Hey Dad

This blog has been prompted by one of my readers who made the following comments on another blog I had written. Patricia writes (and I have edited this slightly to reduce space), My twins Julian and Joanne are in year 2 attending a public school. Rodney do you have any information on how the DET funding Support is utilized by a school? I keep getting told that its at the discretion of the school how to use it. I just happen to know (by accident) recently that Julian has approval for 28 hrs 50 mins of DET Funding Support. Hence I was surprised the school could not provide an aid for Julian to be able to attend the cross country carnival which he was very enthusiastic to attend and was instead told by the teacher to remain at school. Hi Patricia, Thank you for your questions.

You raised two important points:

• who determines the allocation of Department of Education (DET) Funding
• the responsibilities in regards to being told what can and cannot happen regarding a teacher accompanying your son to a cross country carnival.

Point 1 – DET Funding

We had the same experience with Daniel in Primary School. As a typical government department, DET is not expected to know the degree of disability every child has (the key word in this sentence is degree). How does someone like that quantify disability in regards to physical, emotional, mental, social, etc. in a way that will fairly allocate a limited pot of assistance funds?

The government’s response is to equate the level of disability into a number of support hours allocated to the school and, you are right, it is up to the school as to how this time is allocated and, if indeed, it is in fact allocated to the child that needs it.

In our case, as you would know from the blog, Daniel is in a wheelchair and cannot feed himself, toilet himself, scribe in lessons or push himself around, however, the DET only allocated support for him for 23 hours a week (a school week is 31 hours). In effect, Daniel would be without assistance, left alone, at school, with no adult for one day a week.

You are probably asking yourself … what we were thinking at the time, How bloody ridiculous! is that answer. What is he supposed to be doing during that time? Even if we took a teacher’s aide away from him at lunch time across the whole week, how is he supposed to eat and take himself to the toilet … it’s very frustrating as you already know!

We were fortunate that several of the people who managed Daniel’s teacher’s aide schedule were creative with the allocation of their time and subsequently were able to provide Daniel with care for the whole 31 hours. They could think outside the box, but occasionally we encountered people who did it according to the book and were adamant that nothing could be done … we had to go into battle for Daniel’s rights. Eventually we won but it took an incredible toll on Penny and me.

So my answer is this: the principal has ultimate discretion as to how the funds are allocated in order to support your children. The key is, you have to work with them as much as possible to achieve a happy medium. Be as flexible as possible as their hands are also tied and you are therefore relying on their creativity in order to receive the teacher’s aide allocation that your child deserves.

Point 2 – Teachers Aide Support for School Events

Your second point about the school not being able to appoint an aide for your son, so that he can attend the Cross Country Carnival and, as you have put it, he was told by the teacher that he was to remain at school, has me somewhat puzzled. If there was a teachers aid appointed by the school to be with him, why should it matter as to whether that person was at the school or not?

I don’t advocate anyone pulling out the discrimination argument as a first line of defence as, on the whole, I find everyone tries to do the right thing by us (providing you are trying to do the right thing by them first). If you have exhausted every other diplomatic angle and have been fair and reasonable in your approach to resolving this situation, then making the other party aware of the impact of their choices is very important before you take further action.

We (as parents of children with a disability) also have to be careful with the battles we choose to fight. Have you ever heard of the saying, You can win the battle but lose the war? This saying is really pertinent to my point … in every war there are many battles. Some battles we win, other battles your opponent wins – at the end of the day, it is the person who wins the most important battles who wins the war.

This analogy is important in the situation you are facing, because, for the next several years you are going to be in close contact with your school and you are going to enter into discussions on lots of topics. Your association with them will continue throughout this whole time and you will have invested considerable effort ensuring both of you are across what is needed for your children. By the time your children graduate from their school you can consider their graduation the end of the war … it is up to you to look back and see what battles you faced and won.

Alternatively you can set out to win every battle. You will end up burning yourself out and all the people around you and eventually you, or your family, will lose anyway.

My advice to us all is to be careful when we choose where to apply our efforts (we have our families to think of) and yet always stand up for what is right, what is fair and what is reasonable.

What has been your experience in regards to DET funding and the support you have received from our school system?