We received a letter on Friday clarifying the rules under which Max would be entitled to a place at Red Balloon Nursery. Basically they will not pay for the fees, they will give us £366 per term for 12.5 hours a week (pro rata) towards the fees, which all children over 3 are entitled to. They have said that they will back date this payment to January, but the rest of the fees will be our responsibility. As this is considerably less than the fees, if we want Max to go to Red Balloon Nursery we will be left with a large bill to pay. There is no way that we can fund such high fees for the 5 terms we were intending Max to go to Red Balloon Nursery so we are now back to the drawing board and wondering what problem will arise next. If Paddock School have a space for Max in the nursery from September that might have to be the way forward, although it isn’t exactly our preference. However that still leaves us at least the problem of next term. We will keep you posted.
Other news is that Luca has learnt to walk up the stairs (it is more a walk than a crawl) and Max has walked with his walker all by himself. Up till then Max wouldn’t stand happily unless he felt somebody’s hand somewhere on him, not necessarily helping or holding, just being there. So this is a huge step forward. Luca has also learnt a few words. He has added this, that, bubbles and doggie to his limited vocabulary of Daddy and hello.
The Statement is Max’s Statement of Educational Needs (SEN). Children with more severe Special Needs are entitled to have a SEN but as these actually have money attached to them we hear that the state is trying hard to avoid statementing children wherever possible. There has however, never been a question about Max having a statement and we began the process nearly a year ago. 