Special Needs Education, Experiences Of A Black British Parent (1)

In this episode of the Diary for Lawyers, a mother discusses her experiences in the education system with a child who has special needs. She talks about the challenges she faced in getting a diagnosis and the lack of support from social services. She mentions taking an advocacy course to learn about her rights and how to effectively advocate for her child. She also mentions forming her own parent group and the positive impact it has had on her relationship with the school. Overall, she emphasizes the importance of parents being informed and actively involved in their child's education. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Diary for Lawyers and today I'm going to be having a brief discussion or conversation with a mother whose child's obsession is and what her experience, lived experiences, are in the education system, what are some of the challenges she finds, the support that may be necessary and what she thinks the solution and any message she has for other parents, in particular parents from black backgrounds in the United Kingdom. So, I'm going to let her introduce herself and then we carry on with the conversation, obviously. And how old is your child? So, our first child is a special child, both of those, is out on the road in their dad's house. He has FDM education as well, but he does not need an education at all. And they're all in, are they all in the education system? Yes, they both go to mainstream secondary school. Okay, and as you know, it's usually a challenge to even identify what the passive issue is. Did you, what was the process or the experience of getting a diagnosis if they already had a diagnosis? The process for my system was more, they weren't very, I didn't find it very helpful. I had to, quite literally, from 2011 until 2012, I had to leave the application form to pass. And the same course, I found was not very helpful. I was going back to my family's mainstream school. So, I got an EHT plan, which is called a patient health care plan without diagnosis. Then I applied early for my son to get diagnosed in 2015. He had lost a paler path. Then I did another one in 2015, and the same course, which was called the e-centre, which was writing completely different marks from the marks I was writing. So, we weren't working in sync. I also found that they had a high turnover for the same course, but that's when my son suffered. While trying to get my son diagnosed, I noticed that they were doing a tactic where they get someone called in social services. So, when social services got involved, they never told social services, I was the same parent, and my child had tendency behaviour issues, and that I was suspecting my child was autistic. So, when social services got involved, and they explained to them that I needed my son diagnosed, I also needed help with accommodation, because we were in a non-veteran property. I didn't find them very helpful. There was only one social worker that I literally helped with, and she was very supportive, but she was a step down from social services. She was a friend of the solution. She helped me with the ACT plan process. Okay, and the justification for calling in social services was behaviour issues, which obviously are linked to autism. You know, they absolutely did apply things. They used an organisation called Corner House. The whole time we were there, they were actually watching you, watching you interact with your child, and they did a referral to social services. They must have done a referral first of all. Social services, because I really had to use their service before, when I got the ACT plan. I called in the social worker, told her the situation, and she said to me that, so that was in the middle of June 16th, I think it was. Social services was called again. The people had done the referral, and I asked them the name and number of social services, and she said, I didn't see them straight away. I used their service, but nobody ever got back to me. I got to the school one day, and there was a social service and police waiting at the school. The social service now got involved. There was a white social worker. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. He was quite aggressive, quite rude. 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So that teaches you how to do tribunals, to understand the content of transport, the Chinese transport, also to understand how to gather the bandwidth available for the tribunal. And I've also learnt about conventions of SAL, which is a subject access request, finding out information about why their child's not getting the support they need. And also a provision map, if their parents need to ask for if the provision map, or they call it map provision. This shows the budget of what they're doing for a child in terms of provision. Again, for people who might not be familiar with that. Provision map. And what does it do? It shows you what the school is doing with their child in terms of provision. A breakdown, a much more clearer breakdown. So you can see what they've actually been doing for us. And is that a course that you would recommend for the parents? The Advocacy course is a good course. I think it's a good course, but it's also a good just for you as a parent, just in terms of resources and knowledge. If you want to do advocacy work, just to check that you've already done, you've already put in the practice, just to check that you are doing it in the correct protocol. So I think that's why I did it, because I've been doing it for quite a long time now. Perhaps quite a few SDN parents now. Does that involve any costs, or the course? The course, yeah, the course