Tuesday 26 February 2013
Autistic Spectrum Disorder-the Umbrella Diagnosis
It has been way too long since my last post, and way too much has happened to cover it all in this one, but as I am now connecting to The Karg Academy to possibly help parents of learning disabled children moving over to England, I will now find out where we were in the educational help process on my last post and do a great deal of back-filling to get us a year further to where we are now. Check out The Karg Academy if you are having any trouble with the system in the U.S. Its a great site, and I'm not just saying that because it was created by my sister :)
Monday 25 June 2012
Good Lord, Has It Been This Long?
Ok, I have ten thousand good excuses and about fifteen pretty lame ones to explain why I haven't been blogging for nine months, and now its the end of Older Son's first year at school and I didn't write anything about it. Maybe the fact that I'm writing this at about four in the morning is a clue, another is the fact that I have a grand total of five followers and no comments, but maybe some day a parent will google a question about special education in England and they'll come across my posts, and maybe it will help somebody. Besides, I need to start keeping a good diary again anyway.
That being said, its another school day tomorrow and I need to get to bed. I WILL write more, because a whole mountain of stuff has been happening RE Older Son's assessment. We've just sent in the second request to the council for him to get help. More to follow.
That being said, its another school day tomorrow and I need to get to bed. I WILL write more, because a whole mountain of stuff has been happening RE Older Son's assessment. We've just sent in the second request to the council for him to get help. More to follow.
Thursday 8 September 2011
Its really as bad as they warned you.
Have you ever been warned that a situation or place is really bad, and you think to yourself, "Oh, it can't be THAT bad", only to find out that it was possibly worse than you could have imagined? This has happened to me already: when we were thinking of moving to Connecticut and a cousin of mine told me that teaching jobs were hard to come by there, and I thought....see above....only to find out that I couldn't get a teaching job there unless I got a masters degree for love or money and spent five fruitless years trying. One job interview I went on had four hundred applicants! So, you'd think I'd have learned my lesson when several people warned me about how bad the NHS was, especially if you have a child who needs help with an educational disability like speech and language.
But no, I thought the same way, and I have now been exposed to the absolute mess that is the NHS in England, and it does not seem to be improving at any time in the near future.
If you have seen my previous posts, you know that I have already spent two months trying to get my Older Son's speech and language report from Shrewsbury to Kingston to start the ball rolling to get him some speech therapy here. After I finally sent them my copy of this report, I called them last Friday to hear the same woman who cheerfully told me that someone had shredded his report accidentally tell me that now she had read this report she saw that Older Son was going to Reception, England's version of Kindergarten, this Fall, at a school in the Sutton district, which meant that I now had to contact the Sutton clinic to get Older Son help.
The fact that if this woman had asked a few simple questions about my son two months ago I would not have been wasting my time for two months trying to get a useless report to her did not seem to cross her mind. It did mine, several times. However, I remained civil and got the phone number of the clinic in Sutton from her. It didn't work. I had to find the correct one off the internet.
So I called the folks at the clinic in Sutton on Monday. The woman in charge there proceeded to tell me that for Older Son to get any help from them, they would have to get a referral from my GP. When I told her the name of my GP, she told me that they would not accept a referral from that GP, because that GP was a Kingston GP. I would now have to change from a Kingston GP that I can walk to in ten minutes to a Sutton GP that I have to take at least one bus to in Sutton to get my son help.
She also told me that I would have to switch my family to a Sutton GP and have an initial appointment with this GP to get a referral BEFORE Older Son turns five in October, because apparently children with speech difficulties turn into children who do not need speech therapy after they turn five in England according to the NHS, and I would then have to take the school route to get Older Son help.
The school route, I have been informed, is even more treacherous and convoluted and jerrymandering than the NHS route. I have learned my lesson. I DO believe that it is that bad.
Thursday I finally managed to call all of the GPs in the Sutton area that were within a two mile radius of us. They all told me that they won't accept us because we are too far away from them, not in their cachement area.
