Advice for meeting with Education welfare

Hi

I wondered if anyone had any advice for a meeting at school with the head teacher, school nurse and Education Welfare Officer. My daughter has cough variant asthma with regular exacerbations. The school has had letters from my daughter's consultant, on at least 2 separate occasions, spoken to the GP, sent me numerous letters about her poor attendance and I have met with the head several times to discuss her poor attendance. I am just unsure how best to deal with this. Any advice would be welcome.

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Some years ago, our daughter was ill and we struggled with her school attendance. We had a letter from her paediatrician explaining the nature of her illness (not asthma) and what she could and couldn't do etc. Eventually it got to the point of ""the meeting"" with the senco, school doctor and education welfare. Fortunately both my husband and myself were able to go together and another teacher looked after both our children (aged 4&6 at the time). I have to say that I was absolutely disgusted with the education welfare officers and came to the conclusion that all they were interested in was bums on seats and certainly not the welfare of our daughter. The saviour of the meeting was the school doctor. He spoke up in the meeting and said ""clearly this child is not well enough to come to school and needs home tuition"". As a result of that we got a home tutor provided by the LEA until our daughter was well enough to return to school.

I say all this, not to worry you, but just so that you can be prepared. Make sure that you have someone with you and if possible get the school doctor to go along too. Education have to bow to the medics. Our daughter's school also tried to remove her from the school roll but I dug my heels in and quoted the DFEE website which says that this should not be done on the grounds of illness. We had a happy outcome in that she made a full recovery and after 3 years not in full time education including 1 year with virtually no education at all she still managed to get into grammar school and is doing well.

It might also be worth looking at the DFEE website now to see what it says about sick children, and also looking into home tuition. I found out after our daughter had been off for some time that she should have been eligible for home tuition well before we got it.

I do wish you well and hope everything goes well for you at the meeting.

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Hi MummyJ,

I'm sorry your daughters school isn't being supportive it must be very frustrating. The school should be listening to you and it's out of order that they're not. Could you ask one of your daughters health professionals to come with you to the meeting? perhaps the asthma nurse could attend. If not ask them to write a letter stating that they have written before and they are ignoring medical advice. Take a copy of all the letters from medical proffesionals which you have previously sent.

I would also write to the head governor of the school explaining your situation and saying you are not happy with the way the school has dealt with your daughters illness.

Really hope the school take note and listen to you. Best of luck and I hope your daughter is well at the moment.

Alice