is £299. £299? I don't think that's on the report. It's for instalments. So parents can get the course to pay for the course. For some parents, that may be an option. I don't think so. Are you happy to mention the name of the organisation? We can find out in the meantime. So you mentioned that you did the course and you started advocating for yourself. I did the course before I started advocating before I did the course. But did once you were actively involved and advocating, did you see was there a tangible difference in terms of how the school or the organisations you deal with interact with you, respond to you? Once you were now in a position where you advocated for yourself and you had further training on the practicalities of day-to-day involvement, did that make any difference in terms of how the school interacts with you or responds to your requests? In terms of my... From the time that you started actually practically and forcefully advocating for yourself and got more and more confident and well-informed, did that make any difference in terms of how the school responded to that? The school, you said, were very wary of me. I was one of the parents, actually I joined the same parent group last year and I was quite short out of about maybe 30 people. I think I was the only parent that had the annual review every year. Wow. Some of them had the annual review for like 5 years and they're travelling in the school. It should be a statutory requirement. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying. And I think that when I asked to join the group, Nisenko was very hesitant at first. I didn't understand why, so I joined the group and I did not really like the same parent group, to be fair, because it was they'd got a school governor in there that was still part of the school. Well, the other same parent still stayed, but I personally came out and formed my own group and when the same parent governor wanted to go as the same parent governor, the school governor, she was now trying to be nice to me and said, oh, would you like to join their group? And I was like, no, I absolutely don't want to open my own group. And she got upset about that and I didn't know what to do with it. She was the school governor already once, and she was a Chelsea resident and not all the parents are from that borough. Some of the parents are cross-boroughed, like myself. So I didn't feel that she was going to represent all parents. Okay, so you then, obviously, you became actively involved, and what practical difference has it made now? Well, with me, I feel that my input and my stuff, it has made a difference in terms of my son, how I rap with my son. I've got a good rapport with her now, I would say. She's got a greater understanding of me. If she's not sure how to work with my son, she emails me. I've just done that, you know, like she's working in collaboration as well. The EP that did my class, he was very helpful in terms of the provision he put in. He backed up what Cam said, which is children have to have services. Yeah. And he was just saying that school, at one time, there was a time when I didn't really get the previous DENCO. He was trying to avoid my emails, because clearly I didn't understand why he was avoiding my emails until I joined the parent sent group last year, June, and found out that this guy had not been doing annual reviews. I was quite shocked. I just thought annual reviews were a standard of work. Everybody did that. You need to know where you're going and how to improve. So I do think as an STN parent, it's very good to have STN parent groups in schools so you see who is the same as my other parents and know what's going on in the school. Because a lot of them, what I find with STN parents, it tends to be isolated. Yes. I feel that there's strength in language. There's a group of STN parents in which you don't know as much. There might be another group of STN parents that might know something over here. You learn from each other over there. I think the STN parent groups, WhatsApp groups, I think they're very much needed in schools so that parents can find out what's going on, what services are out there. OK. You said your child got a mainstream school. There's been this debate especially among parents, I'd say, from mine and within sometimes the legislation. Mainstream versus stationary schools. What's your view? To be honest with you, I'm not really one for stationary schools. But in saying that, my son went to school part-time in 2021. He went part-time to school in July 2021 up until October 2021 and still was in a mainstream school. My son didn't like the stationary school but I liked it in one way for my son that he got the shock factor and he was much more appreciative of the LSA and the people that he worked with when he went to the stationary school. When he went back to his mainstream school, he now started to be more respectful towards his LSA. So in that respect, I did like it. Why didn't you like it? He thought that he didn't fit in there but he just didn't like the fact that the doors were closed. It makes you feel like you're free. But in stationary schools, I don't know about all stationary schools, this one, you have to use the pub to open doors. You kind of feel a bit closed at the moment. Yes, and that can be triggered. I think he just missed his friends because that's where his environment is. And why didn't you like stationary schools? I don't like stationary schools because I don't think they help children academically. They don't look at the academic side of things. I'm a bit biased. I'm a parent that likes my child's education, like academically. So I find that they also sometimes don't make boundaries. See, in