parents, to name but a few, in our midst.  Our community is a fantastic resource to be able to dip into – we all share a website (the RDI Platform) where we can communicate with each other and draw on each others’ experience and knowledge, sharing views as well as video clips, updates on new research and webinars.  And we often do draw upon each others experience – because the families we are supporting have children and adults who have a diverse range of needs.

Brendan is a fellow RDI Consultant based in Gloucestershire, UK, who has found Gentle Teaching to be an excellent resource for supporting people whose behaviour can be challenging.  Here, Brendan (in black type) introduces us to Gentle Teaching:

My aim here is to simply give you the flavour of Gentle Teaching, not to explain it in any great detail. I have tried to keep my writing to a minimum here as Gentle Teaching is best understood by watching it in action. All in all, this post will take up about twenty minutes of your time, so grab your favourite tipple and relax.

Originally conceived in the late 1970’s, Gentle Teaching is a relationship and development-based model for helping those in need. Relationships are the main foundational elements of all goals. Skill acquisition and behaviour are seen as by-products of a much broader process: that of teaching the person to experience and reciprocate feelings of emotional and spiritual connectedness with others. As you read on and view the video clips, those of you familiar with RDI® will no doubt see the obvious parallels between the two approaches.

Gentle Teaching is part philosophy - part intervention. Care-giving is seen as a subjective act with each person bringing his or her own unique set of values and beliefs to any interaction. Through a mentoring process, caregivers are empowered to use their personal gifts and abilities to help guide the vulnerable individual towards feeling a sense of belonging, companionship and community. Gentle Teaching is not a scientific endeavour in any respect and, because of the number of variables involved; it does not lend itself easily to scientific research.

The main strategy of Gentle Teaching, as silly as it may seem, is unconditional love. The focus is on four essential domains that need to be intentionally taught to the vulnerable person. These domains are:

1.    To feel safe

2.    To feel loved,

3.    To be ‘loving’ (i.e. to be able to reciprocate these feelings)

4.    To be engaged (i.e. to be an active participant in one’s own life project)

As part the mentoring process, caregivers learn to teach the above developmental domains using their ‘tools’:

1.      Hands

2.      Words

3.      Eyes and

4.      Presence

Have a look at this clip to see the process in action between typical parents and their infant children.

Central to all dialogues is the simple message that “You are good and I am good”. Many children and adults requiring support get stuck in the ‘terrible twos’. Over time, as the individual begins to feel very safe and very loved, caregivers gently ‘stretch’ him through those terrible twos. Gentle Teaching does not follow a step-by-step development model. Rather, the domain of safe and loved is at the core of the human condition and the other domains radiate outwards from it. At any time during our lives and through no fault of our own, this central domain may become broken or very fragile. For example, when a mother loses her baby, those close to her will provide her with the extra love and attention she needs to feel safe and loved again.

I have picked the following clip as the young man featured presents some particular challenges that make it very difficult for his caregivers to value and honour him unconditionally. The clip also features Dr John J McGee, the founder of Gentle Teaching and a little Eminem!

If you are still awake and with me (!) this third clip features David. David runs around and around. He is like a bird that continuously flits from one branch to the next. When caregivers place demands on him he can become self-injurious and aggressive. In this clip you will see John working to establish co-regulation with David.

That’s about it! However, before I go I must express my thanks to Zoe for this opportunity to share Gentle Teaching with you all. I am happy to answer any questions and/or provide more information as required. Please feel free to contact me at any time: brendan@learning-together.info

Brendan’s web site is http://www.learning-together.info

Thanks Brendan J

 

IEP? Time to get your underpants on over your trousers.....

As discussed in my previous blogpost, the Individual Education Plan (IEP) is the main mechanism for monitoring and reviewing progress against agreed targets.  What seems to me to be crucial about the IEP is that meaningful, realistic targets are agreed with parents at the outset and that a timescale clearly details the period during which interventions will be monitored as well as a date at which progress in meeting targets will be reviewed.

This is the IEP that was drawn up for the elder of the two daughters whose Mum we are supporting.

Targets	Success criterion	Intervention	Outcome
He will understand and respond to facial expression and body language	Appropriate response seen on 10 occasions	Modelling expressions Using emotion cards	*
He will use appropriate language in conversation	Appropriate use of language seen on 10 occasions	Role play appropriate use of formal and informal language	*
He will work well as part of a team	Seen to work co-operatively with others on 10 occasions	Set group tasks and place child in group	*

*Nothing was recorded in the ‘outcome’ column

What strikes me about this is the extent to which parents are at the mercy of the school.  If parents aren’t used to report writing or developing and reviewing planning documents, how can they be expected to critically analyse an IEP to make sure it makes sense?  If you are a parent in that situation, you trust the school and the SENCO to be doing their jobs…..clearly though, this school wasn’t up to the job.