For those of you keeping notes: we live in Worcester Park, Surrey, in the Borough of Sutton, right next to the town of Kingston. Because we live on the border of Worcester Park near Kingston, we are signed up at a GP that is affiliated with the Borough of Kingston and Kingston Hospital. Older Son was not able to sign up to the school that is closest to us, a Kingston school, because they didn't have any room, so we signed him up at a school about a fifteen minute walk away that did have room. This school is in the Borough of Sutton. Because Older Son is going to a school in Sutton, he now needs to go to a speech therapy clinic in Sutton. The Sutton clinic won't accept a referral from a Kingston GP. The Sutton GPs wont accept us in their practice because we live in a Kingston cachement area for the NHS, even though we pay our council tax to Sutton. Its so easy to fall into sarcasm at this point. I have just deleted a rant.
So I called back our original GP yesterday, who havent even got us on their books yet because they're changing over their computer systems, and they said they HAVE done referrals to Sutton practices before. So tomorrow I need to call up this woman at the Sutton clinic and convince her, or her boss, or her bosses boss, or the Queen if I have to, that Older Son WILL get speech therapy from her clinic.....when he gets to the front of the queue, which will be in about three months.
......and that concludes my rant for today.....
But no, I thought the same way, and I have now been exposed to the absolute mess that is the NHS in England, and it does not seem to be improving at any time in the near future.
If you have seen my previous posts, you know that I have already spent two months trying to get my Older Son's speech and language report from Shrewsbury to Kingston to start the ball rolling to get him some speech therapy here. After I finally sent them my copy of this report, I called them last Friday to hear the same woman who cheerfully told me that someone had shredded his report accidentally tell me that now she had read this report she saw that Older Son was going to Reception, England's version of Kindergarten, this Fall, at a school in the Sutton district, which meant that I now had to contact the Sutton clinic to get Older Son help.
The fact that if this woman had asked a few simple questions about my son two months ago I would not have been wasting my time for two months trying to get a useless report to her did not seem to cross her mind. It did mine, several times. However, I remained civil and got the phone number of the clinic in Sutton from her. It didn't work. I had to find the correct one off the internet.
So I called the folks at the clinic in Sutton on Monday. The woman in charge there proceeded to tell me that for Older Son to get any help from them, they would have to get a referral from my GP. When I told her the name of my GP, she told me that they would not accept a referral from that GP, because that GP was a Kingston GP. I would now have to change from a Kingston GP that I can walk to in ten minutes to a Sutton GP that I have to take at least one bus to in Sutton to get my son help.
She also told me that I would have to switch my family to a Sutton GP and have an initial appointment with this GP to get a referral BEFORE Older Son turns five in October, because apparently children with speech difficulties turn into children who do not need speech therapy after they turn five in England according to the NHS, and I would then have to take the school route to get Older Son help.
The school route, I have been informed, is even more treacherous and convoluted and jerrymandering than the NHS route. I have learned my lesson. I DO believe that it is that bad.
Thursday I finally managed to call all of the GPs in the Sutton area that were within a two mile radius of us. They all told me that they won't accept us because we are too far away from them, not in their cachement area.
For those of you keeping notes: we live in Worcester Park, Surrey, in the Borough of Sutton, right next to the town of Kingston. Because we live on the border of Worcester Park near Kingston, we are signed up at a GP that is affiliated with the Borough of Kingston and Kingston Hospital. Older Son was not able to sign up to the school that is closest to us, a Kingston school, because they didn't have any room, so we signed him up at a school about a fifteen minute walk away that did have room. This school is in the Borough of Sutton. Because Older Son is going to a school in Sutton, he now needs to go to a speech therapy clinic in Sutton. The Sutton clinic won't accept a referral from a Kingston GP. The Sutton GPs wont accept us in their practice because we live in a Kingston cachement area for the NHS, even though we pay our council tax to Sutton. Its so easy to fall into sarcasm at this point. I have just deleted a rant.
So I called back our original GP yesterday, who havent even got us on their books yet because they're changing over their computer systems, and they said they HAVE done referrals to Sutton practices before. So tomorrow I need to call up this woman at the Sutton clinic and convince her, or her boss, or her bosses boss, or the Queen if I have to, that Older Son WILL get speech therapy from her clinic.....when he gets to the front of the queue, which will be in about three months.
......and that concludes my rant for today.....
Monday 29 August 2011
You couldn't make this up....
