How does a child with special needs get a place in to a special needs school r there any special requirements?

The principal requirement you need to get your child into a special school is the Statement - once you have a statement, if you learn how to use it properly you can use it to get what you want. Ring the special school on Monday, make an appointment with the Headteacher or whoever is appointed to speak to the visitors & arrange to go & see the school. In fact, if you still have the list of special schools in your area, go visit them all if you want to. If you want your child to go to a special needs school, there don't to be any special requirements in the Statement, you don't even need to have visited the school you can ring the Special Needs section on Monday morning & ask them to apply to the special school for a place. If you have the email of your child's Special Needs Officer, you could write to them & ask them to apply to the school that way you have evidence that you wrote to them to let them know what you wanted. You could also ask the Special Needs section at the local Authority if there are any resourced units for Autism attached to mainstream schools - these units give the children the experience of mixing with their peer group in a mainstream setting but they still have a place where they can retreat to & be taught alongside other children with Autism. When was the last Annual Review held? If it was more six months ago & there's been a significant change in your son's behaviour, you could speak to the SENCO about holding an early Annual Review for the specific purpose of discussing the possibility of discussing a change of place - the SENCO would need to make sure as many of the professionals as possible involved with your child attend (Speech & Language, the EP, any from the Autism Team) As I've said before, if you have a Final Amended or Final Statement which is less then 60 days old you could appeal to SENDIST. You could still work at persuading the Authority to raise his support while waiting for Tribunal.

I would suggest trying to talk to them and see if they have a resource room that he can stay in all day, where he has supervision and more 1 on 1!

How about contacting the special needs school and see what they require, I can't help much I'm afraid, we have just had our sons diagnosis and been told there will be no problem getting a statement and the autism outreach team loosely suggested (they aren't allowed to tell you what to do) that we enrol our son in a special needs school next September, we think we are going to try a split placement - 3 days at special school and 2 in mainstream and see how it goes but we have a care plan meeting on Tuesday so will thrash it out then with the "experts". Could you speak to the SENCO at school and see what they think maybe. There is a girl on here called Angie (autism's beautiful face) she is really good at this type of question you could try re posting in the pregnancy section and hopefully she will answer. Best of luck.

I have a son with autism and he was turned down a statement. He is in mainstream school. Get your school to do an IEP and get some reports from speech and language therapy etc. Keep a diary of all his daily issues. Put it all together in a report and send it off to the Ed Dept again for review. The Government are motherf*ckers for not giving our kids the help they need. Contacting a special needs school won't get you anywhere unless you have a statement which can get him in there. Unfortuately theres not a lot we parents can do. Our hands are tied.

You need to request an immediate review of his statement at which you present all your evidence, this would be all the reports from speech and language therapist, educational psychologist and any other reports or statements from people who work with him. The school should be able to provide you with evidence that his needs are not being fully met in that setting. As his parent you can state why you want him moved by outlining what the special school can offer him that his present placement can't. You may find it helpful to talk to someone at the National Autistic Society and get their advice. There is also an organisation, ACE, who deal with educational issues such as this.