--- frustrated mum 

You can request help from the educational psychologist employed by your local authority directly by writing to them or you can ask the SENC at your school to refer your child. If that doesn't work then your GP or the community paediatrican can refer your child. If you have any problems contact your local Parent Partnership for advice. The telephone number of Sefton's Parent Partnership is 0151 231 0551.

The Psychologist can carry out an assessment of your child's special educational needs. He or she can also arrange for specialist teaching support in your child's school. If a SEN statement is necessary then the psychologist's report will form the basis of the evidence that the LEA will use to prepare a statement. This information can be supplemented by your own views (parent representations) and medical evidence or evidence from other speicalist like the speech and language therapist, occupational therapist, paediatrician or hospital consultant. Good luck! Let us know how you get on.

Diagnosis was very late and very difficult to come by, in fact we only have a tentative diagnosis. Treatment is non-existent. I'm very frustrated because I want to help him, but don't know how to go about it. "Professionals" only seem to be able to work within very tight boundaries, and my son often falls through the net. Any ideas?

--- frustrated mum 

My lad is a very talented boy but his brain certainly seems to work in a different way from other children. He knows that he is bright but gets very frustrated because of things that he finds so difficult to do. The audiologist tells us that there is slight hearing loss, more marked at certain frequencies but that he can hear well enough. The speech and language therapist has discharged him from the service because he has an excellent and quite sophisticated vocabulary. However, he has just moved to a new school and his new teachers and classmates cannot understand a word he says. At his previous school the staff and his classmates had learned to understand him; he started there at age 3 and over the years everyone got used to the way he talks. It is probably unreasonable to expect a whole new set of people to figure out what he's trying to say in just three months when it took years for him to make himself understood at the previous school.

At the first parent's evening at his new school it was clear that he doesn't always understand instructions given to him and that he has found it difficult to settle down to work because he gets confused about what he is expected to do. It has now been recognised that he has speech dyspraxia and auditory processing disorder. These difficulties have been recorded on an individual education plan and are mentioned in his SEN statement. It's early days.....The SENCO at the school has referred our child back to the speech and language therapy service again and we have asked the school to get the occupational therapist involved in designing a programme for him at school.

I would say the important things are: keep the communication open between home and school; try and spot the difficulties as early as possible; make sure that problems are correctly described and included in the IEP and, if your child has a statement, make sure that action is taken and recorded at the statement review.

If none of these things work then it is possible to formally request a new assessment by the school's educational psychologist service or you can contact the paediatrician at the local health centre for advice and help. Your GP can refer your child if necessary.

Best of luck....Don't give up!

Diagnosis was very late and very difficult to come by, in fact we only have a tentative diagnosis. Treatment is non-existent. I'm very frustrated because I want to help him, but don't know how to go about it. "Professionals" only seem to be able to work within very tight boundaries, and my son often falls through the net. Any ideas?