This week had yet another road block put up in my eternal quest to get Older Son's speech and language report from Shrewsbury to Kingston. After finally getting a hold of someone in Shrewsbury last week to re-send the report to Kingston, I was DETERMINED to talk to a live person in Kingston this week to let them know that the new report had been sent, and to ask them to call me when it arrived. After calling and leaving a message twice, I finally talked to someone in Kingston. Here's how it went:
Me: Hello, this is _____, I'm calling about my son ________'s speech and language report that was sent down to you from Shr----
Kingston: Oh yes, Mrs _______, I've been meaning to call you, we did receive your son's report, but unfortunately it's been destroyed.
Me: ------Stunned Silence-------You're joking, right?
Kingston: No, we're terribly sorry, but it seems that his report was picked up by someone who was Shredder Happy and it got destroyed. I was going to call you to ask if you could send me the copy that you have?
Me:-----Stunned silence again----Someone got----shredder happy?
Kingston: Well, yes, but if you send the report to us we can pro-date it back to when it was originally sent, so you wouldn't have lost any time.
Me: I hope you can understand how disappointed I am in this, and how can you say that no time has been lost since you have now lost my son's report twice and a month has gone by?
Kingston: Well, you see, there is a four to six month waiting list to be seen for an initial visit, so we will just bump his report further, so now you only have-----
Me: Three to five months?
Kingston: yes. Do you have our fax number?
With the rain and the bank holiday, I have not gotten this report sent, but it will be faxed tomorrow. Here is the edited version of the cover letter to the THIRD report to be sent to this Mickey Mouse outfit:
Ms.____________,
So, there you go. It's good to ask people who are in the know, like speech therapists and special education specialists, for key terms that will shake things up: like "instigate and activate into your caseload". It was suggested that I also write that I am studying the 2010 Special Education Act that has just been introduced into the UK in June. I didn't want to come across as too heavy handed, but I AM going to be reading up on the law now, because it seems to get anything done, you have to play hardball.....I guess the UK version of that term would be to say I need to start playing Rounders, but it just doesn't sound the same.
Me: Hello, this is _____, I'm calling about my son ________'s speech and language report that was sent down to you from Shr----
Kingston: Oh yes, Mrs _______, I've been meaning to call you, we did receive your son's report, but unfortunately it's been destroyed.
Me: ------Stunned Silence-------You're joking, right?
Kingston: No, we're terribly sorry, but it seems that his report was picked up by someone who was Shredder Happy and it got destroyed. I was going to call you to ask if you could send me the copy that you have?
Me:-----Stunned silence again----Someone got----shredder happy?
Kingston: Well, yes, but if you send the report to us we can pro-date it back to when it was originally sent, so you wouldn't have lost any time.
Me: I hope you can understand how disappointed I am in this, and how can you say that no time has been lost since you have now lost my son's report twice and a month has gone by?
Kingston: Well, you see, there is a four to six month waiting list to be seen for an initial visit, so we will just bump his report further, so now you only have-----
Me: Three to five months?
Kingston: yes. Do you have our fax number?
With the rain and the bank holiday, I have not gotten this report sent, but it will be faxed tomorrow. Here is the edited version of the cover letter to the THIRD report to be sent to this Mickey Mouse outfit:
Ms.____________,
This fax should contain the speech and language therapy report done of my son _______ by _________ in Shrewsbury on July 7th, 2011. On the second page she recorded that she had sent you a copy of this report on that day. I am disappointed that it has taken over a month for this report to reach you. Since we arrived in Worcester Park on July 11th I have called the speech and language office on a weekly basis to gain information on the whereabouts of my son’s report. I was first told that the report could not be found, and that I would be contacted when it was found. After a week of waiting, I called your office again to be told that the report was not found and that I would have to send it to you again. I have called every week since to find out if you received the report, only to leave my message and phone number on an answering machine that never gets returned. Today I finally reached you, only to hear you say in a casual manner that someone got “shredder happy” (direct quote) with my son’s report.
Ms ________, I do not hold you in any way responsible for the fact that____ will be starting reception in a few weeks time with a language delay that is at least two years behind that of his classmates without any speech therapy help. However, I do hope that my son’s reports will be treated in a more professional manner in the future. My son will not be able to access and learn the curriculum to his full potential unless he gets support. Since he needs help as soon as possible, I would also like you to instigate and activate my son _______’s speech therapy into your clinic’s caseload now, as his first assessment has already been completed up in Shrewsbury.
Please contact me by the above number as soon as you have received this fax, and to inform me if ______ can be instigated and activated into your caseload now.
