We got what we wanted… so why the tears?!

Guess what! Disabled kids need to apply for primary school earlier than ‘mainstream’

kids! We found out by accident, despite Obi being fully embedded in the council’s care system and attending a Special Needs nursery in the borough – quite impressive, really, but at least we worked it out before the deadline!

Your child does need an Educational Health and Care Plan (EHCP) to qualify for this early application (or special needs support in schools in general), but certainly in Lewisham it doesn’t need to be fully approved, yet, their name just needs to be in the process. EHCPs are one of those things you will never have heard of unless your child needs one (until recently, at least, because the Government’s making headlines for considering scrapping them), but they are basically a legally binding document outlining a child’s individual support requirements and the funding available to a named care setting (e.g. a nursery or school) to meet those specified needs.

We learned while looking at schools that quite a few of them, specifically those specialising in ADHD / Autism, will not take children with Global Developmental Delay. This rather limited our options, and with Connie at school just up the road we didn’t want Obi going somewhere miles away.

Lewisham only has one school that is actually suitable for Obi, and the placements are coordinated by Kaleidoscope, the community care team he’s been under the – generally excellent – care of since he was just a few months old. We did go and visit a few other special schools, but Obi would have been trampled to death by marauding able-bodied kids in most of them, and they followed the national curriculum which won’t really be much use to him at this point.

The Visit

When we went to see this school that we assumed Obi would be placed at, it was immediately deeply depressing. There was a Morph in the entrance hall – one of the ones that had been dotted around London a few years ago – but he had a walking frame, a bit like that which Obi had at home. And outside every classroom was a parking lot for wheelchairs and walkers, while inside, regardless of age, they all seemed to be singing nursery rhymes. Obi would be in heaven with Twinkle Twinkle on endless loop…

'Messy Morph', as designed for Morph's 2023 Epic Art Adventure in London by the kids of Watergate School

But the school does have a pool, and they even take the kids to a lovely outdoor swimming facility in a local park to do adaptive water sports like body boarding, when they’re not playing in the adventure playground on-site. It was definitely going to be the right place for Obi, even if it would take some getting used to for us.

Having said that, I did really enjoy the Wheelchair Skills class we saw, which involved each kid taking turns to get across a room in their chair, while the rest of the class threw giant inflatables at their faces. What a way to learn how to do a quick turn!

The Application

We’d been told we needed to list three schools on Obi’s application, even though there was only one that would be suitable. We’d been advised to look ‘out of Borough’, and wasted a fair bit of time visiting schools miles away that just wouldn’t work for him – or us.

And then when it came to it… the application I’d been dreading for months was a basic Microsoft Form, where I ticked a box with the name of our chosen school on it, didn’t put down any second or third places, and there we were - done!

The most painful part was having to chase to register for a school in the first place; it seemed to be one poor woman’s job to do every single SEND school application in the Borough, and I’m not sure she knew how to use mailing lists… Everyone was trying to be helpful with the guidance they’d given, but the process was clearly just opaque unless you’d actually completed it yourself, so frankly - we clearly just went a bit OTT in the end, and I hope others don’t make the same mistakes because it was a massive waste of time!

The Placement

They let you know which school you’ve got a place at (or the school they’re ‘minded to place’ at, pending discussion) by updating the EHCP. We were a bit nervous Obi wouldn’t get a place because there’s always more demand than capacity, but if he didn’t get in it just meant we’d be spending months appealing the decision until he did – there wasn’t really another choice for us. Having said that, I’ve heard of people around the country whose kids need to travel crazy distances to get to schools because they couldn’t get in to their local provision, and that’s where those ‘out of Borough’ visits probably come in useful.

So, when Obi’s placement came through and we got the school we wanted for him – no questions asked – why did I burst into tears?!

It’s probably partly down to relief; the announcement date got pushed back by a couple of weeks, so it felt like we’d been waiting for ages. And then when they did call to tell us the decision, they also said the EHCP update we’d been talking about for months was still not done (and I’m writing this in August about a conversation that happened in February, and we’re still waiting for the updated EHCP…) so we’d just get a draft with the school’s name on it. Not a massive problem, but not ideal as the guidance in the document for Obi is outdated given the progress he’s made.

But it’s also probably down to the fact Obi got into the only special school in Lewisham, and nobody questioned it, not even for a second. It was like when we didn’t have to appeal to get any of the DLA payments, or go to a panel to make our case for an EHCP… Obi’s problems are big enough that he gets what he needs, and no-one has ever tried to stand in our way – I know we’re extremely lucky to not have to go through endless fights and appeals, but also...

Through my tears, I said to Patrick “I don’t know why I’m crying; this is what we wanted!”, but I think he hit the nail on the head with his response: “this isn’t what anyone wanted, Jo, so that’s probably why you’re crying.”

Which makes sense.

What We Learned:

1. Try to get an example of your Local Authority’s application form for special schools, because they’re different to the mainstream ones

2. It is worth visiting more than one school – they really were all very different and I think kids with special needs can have such specific requirements that one person’s worst nightmare is someone else’s perfect environment

3. School is going to be a major milestone. It’s unclear how we’ll manage it!

*I’ll write another blog about the EHCP process in due course