Another One Bites the Dust!
On my last post about Mollie and education I described how demand avoidance was causing a noticeable decline in attendance at Mollie’s alternative provision. I had hoped that things would improve following the Christmas holidays when the building pressure of Christmas had been removed.
Sadly things continued to decline and she only managed two sessions following Christmas and has now not attended at all for weeks. Knowing Mollie as I do and being familiar with how these patterns ultimately turn out, I made the decision to not pursue this placement and informed the relevant professionals.
From the beginning of the placement I was aware of factors that were likely to possibly contribute to difficulties. I tried to ensure that these factors were addressed as a preventative measure but sadly no further support was forthcoming.
Mollie had requested a to return to school at the end of May 2015 and we are still months away from a finalised EHCP and therefore a suitable and correctly supported placement. I won’t go into the fine details because I feel that it would be inappropriate to do so at this time. All I will say is that due to huge delays in this process from beginning to end we now find ourselves going through the horrible process of ‘Formal Complaints’.
The school were wonderful and I have nothing but praise and thanks for all of their efforts. They did everything that I asked of them and worked collaboratively with me to try to ensure success. But with limited support from the LA we were both greatly restricted with what we could put into place to support Mollie.
It has been a very difficult period that has required an awful lot of resolve on my part. In order to stay strong and supportive for Mollie I have to try to emotionally detach myself from the situation. This is so difficult for any parent to do when you are seeing your child so visibly crushed and her emotional well-being plummet through the floor.
So where do we go from here? Well after much discussion, Lee and I have decided that she needs time to recover from these experiences. Quite frankly she was destroyed, living day and night in her bedroom and skin picking was off the scale. While the LA are standing firm on saying that they are unable to provide Mollie with suitable support until the completion of the transfer of her statement to an EHCP, we see little point in setting her up for another failure by starting another provision that will also be restricted by hours and support.
We are therefore going to keep her at home and allow her ample recovery time. We are currently making progress with her, following several weeks of self imposed confinement to her room I have been able to tempt her out, re-engage with her and we have recently managed a couple of trips outside of the house.
For the interim we are hoping to secure an on line home education package. This will allow her to meet other pupils online from what, we hope, will be her final placement. Will this be agreed, well your guess is as good as mine?
To the many parents who are currently facing similar battles stay strong, keep fighting, never give up and the very best of luck.
Some of you may find my new resource ‘PDA Guidance‘ helpful for you in your journey. It would be a shame to put all of my recent research to waste. It may not have benefited me, other than knowing how to present a complaint, but it may help you.
Time to go and look for an extra bottle of emotional detachment and strength me thinks!