mainstream schools, there's rules in it. They have boundaries. I find that socialist schools nurture as opposed to a mainstream school where you have the rules. They have to make reasonable adjustments but they still have rules, like you have to line up in a queue. You know, like certain things I didn't like. And do you think he'll flourish more in a special ed school or a mainstream school? It depends on the child as well because some children do need to be in special ed schools. It depends on the child. It depends on the need as well. It depends on the need. For me, I don't feel that my child needs to be in a special ed school so I was against it for my child. In saying that, some parents feel that their child will do well in a special ed school and it's down to the parents, it's down to their need. But I personally feel that for me, I want to say how can I put this but for me, I can say as a parent, my son is into gaming, computers. I felt that my son needed more help in social interaction. My son is a very, very quiet person and he doesn't he's not the type that will make friends quickly. He has to kind of like be more sociable and he has to make that. There's a group of kids, he's not the person that will go and start talking and everything. So he needs an incentive. So, I feel that being in a special ed school for my son, I felt that he couldn't cope because he's used to doing academic so he found the work too easy. Wow, wow. That's good. I'm not going to lie, my son is one that didn't really like doing the homework. In the special ed school, when he went there, he asked the school for more work so the LSA called me up and she was laughing. She said, I don't know if it's he's changed his mood. He's much more polite now. More respectful. I just thought she was really laughing down the phone. Wow. Okay. So maybe it's because they know, they understand the triggers and the complexities of the needs they have. Yeah. But also as well, in special ed schools they do more, they have more time in terms of speech and language. They have those things on site. Where mainstream schools, even though they put it on the EAC time, they don't do everything they say they put on the EAC time. No regulations, no school literacy. Special ed schools will try to keep that service. And you said you went there part time. How does that work? Some days he would go, say Tuesday he went all day to the mainstream school. Okay. And then maybe Wednesday and then Friday he went to the special ed school. So three days a week he was at the mainstream. And then two days... Was that a trial phase? Just because Senko and my son and me weren't really getting on with Senko, so we needed a little break from each other. So no call at first to suggest things like that. Yeah, that's right, my son. Before we sort of wrap up. The, obviously a lot of the challenges faced with special ed in school and parents are, sort of, they tend to affect generally everyone. However, as almost in every area of life there's a disproportionate impact on blacks and other minorities. What was your view in that, how it affects blacks? I think it affects black parents as well. Some black parents don't like to write emails. I think people should get used to writing emails. My advice is to read a lot. Try and do courses to educate yourself. Because when you watch your parents, it's like a battlefield. You don't know what you're doing. There's some professionals that will try and help you and there's some professionals that just shout out or give you bad advice that does not suit your child's needs. Doesn't have a clue about your child. Sometimes your child will suffer as a result of lack of knowledge. If you don't know about your child, then your child is going to go and stay in places where they shouldn't really be. This is just my opinion as an SDN parent. And this is just not even about what the specifics of the black experience are. For me, the black experience, I find the professionals, I find they become quite rude. Yeah? And then when you start in a conversation and you don't like what they're saying, they'll say, Oh, do you know who you're talking to? And I think you're being aggressive. Yeah. Their friends panic the other way around. Yeah. So, another thing I don't like is not because you're speaking Polish or well-mannered as they say, but you're being rude. I think that's more insulting and patronising. Yeah. And I find with a lot of professionals, when they don't like what you're telling, they'll be like, Oh, I had a Zoom meeting one time with one of my South Central. Just to show you funny enough. And she got her colleagues to come in and they were trying to be rude. And she didn't tell her colleagues all the stories. So when they would get involved, some of them didn't know what was going on. And then I put it out there and said, When we had the last annual review, this is not what you said. This lady didn't say that at the last meeting. We're saying something completely different now. And I've asked you on numerous occasions for the time they've offered at my first LSS and I'm still waiting. And I did a meeting with one of my friends. So, when she was trying to lie, my friend who was at the last meeting, she said, I have seen the emails that have been asked from you, so what have you got to say? And she was like, I think now we need to come to a close. We need to come to a close. And from that day, she's just been avoiding my emails. So I've asked for a massage. I should be getting that any day now. And is there an option to change professionals? Or is that something that... Well, the professionals, now, they need to get training for disbiasness as well. There was a time last 2021 at international my son's