One of the first things you will notice is that the document – the IEP of a girl – uses the pronoun ‘he’ throughout.  This probably tells you all you need to know about the level of care and attention used in developing the document and the commitment of the school to addressing this child’s needs L

There are other causes for concern, for example, the targets themselves are so general as to be completely unachievable. I would suggest that they need to be broken down developmentally to focus on the component parts that make up the whole, one at a time.  So, for example, ‘working well as part of a team’ depends upon mastery of competencies such as social referencing, co-regulation and joint attention (see previous blogposts).

In typical children, these developmental steps take years to master and the ultimate goal (teamwork) will not be achieved unless the foundational steps that underpin it are sufficiently mastered.  I call this ‘Vygotsky’s Law’ after the father of developmental psychology who introduced this concept.

We know that social referencing, co-regulation and joint attention are all impaired in autism, so we can see that ‘working well as part of a team’ makes no sense as a target for a child who does not have the lower level competencies in place.  The same could be said for the other two targets, as both of these require underpinning competencies to be in place.

In terms of the interventions suggested, I am not aware of any research (peer reviewed or otherwise) which demonstrates that any of them would successfully address the difficulties outlined.  For example, I know of no studies showing that using emotion cards helps a child with autism either to respond better to facial expressions or to improve their social communication (which is the ultimate purpose of being able to read facial expressions – it is not an end in itself).  Recognising facial expressions from a card or from the face of an animated train is one thing, but using the information transmitted in a facial expression to inform thinking and action is quite another.  I’ll quote from one of my favourite people with autism, Janine Collins, Research Associate, University of Maine, who reinforces this point when she writes, ‘Methods of teaching proceed as if being able to state, identify a statement describing, or select a picture depicting when and where to use a skill is the same as being able to actually initiate the skill when needed. This allows for no real way to build one's capacity to deal with social nuance and novelty.’

Then there is the issue of measuring progress.  The success criteria given in the IEP above are pretty meaningless.  Increases in frequency of a behaviour tell us nothing about whether the child exhibits the behaviour consistently across various settings and contexts (i.e. in different environments with different levels of challenge and with different communication partners). 

David Sponder, an RDI Consultant, Educational Psychologist, and Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA) gave an excellent webinar about measurable outcomes (archived on the RDI Platform for those of you with access to it).  Here is an abridged example he shared comparing measuring progress in developing joint attention by increases in frequency of a behaviour vs. measuring progress by using ‘foundation and elaboration’. 

Measuring by frequency

·        Benchmark 1

‘Student will demonstrate evidence of receptive joint attention 2/5 opportunities during periods of unplanned, unstructured social interactions with age mates each day for a period of 3 weeks.

·        Benchmark 2

‘Student will demonstrate evidence of receptive joint attention 3/5 opportunities during periods of unplanned, unstructured social interactions with age mates each day for a period of 3 weeks.

·        Benchmark 3

‘Student will demonstrate evidence of receptive joint attention 4/5 opportunities during periods of unplanned, unstructured social interactions with age mates each day for a period of 3 weeks.

Measuring by ‘foundation and elaboration’

·        Benchmark 1

Student will respond to joint attention by focusing on the shared referent when the communication partner engages the pupil directly.

·        Benchmark 2

Student will respond to joint attention by focusing on the shared referent when the joint attention bid is expressed to a group and not directly to the pupil.

·        Benchmark 3

Student will respond to joint attention by focusing on the shared referent when the joint attention bid is expressed to a group and the pupil overhears it or oversees it.

Conclusion

We can see that the ‘foundation and elaboration’ measures give us far more information about the level and quality of mastery of the developmental milestone of responding to joint attention. 

If we look at autism from a child development perspective, we can see that the IEP targets do not take account of the underpinning competencies that need to be mastered in order to facilitate the emergence of the desired skill.

We also know that there is a lack of evidence to support the efficacy of any of the proposed interventions.

This IEP hasn’t really got anything going for it at all……..yet it has been submitted to a panel of experts and the panel has used it to help them conclude (with nothing recorded in the ‘outcomes’ column) that this child’s needs are being met at school.

It really is a system that is heavily loaded against parents………where a school is not cooperating with a request for statutory assessment and/or in developing, implementing and monitoring IEPs, think how much knowledge, perseverance, assertiveness and organisation it takes for parents to be able to make sure that the school is doing its job properly, not to mention the emotional resilience needed to keep on fighting your child’s corner in the face of professionals and so-called ‘experts’ who are not on your side (and are often being defensive about their role).

You really have to have your underpants on over your trousers to be on top of all that…………..