Thank you,
So, there you go. It's good to ask people who are in the know, like speech therapists and special education specialists, for key terms that will shake things up: like "instigate and activate into your caseload". It was suggested that I also write that I am studying the 2010 Special Education Act that has just been introduced into the UK in June. I didn't want to come across as too heavy handed, but I AM going to be reading up on the law now, because it seems to get anything done, you have to play hardball.....I guess the UK version of that term would be to say I need to start playing Rounders, but it just doesn't sound the same.
Monday 22 August 2011
Further dealings with the NHS
I didn't have any spare time last week to blog. Today I don't have any free time, either, but I am doing the lazy mommy thing and employing Mickey, Minnie, et al to babysit the boys for twenty minutes to vent some more.
Today I got some papers for Older Son that really pissed me off. I'll have to back up a little bit to explain everything, so please bear with me:
The reason we had gone up to Shrewsbury on the 9th was to visit with Older Son's pediatrician for the next visit on the docket. I knew that as soon as I told him we had moved, he was going to say he couldn't help us anymore, and that's exactly what he did. Two other specialists were in the room with him, and none of them seemed surprised that I was getting the run around from NHS as far as getting speech therapy for Older Son. It seems that the speech therapist's report had not reached him as well. Must be something wrong with the fax machine at the speech and language department in Shrewsbury.....or with the person running it....They ended up just giving me some advice on how to deal with the NHS that I've heard before, up to and including the old "make sure any requests are in writing" line. I remember doing that with the parents of my students in California when they needed help, although we weren't supposed to tell the parents that key piece of information. It seems to be an open secret in the health and education departments on both sides of the pond: imagine that scene from The Incredibles in the insurance office, "What I'm NOT going to tell you is to NOT take the PINK form and go to the SECOND FLOOR, and do NOT go to room 3A to file it THERE...." Except its more like, "What we're NOT going to tell you is that you need to MAIL a copy to the department that is NOT signature required, and DON'T under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES make sure that its DATED FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, and PLEASE DON'T EVER keep a copy for your own file...." So, I thought it was a rather large waste of time and money, but I also wanted to make sure that the pediatrician sent all of the files to the GP we will have here in Worcester Park, and since papers seem to have a life of their own here, I asked him to make a copy of EVERYTHING that was in the file he was holding on Older Son.
Well, I got that file today, and my worst suspicions about what diagnosis the pediatrician was angling for were proven true: all those questions about whether Older Son needed to have routine, did he get upset with any change in routine....questions that I answered with no, and that he seems to be adapting very well to a major change in home and school, were put on file as that he does have trouble with change of any kind, and that I was agreeing with the pediatrician that Older Son should be investigated for possible ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is the first time that phrase has ever been associated with Older Son on file. I am planning on writing over this report in red ink every point that this doctor misrepresented me. I shouldn't be surprised. Really, I shouldn't. Everyone has been telling me that Autism is the umbrella term used in the UK for every kind of learning disability. Still, it hurts.
I keep thinking of something my sister said to me about having a child with a disability: that even though you love your child, you also mourn for the child he might have been. Its times like this that I mourn the child who would be talking with me and having conversations. A child who I wouldn't worry about being picked on for not being able to communicate. A child others wouldn't be trying to label as autistic. I know that compared to many other parents I have nothing to complain about. Older Son is healthy and happy and will improve in time. He's been improving just this past month with one of his jumps in communication. I am grateful for everything I have. I just need to have a cry once in a while, and then, as one of my friends once said, put on my big-girl knickers and keep on fighting.
An interesting side note: I got a call today back from the speech therapist who did the report for Older Son in Shrewsbury! Will wonders never cease! I was also surprised to hear her offended tone when I said that her report never reached the Kingston speech and language department or the pediatrician....It wasn't like I was blaming HER, just her secretary.....so, she's going to ask that same inept paper pusher to re-send the report to Kingston via the fax number I gave her and in attention to the person I finally had gotten a hold of there two weeks ago. I then called Kingston, again, and left a message, again, telling them to expect this fax.
Hope springs eternal.