school and they had a cheat to say something that the terminology that black people use. Now, my son doesn't talk like that. I know exactly how my son insults. So, as soon as they said it, I said to the teacher, I don't like that idea that my son is being racially profiled. And I said to her, my son wouldn't say that, so this one I'm challenging on that ground. So, when they had a parent meeting, that teacher, eventually, my son got something from it, he didn't say the whole story. It's then that I started, oh, actually, you need to come and get the Prime Minister. I said, I can come with you if I like. Right. I said, that's my constitutional right. I said, I can come with you if I like. For me, you're not, in 2010, you're failing my child. And my answer was, can I take that email again? I sent an email back to my son, and this girl was just avoiding it because I didn't know that, by that time, I wasn't in the parents' group. This parents' group was only formed last year. When I went into the parents' group, I was so shocked at how much parents, their schools, their newspapers, have often done this for these adverts. So, they've now re-banned, they've got a new person in, a new headmaster came in September, he's leaving, they've got another headmaster in, a black headmaster, so we're going to see how this works. It's funny how they've got a black person to come in. So, we're going to see, but me personally, I just think, as an SDN parent, in general, you need to know what you're doing, and don't have meetings of your own, because you don't want to get stigmatised, that you had a meeting with them, that you were aggressive, because professionals tell lies. Not because they're professionals, it doesn't mean they can't abuse their professional position. At the end of the day, you're an SDN parent, they're professionals. Please tell the public whether they believe you, the SDN parent, or them, the professionals. So, it's better to stay about yourself, and have meetings with other people to bear witness, always have an independent witness. If you can't have an advocate, get somebody that knows about SDN, or has an understanding of what the protocols are. Oh, very sound advice. And just finally, mindful of time, your time. If you're to leave any one advice for parents, but in particular, black parents, or kids with special needs and education system, what would you tell them? Stop the calling on the phone. Do emails. Straight up. Yeah, it's annoying. That's their downfall. You can't take that to trial. You can't take that to court. Violating your child's human rights. Violating your child's equal rights. Where's your evidence? It's their word against yours. Always leave a paper trail. Documentation. You need to document everything. And you need to be organized. If you don't understand something, she's up against you. Go and sort it. Research. If you don't know anything, learn how to talk as well. They don't know how to talk. And they overshare things that are not relevant to their child's needs. Right. And then finally, what specific support do you parents or your parents need? They should have parent carer workshops. They should also try and do workshops, online workshops for FDM parents. So that if say like there's FDM parents that are different from our own that can't physically go to certifies, I think there should be virtual FDM forums. Teach FDM parents their rights. And when you say parent carer, what do you mean? You know what I mean? Like, if you're not taking care of yourself mentally, or having somebody that you could physically, that you could go and explain it. I think people don't get the discrimination your child faces. Somebody's got a child who knows FDM, they don't get your profanity. Here she goes again. Only a FDM parent will understand that FDM parents struggle. And the struggle is real. Okay. I think that was obvious. Leaving it on a positive note, how is your child now? On a positive note, my son did his prom two weeks ago. Oh wow. He had his last day of school, got into college. Looking forward to college. On a positive note, my child did very well with his food tech. Okay. On a positive note, he did really good with food tech. He did food tech practicals, he did tacos, salt fish for starters, fruit cocktail, and yeah, he's enjoying looking forward to now leaving. What is he going to do? Have his own business, and cooking. He's good at cooking. Wow. One of the two most celebrity areas. He likes making money online. He likes virtual games. I would like him to go to a church in Rwanda. When is that? Next year. Would you go with him? They will go with a group. I've been going to my church for 23 years since July. So, it's like a family. And it's SEM friendly. My church helped me with my EHD plan. It came to me when I was fighting to get an EHD plan. I would say to SEM parents, especially black SEM parents, if they are into church, or just SEM parents in general, go to church with SEM parents. That is so powerful. They were very supportive. They were very loyal. They gave outstanding character reference. Don't isolate yourself. Being a SEM parent is not a crime. You have gifted children. Does the church help with orientation? Yes, they have people that work with them. They have doctors, teachers, headmasters. Are you talking about the church? Yes. St. Paul's. Oh, St. Paul's. Yes. Vibrant. I really like my church. Well, that's what we have time for. It's just a brief overview. We've got interesting experiences from black parents to non-binary experiences. The support needed is just a few bullet points. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. It's just a brief overview. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you.