How will the boy communicate with the world on his own?
The issue of whether and when the boy should go to school came up. Although we live in the present, there are some things that force us into forward planning. Schooling is one. We can't just decide he can go to school. There seems to be a long process that we will have to go through before this can happen, if it can happen at all. He will need a Special Needs Statement. We will have to start it now if we want him to go to school in September. It's not clear whether he can go to a normal school or whether they will prefer he went to a special school. We don't have to send him to school until he's five. But we don't know how he'll be come September. It's just such a long way away.
The trachy and the recent surgery pose him additional problems. His poor balance makes him vulnerable to other children's play. His eye problems compound that. The trachy means he needs permanent medical supervision. And his speech, such as it is, is just about intelligible to us. But who knows what teachers or other children will make of it. His language is a mixture of signs and words. No real sentences.
But I get ahead of myself. He has the start of the Special Needs Assessment tomorrow. And we are meeting a local nursery on Friday. If they don't provide someone to do 1:1 for him, either the wife will have to be with him or he can't go. And the local authority don't have to provide anything for him before he's 5. Never straightforward.
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2 comments:
Wow, school in September. Sounds hard to imagine that far ahead.
I'm not sure how the schools work over there - they can just say, No, Sorry, We won't take him ?
Itis hard to imagine that far ahead. Up to the age of five there is no compulsory schooling in the UK, so if he doesn't come with adequate funding the schools can indeed say no. After he's 5, the local authority have a duty to educate him but who knows how they will define that duty. That's what the assessment should tell us.
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