Today I got some papers for Older Son that really pissed me off. I'll have to back up a little bit to explain everything, so please bear with me:
The reason we had gone up to Shrewsbury on the 9th was to visit with Older Son's pediatrician for the next visit on the docket. I knew that as soon as I told him we had moved, he was going to say he couldn't help us anymore, and that's exactly what he did. Two other specialists were in the room with him, and none of them seemed surprised that I was getting the run around from NHS as far as getting speech therapy for Older Son. It seems that the speech therapist's report had not reached him as well. Must be something wrong with the fax machine at the speech and language department in Shrewsbury.....or with the person running it....They ended up just giving me some advice on how to deal with the NHS that I've heard before, up to and including the old "make sure any requests are in writing" line. I remember doing that with the parents of my students in California when they needed help, although we weren't supposed to tell the parents that key piece of information. It seems to be an open secret in the health and education departments on both sides of the pond: imagine that scene from The Incredibles in the insurance office, "What I'm NOT going to tell you is to NOT take the PINK form and go to the SECOND FLOOR, and do NOT go to room 3A to file it THERE...." Except its more like, "What we're NOT going to tell you is that you need to MAIL a copy to the department that is NOT signature required, and DON'T under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES make sure that its DATED FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, and PLEASE DON'T EVER keep a copy for your own file...." So, I thought it was a rather large waste of time and money, but I also wanted to make sure that the pediatrician sent all of the files to the GP we will have here in Worcester Park, and since papers seem to have a life of their own here, I asked him to make a copy of EVERYTHING that was in the file he was holding on Older Son.
Well, I got that file today, and my worst suspicions about what diagnosis the pediatrician was angling for were proven true: all those questions about whether Older Son needed to have routine, did he get upset with any change in routine....questions that I answered with no, and that he seems to be adapting very well to a major change in home and school, were put on file as that he does have trouble with change of any kind, and that I was agreeing with the pediatrician that Older Son should be investigated for possible ASD: Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is the first time that phrase has ever been associated with Older Son on file. I am planning on writing over this report in red ink every point that this doctor misrepresented me. I shouldn't be surprised. Really, I shouldn't. Everyone has been telling me that Autism is the umbrella term used in the UK for every kind of learning disability. Still, it hurts.
I keep thinking of something my sister said to me about having a child with a disability: that even though you love your child, you also mourn for the child he might have been. Its times like this that I mourn the child who would be talking with me and having conversations. A child who I wouldn't worry about being picked on for not being able to communicate. A child others wouldn't be trying to label as autistic. I know that compared to many other parents I have nothing to complain about. Older Son is healthy and happy and will improve in time. He's been improving just this past month with one of his jumps in communication. I am grateful for everything I have. I just need to have a cry once in a while, and then, as one of my friends once said, put on my big-girl knickers and keep on fighting.
An interesting side note: I got a call today back from the speech therapist who did the report for Older Son in Shrewsbury! Will wonders never cease! I was also surprised to hear her offended tone when I said that her report never reached the Kingston speech and language department or the pediatrician....It wasn't like I was blaming HER, just her secretary.....so, she's going to ask that same inept paper pusher to re-send the report to Kingston via the fax number I gave her and in attention to the person I finally had gotten a hold of there two weeks ago. I then called Kingston, again, and left a message, again, telling them to expect this fax.
Hope springs eternal.
Tuesday 16 August 2011
On trains and children in the UK
If it is at all possible. DON'T mix the two!
OK, OK, It isn't all that bad. I'm just recovering from a bad train experience from Shrewsbury to London this past Sunday. We ended up sitting on the floor in the tiny floor area before the food cart of the train because there was no place for the stroller and almost all of the seats were reserved. This had not happened to me before: I had been lucky enough to get the handicapped space for the stroller on both legs of the journey, but this time there were not only strollers in that space, but I had to share the tiny floor space area I mentioned before with another mother and baby with stroller for half of the ride from Birmingham to London. Aside from it being a massive fire hazard, it was also embarrassing to have to inch the stroller over for people to get by to the food cart area and back. The only consolation I had was that I could see through the sliding doors to people sitting on the floor in the next train over. Its amazing what the British people will put up with. We all spent fifty pounds each for this luxury. So I am a little burnt from my latest experience with Virgin rail.
However, I haven't been able to avoid going on the train since I've been here, and I know that I'll be using it again since we won't have a car for quite a while, so I guess it's better to focus on the positive and give out some good advice.
1. If you can, reserve a seat even if you don't think you are going to need one. This would not have helped us much with Older Son, since because children can ride free you can't reserve a seat for them, but if you have only one baby its worth it.
