Our Story - F v Herts LEA (December 2006)

"Our son is now fifteen years old and was born with a rare metabolic disorder. He spent most of the first eight months of his life in Great Ormond Street Hospital, and had, and still has, many challenges to face every day of his life.

His diet is very restricted, and his condition has had an enormous impact on his educational development from nursery through to secondary school.

Our son has always attended mainstream school, but with varying degrees of support, and the difficulty has been to provide an appropriate curriculum along with professionals who are able to teach the way that he learns best. His educational statement was clearly inadequate, but the local authority repeatedly refused to give him the additional support he so desperately needed.

Despite our best endeavours, our son attended year 7 of secondary school less and less frequently as the year wore on because quite simply, he was unable to access the curriculum. The school did absolutely everything it could to provide our son with as much support as was possible within a mainstream environment, but was unable to give him the knowledge, skills, understanding, self-esteem and confidence necessary to achieve his full potential.

By the time he commenced Year 8, he was hardly attending school, and within a few weeks the placement had completely broken down, and he was not attending at all. Despite regular conversations and meetings with representatives from the local education authority, and despite the fact that the authority agreed that our son’s placement had broken down, no additional money was forthcoming; infact there was no additional help or advice at all.

We felt helpless, we felt the authority was not listening to us, we knew we needed to do something positive, so we took steps to find a solicitor whom we could go to for advice.

In the summer of 2005, we contacted Douglas Silas for a preliminary consultation. At this initial meeting, we explained our son’s situation to Douglas Silas, and were extremely impressed with the thoughtful, helpful and practical advice that was offered to us. Once home we talked very carefully about the various options that were open to us, and decided that we only really had one option, and that was to formally instruct Douglas Silas to act on our behalf to try and sort out our son’s inadequate educational provision.

We embarked upon a journey with Douglas Silas that lasted for eighteen months. The first stage of the process was to ask the local authority to review our son’s statement. This in itself took a few months to achieve, and it was only when a number of reports were commissioned, and tribunal proceedings were threatened that the authority eventually agreed to carry out a review of the statement.

Despite the advice and evidence that was given on our behalf by many professionals to the local authority, the authority refused to increase the funding and hours that our son was already receiving. Feeling somewhat deflated, we had lengthy discussions with Mr. Silas about our possible next options, and the alternatives that existed. It was clear to us after a great deal of soul searching, and hours of agonising as to what was best for our son, that we again had only one real option – to take the authority to a tribunal.

Douglas Silas advised us as to the additional professional reports we needed to obtain; he advised us as to the wording of our own statements, and as to all the evidence that was needed to give our son the best possible chance of having his educational needs satisfied.

Apart from the many solicitor hours we were involved in, we also had to find a school for our son that would be able to meet all his needs should we be successful in our tribunal case. Again, we managed to do this not only through our own research but also with the help of Douglas Silas. By the time of the tribunal hearing in December 2006, we felt that we had the perfect school for our son, and a very strong case to support that view. In December 2006, our son had already spent a term and a half at his new school on a part time basis, he was very happy, and the feedback from the school was excellent.

We felt very well prepared for the tribunal itself, having been fully briefed on many occasions by Douglas Silas as to what we might expect at the hearing, and how we should prepare ourselves for it. The hearing lasted for one day, and although at lunchtime it was difficult to tell what the Panel’s decision would be, by the end of the day, we were hopeful that the outcome would be positive.

We were so impressed by the way in which Douglas Silas presented the case during the hearing, including the preparation of the tribunal bundle, advice as to witnesses to be present, and a real belief that what we were doing was right. Mr. Silas had an in depth knowledge of our son’s needs and requirements, and definitely convinced the Panel of the justification of taking the authority to the tribunal, and in fact just how unhelpful and difficult the local authority had been.

The tribunal ruled in our favour and instructed the local education authority to pay for all the tuition fees of our named school (and a small amount of costs), and we will always be so grateful to Douglas Silas for his clear and thoughtful advice, and for giving us encouragement during some of the more difficult stages. Our son is now in Year 10 at secondary school, and for the first time he has been given the opportunity to learn in a suitable environment with support from an incredibly dedicated team of staff.

We cannot pretend that the eighteen months we spent in dealing with this situation was easy, because there were many ups and downs. However, Douglas’ support and expertise ensured that the case was prepared thoroughly and we are so grateful for all he did for us.

At the time of writing (27th May 2007) our son is now happily attending secondary school all day every day. So was it all worth it? YOU BET!"

Click here to read the SENDIST decision in this case

Click here to read the SENDIST decision regarding the Costs Application

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