#9 This is the place

They say when you know, you know, for all kinds of things in life. When we first walked into our chosen school for Noah, it was instant. The head teacher showed us around different class rooms, showed us the sensory room, a soft play climbing room, sunken trampoline, and told us about the therapies and support they could provide. The facilities were endless, and the set up was amazing. All we needed to have in place in order for Noah to go there, was an EHCP. As I mentioned before, when the Local Authority assesses a child for an EHCP, they assign an Educational Psychologist to write a report as part of the process. They gather information from the parents (I imagine in another life where bats were found in the sky and not on plates this was done face to face rather than over the phone), and then observe them at school, or nursery.

The Ed-Psych they assigned to us was really lovely and informative, and listened to me whitter on about Noah and how he behaved at home for over an hour. Then a week or so later she visited him at nursery, where I'm told he gave her a run for her money! Her report is what had initially led us down the path to viewing Special Educational Needs school. She made it clear that Noah was going to need such a significant level of educational support that mainstream school just felt... wrong.

There isnt a huge amount of choice for SEN provision schools in our area, but we set about finding as much information as we could about what was out there. We narrowed it down to three places. One was a specific speech and language unit at a mainstream school, the second was a school that caters for special needs children from the age of 4 all the way up to 19, and even has a careers programme for the oldest year groups, but the one that we've fallen in love with, is a SEN primary school that caters primarily for autistic children. We toured two of the three places, but the school with the education programme wouldn't take us around, so it was really hard to know if it would be a good fit.

Once an EHCP is granted, applying for schools is also a little bit different, because we have to do it earlier than mainstream children. This is so that we have a chance to appeal the LA's decision if we don't agree with it. The morning of the tour at our favourite school, I recieved an email from the LA requesting our school choices for Noah. The tour was at 2pm, and I emailed the LA from the car on the way home selecting it, because it was that good. It was the perfect place for him, and as we'd been shown around the classrooms where the children were all learning, I had seen a version of Noah in every single one. This was it. I was going to fight tooth and nail to get him in there.

As I write this, we are currently 11 days away from the descision deadline they gave us. If we manage to get in first time without debate, it will be the best Christmas, Birthday, Anniversary and everything present all rolled into one.

We're ready for the fight if it comes, but lets hope we don't have to.

Our recent diagnosis has only strengthened our application for this school, and I'm hoping it's the cherry on top of the cake.

The Ed-Psych is also the person who got us to apply for Disability Living Allowance, which is a monthly payment from the government for under 16's with additional needs, and it's intended to help towards the extra cost of taking care of them. Things like larger sized nappies as some children can take a lot longer to potty train, fidget toys for those with sensory needs, or even social clubs or classes for things that help build their social skills and confidence. As a result, we're now able to take Noah swimming once a week to a Sensory Swimming session for SEN children, and it's been incredible.

Seeing the change in Noah when different kinds of support are applied has really solidified our belief that the earlier these kinds of thing are put in place, the more successful they can be. If we can start him off with full support from the second he starts school, we'll have it made.