2. Get to the train station at least 20 minutes early for the train. Sometimes that helps you get that coveted handicapped area to fit your stroller into. The train system is definitely NOT family friendly in that regard. For all but this last trip I was able to get a spot there. This time even though we arrived early at the Shrewsbury station, the spot was taken by a family who had gotten on the stop before. Forget about Birmingham. We had twenty minutes to get to the train and ten of that was taken up with getting there. We were lucky to get the crappy floor area.
3. Take your time getting a stroller off the train. That gap is the perfect sized space to trap the stroller's wheels and keep them stuck in there while your baby is hanging in space and your trapped behind the stroller and people are behind you and you're wondering if the train is going to start moving with the stroller trapped like that......wondering how I know this? Yep, happened to me and Younger Son. Luckily the people on the trains are usually friendly and helpful and I got help from some folks on the platform. I've also gotten help getting the stroller off the train by a good Samaritan pretty much every time.
4. Treat it like a plane ride. Lots of snacks and things for the little ones to do.
5. If you can keep your toddler in the stroller, do so. I've found that the best thing to do is just not take my Younger Son out for any reason other than a diaper change. If he knows that that's how it is, there's less crying to get out. Every mom that I've seen on the train who has taken her toddler out of the stroller for a cuddle or just to sit on her lap has ended up with a toddler running up and down the aisle and screaming bloody murder when he or she has to be put back.
6. If at all possible, don't travel on a Friday or Sunday afternoon/night. You'll avoid the weekend rushes.
It looks like I won't have to take a trip up north until around Christmas time. Maybe we'll splash out for the holidays and rent a car for the weekend? One can only hope.
OK, OK, It isn't all that bad. I'm just recovering from a bad train experience from Shrewsbury to London this past Sunday. We ended up sitting on the floor in the tiny floor area before the food cart of the train because there was no place for the stroller and almost all of the seats were reserved. This had not happened to me before: I had been lucky enough to get the handicapped space for the stroller on both legs of the journey, but this time there were not only strollers in that space, but I had to share the tiny floor space area I mentioned before with another mother and baby with stroller for half of the ride from Birmingham to London. Aside from it being a massive fire hazard, it was also embarrassing to have to inch the stroller over for people to get by to the food cart area and back. The only consolation I had was that I could see through the sliding doors to people sitting on the floor in the next train over. Its amazing what the British people will put up with. We all spent fifty pounds each for this luxury. So I am a little burnt from my latest experience with Virgin rail.
However, I haven't been able to avoid going on the train since I've been here, and I know that I'll be using it again since we won't have a car for quite a while, so I guess it's better to focus on the positive and give out some good advice.
1. If you can, reserve a seat even if you don't think you are going to need one. This would not have helped us much with Older Son, since because children can ride free you can't reserve a seat for them, but if you have only one baby its worth it.
2. Get to the train station at least 20 minutes early for the train. Sometimes that helps you get that coveted handicapped area to fit your stroller into. The train system is definitely NOT family friendly in that regard. For all but this last trip I was able to get a spot there. This time even though we arrived early at the Shrewsbury station, the spot was taken by a family who had gotten on the stop before. Forget about Birmingham. We had twenty minutes to get to the train and ten of that was taken up with getting there. We were lucky to get the crappy floor area.
3. Take your time getting a stroller off the train. That gap is the perfect sized space to trap the stroller's wheels and keep them stuck in there while your baby is hanging in space and your trapped behind the stroller and people are behind you and you're wondering if the train is going to start moving with the stroller trapped like that......wondering how I know this? Yep, happened to me and Younger Son. Luckily the people on the trains are usually friendly and helpful and I got help from some folks on the platform. I've also gotten help getting the stroller off the train by a good Samaritan pretty much every time.
4. Treat it like a plane ride. Lots of snacks and things for the little ones to do.
5. If you can keep your toddler in the stroller, do so. I've found that the best thing to do is just not take my Younger Son out for any reason other than a diaper change. If he knows that that's how it is, there's less crying to get out. Every mom that I've seen on the train who has taken her toddler out of the stroller for a cuddle or just to sit on her lap has ended up with a toddler running up and down the aisle and screaming bloody murder when he or she has to be put back.
