The ICAN (Meath School) Assessment Part Two

Having taken part in an ICAN workshop in the summer of last year, we booked a full assessment for M, at the Meath school in the autumn.We funded the assessment ourselves, since M seemed to be making slow progress with the help available locally. The team sent photographs of the school, classroom setting and all of the staff members that would be dealing with M during the two days, two weeks prior to the assessment. This was really helpful and reassuring for M.

We were obviously apprehensive about leaving M in a strange place and so were surprised, on the first day that he went off to class happily, with Mandy Grist, the speech and language therapist. I am confident that M felt, at ease throughout the two days that he was there and I felt that he was more at comfortable and receptive to assessment, within a classroom setting. I have mentioned before that our hospital visits felt more like we were being interviewed, than the focus being on M and his needs. The pictorial timetable helped M gain a perspective of time and an order to his two days spent at the Meath School. We also had made sure he knew that it was going to be two sleeps, until he returned to his own school.

A range of individual assessments were carried out by the speech and language therapist, assessment teacher and the educational psychologist. M was observed in a class group of pupils of similar needs and in the playground. In addition, M was also seen by an occupational therapist.

We attended a feedback meeting with the team, at the end of the two day assessment. Both the Dad and I were shocked at the extent of M’s disability, which was as I feared severe specific language disorder/impairment. We were heartened to hear that M’s non verbal communication and skills were good and that this indicated that his disability was speech and language specific. On one of the visual and perceptual tests he scored the equivalent to that of an eight year old.

We were given a list of useful organisations, which included ASLTIP and were told that one to one speech and language therapy, would only be a starting point in meeting M’s educational needs for the future. We also discovered that M had some physical issues and that he would require a referral to a local physio therapist/ occupational therapist. Suffice to say we have heard nothing from the hospital, with regard to this in the six months since M’s assessment, despite phone calls to chase the matter.

We asked outright whether the team considered M’s behaviour to be on the autistic spectrum. We had a resounding no from around the room. M was considered to be a strong non verbal communicator, who used every available means of communication other than speech, to make him self understood.He was sociable and tried to initiate play with the other children, albeit in a non verbal way.He also displayed his ability for imaginative play. I have to say a lot of the feedback and resulting report were beyond my comprehension, in layman terms, but it gave us a strong foundation for negotiating continued support for M at school. It is hard to detach yourself emotionally, when receiving bad news about your child. There is so much you should be taking in, when actually you feel like having a really good cry! I do remember drawing comfort from the results of ‘the blob tree test’, which showed M feels a close attachment to Mummy and Daddy and that he feels he has at least one friend.

Two weeks later we received a comprehensive and detailed report of all of the assessments and recommendations, which were tailored to take into account all of M’s educational needs. This has been an invaluable means of conveying the extent of M’s needs to all the professionals involved with M’s care. The school and Ed psych could not have been more supportive in striving to cover all of these bases.To put this into perspective, The Meath school team have provided us with our first full evaluation of M's speech since 2006! We have been lucky that our head master has allowed us to provide an independent speech and language therapist, but are mindful that M has one hell of a journey ahead of him to overcome the obstacles ahead of him.

Please follow this link to the for part one of this post http://sunshinetc.blogspot.com/2008/04/wednesday-09042007-meath-school.html