I'm trying to keep her in touch with deaf events and the Deaf school but it's a battle. It's very telling that there are several kids in the Deaf school whose parents are paying for it as a private placement at full fees. No idea how much that costs, but probably IRO £20k a year - how desperate must they be?
OK, just thought I would edit to expand this as I'm sure many don't really understand how placement works in the UK system. Get ready to have your head explode! I will compare for the most part to the US for the perceived majority audience.
Here what the US calls "Public schools" we call "state schools" - schools which are owned and run by a local authority education department (similar to US "school district").
A "public school" is an inexplicable thing but basically it's a private school as in you pay fees to go there and they are considered extremely posh.
A "private school" is pretty much the same thing as in the US.
Most authorities maintain a selection of "special needs" schools as state schools, but those are catch-all special schools, usually for children with multiple disabilities, severe learning disabilities and/or behavioural disabilities, major physical impairments and general medical needs that mainstream schools don't want to touch with a barge pole. These places are more expensive than other state placements but are still state placement and entry is by the local authority placing the child you have no actual rights to go there. Similarly for a mainstream school with a unit, which are few and far between here, there is no HI unit in this city at all.
The major specific impairment schools such as the blind and deaf schools are usually essentially private schools, but local authorities can, if they wish, choose to buy some of these places at the going rate. The authority is then responsible for fees, costs of getting the child to and from school and boarding if necessary, not just the cost of the educational place. It's all or nothing, so if they placed my child at the school they'd be responsible for transport every day too, and they don't want to do that - if I lived locally they may well place her, we considered moving but can't afford to. We cannot offer to pay part of the cost.
Because the school is still a private school, they can take any additional children they want to into the unfilled private places with parents paying full fees, so some parents do actually send their kids there. Funding at nursery level is allocated a certain amount per child and you can spend it wherever you choose to spend it, so I could choose for her to go to their nursery with my nursery funding, but at school level you have to go to the school where the authority allocates your school place, which is now to be a mainstream. I'm annoyed as her previous SLT was going to put her up for a place in a speech and language unit, which would probably have included other DHH kids but the new one is very mainstream-oriented. No supporting letter, no place in SLU. And in any case other kids in the SLU may have turned out to have different needs, it could have been all learning disabilities that year. Many people have had trouble getting the right placement from the start, they always start with the cheapest and work up. A friend with a son who has multiple difficulties didn't like the deaf school placement as the other kids were all developmentally normal but deaf, and another parent had the oppostie problem her son was the only one who was developmentally normal so he had no real peers. If only they could have swapped!
I'm sorry! That's just so wrong and unfair to your daughter.