6. If at all possible, don't travel on a Friday or Sunday afternoon/night. You'll avoid the weekend rushes.
It looks like I won't have to take a trip up north until around Christmas time. Maybe we'll splash out for the holidays and rent a car for the weekend? One can only hope.
Monday 8 August 2011
If you want to make sure something's done right....
you'd better do it yourself as far as making sure documents get to their correct destination in the English NHS. Today was positive in many ways: Older Son suddenly discovered that the door to his bedroom was a rectangle, and on our walk to downtown had to point out every rectangle he saw. At one point he said, "Rectangles EVERYWHERE!" It was a great thing to be a part of. I also managed to be on the ball and professional about getting the last bits of information to the Sutton School Admissions to make sure that Older Son was well and truly in as far as the upcoming school year was concerned. I even typed-up a very professional cover letter to go with the information that detailed all enclosed information. ( The reason I am making a big deal out of this is that the longer anyone reads this blog, the more they will know how rarely I am ahead of the curve with getting things done in a timely and professional matter.) Anyhow, I walked downtown with the boys to fax the papers to Sutton and- 2 pounds fifty later- job done. On the way home Older Son was saying goodbye to everything on our walk before we got home: "Goodbye tree, goodbye man, goodbye fence, goodbye car, goodbye bin...." I pointed out things he had missed, and Younger Son got into the act, shouting "Buh-bye-Buh-bye!" over and over. We got a few looks, but I could care less.
As a side note, I learned that I had been exposing my basic ignorance of English geography every time I complained to anyone about how our address says Surrey but we were sending our information about schools to Sutton.....it turns out that we are in the Borough of Sutton. One of my husband's friends pointed it out to me this weekend, and it's there in big letters on the notice we were sent about Older Son's school: Borough of Sutton. I have since learned that we are in Worcester Park, Sutton, Surrey, but its never put on the address like that because the post code covers the fact that we're in Sutton....those of you who are English and reading this post are probably thinking, "Well, duh..." but hopefully this will help the next American mom who may read this. England seems to be filled with different overlapping boroughs and counties, so you have to be careful to find out where exactly information needs to be sent to be effective.
Case in point: my ongoing struggle to get Older Son's NHS speech and language report from Shrewsbury; where it was done, to Kingston; where it needs to be for Older Son to continue getting help and possible speech therapy in Worcester Park. Like I said before about knowing where information needs to be, I would have had no idea that the NHS in Kingston, the next town over, covered children with speech and language difficulties here . This report was done a month ago, and it has yet to get to Kingston, even though I was reassured by the speech therapist that she had sent it to Kingston for me, and even states at the end of my copy of the report that she had sent it there. I had called Kingston's speech and therapy department last week to find out if any search had been done for the missing file, and was told that they had looked but no report for Older Son had been found. At this point I doubt they even bothered to move any papers around, but I'll play the game, and had asked for their fax number to have Shrewsbury send it again. It was just my luck that when I called the Shrewsbury office the speech therapist who had done the report was on holiday and they were moving office. I left a message for her, (see earlier blog about how futile that effort is) and of course have yet to hear back from them. Today I called Kingston, and after getting a message machine from the front desk for two hours, someone finally picked up the phone to send me through to the speech and language department to......wait for it, folks.....another message machine. So, I (sigh) yet again left another message on another machine to ask if maybe I could fax them MY copy of Older Son's speech report to finally get this ball rolling. We're going up to Shrewsbury tomorrow. I'll bring all the paperwork up there in case I finally manage to talk to a person and am certain that the fax wont end up in the circular file (something I learned from my teaching days: the circular file is the trash can).
We're going up to Shrewsbury to have another meeting with Older Son's pediatrician, who will look over the speech and hearing reports, and probably tell me that Older Son has autism, because I swear that's what he decided Older Son had the second I was stupid enough to say that he didn't make eye contact very well as a baby. He then started asking me if Older Son had to have a fixed schedule, if he got extremely upset if things changed, if he had to go to school a certain way every day...on and on, and I felt like screaming, NO. HE DOESN'T HAVE AUTISM. STOP TRYING TO PUT HIS PROBLEMS UNDER A NEAT HEADING AND DO YOUR JOB. But I didn't. I just told him calmly that, no, he doesn't have any trouble with changes, any more than any other child does, and that he adapted remarkably well to moving to another country and living in another house and going to another school. Still, I've had at least three people, one who works in the NHS no less, tell me to expect that title to be slapped on him, and that it may be the only way to get him the help he needs in a timely manner. Do I think that Older Son is Autistic? No. Do I think he has some sensory issues? Probably. But I want him to be assessed by a qualified professional, and it looks like that will take a while here. Well, its better than what was happening in the states: he was going to be in a regular kindergarten classroom this year with only a pull-out group speech therapy group twice a week. I know for a fact that would have done absolutely nothing for him. So, even though things are moving slowly, I need to remind myself that its better than the situation we left. Someone remind me of that fact when I report that I've gone ballistic on some bureaucratic lackey who loses my paperwork again.
As a side note, I learned that I had been exposing my basic ignorance of English geography every time I complained to anyone about how our address says Surrey but we were sending our information about schools to Sutton.....it turns out that we are in the Borough of Sutton. One of my husband's friends pointed it out to me this weekend, and it's there in big letters on the notice we were sent about Older Son's school: Borough of Sutton. I have since learned that we are in Worcester Park, Sutton, Surrey, but its never put on the address like that because the post code covers the fact that we're in Sutton....those of you who are English and reading this post are probably thinking, "Well, duh..." but hopefully this will help the next American mom who may read this. England seems to be filled with different overlapping boroughs and counties, so you have to be careful to find out where exactly information needs to be sent to be effective.
Case in point: my ongoing struggle to get Older Son's NHS speech and language report from Shrewsbury; where it was done, to Kingston; where it needs to be for Older Son to continue getting help and possible speech therapy in Worcester Park. Like I said before about knowing where information needs to be, I would have had no idea that the NHS in Kingston, the next town over, covered children with speech and language difficulties here . This report was done a month ago, and it has yet to get to Kingston, even though I was reassured by the speech therapist that she had sent it to Kingston for me, and even states at the end of my copy of the report that she had sent it there. I had called Kingston's speech and therapy department last week to find out if any search had been done for the missing file, and was told that they had looked but no report for Older Son had been found. At this point I doubt they even bothered to move any papers around, but I'll play the game, and had asked for their fax number to have Shrewsbury send it again. It was just my luck that when I called the Shrewsbury office the speech therapist who had done the report was on holiday and they were moving office. I left a message for her, (see earlier blog about how futile that effort is) and of course have yet to hear back from them. Today I called Kingston, and after getting a message machine from the front desk for two hours, someone finally picked up the phone to send me through to the speech and language department to......wait for it, folks.....another message machine. So, I (sigh) yet again left another message on another machine to ask if maybe I could fax them MY copy of Older Son's speech report to finally get this ball rolling. We're going up to Shrewsbury tomorrow. I'll bring all the paperwork up there in case I finally manage to talk to a person and am certain that the fax wont end up in the circular file (something I learned from my teaching days: the circular file is the trash can).
We're going up to Shrewsbury to have another meeting with Older Son's pediatrician, who will look over the speech and hearing reports, and probably tell me that Older Son has autism, because I swear that's what he decided Older Son had the second I was stupid enough to say that he didn't make eye contact very well as a baby. He then started asking me if Older Son had to have a fixed schedule, if he got extremely upset if things changed, if he had to go to school a certain way every day...on and on, and I felt like screaming, NO. HE DOESN'T HAVE AUTISM. STOP TRYING TO PUT HIS PROBLEMS UNDER A NEAT HEADING AND DO YOUR JOB. But I didn't. I just told him calmly that, no, he doesn't have any trouble with changes, any more than any other child does, and that he adapted remarkably well to moving to another country and living in another house and going to another school. Still, I've had at least three people, one who works in the NHS no less, tell me to expect that title to be slapped on him, and that it may be the only way to get him the help he needs in a timely manner. Do I think that Older Son is Autistic? No. Do I think he has some sensory issues? Probably. But I want him to be assessed by a qualified professional, and it looks like that will take a while here. Well, its better than what was happening in the states: he was going to be in a regular kindergarten classroom this year with only a pull-out group speech therapy group twice a week. I know for a fact that would have done absolutely nothing for him. So, even though things are moving slowly, I need to remind myself that its better than the situation we left. Someone remind me of that fact when I report that I've gone ballistic on some bureaucratic lackey who loses my paperwork again.
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