#3 - Advocating for Accommodations

Welcome to the third episode of the School Can't Experience Podcast by School Can't Australia. Hosted by Leisa Reichelt and featuring Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers. This episode explores:

• strategies for working with schools to obtain supports and accommodations for children struggling with school attendance,
• personal stories and practical advice,
• discuss legislative protections to empower parents in advocating effectively for their children's needs,
• the necessity of ongoing reassessment of accommodations, and 
• alternative educational pathways

Useful resources:

• Disability Standards for Education Act (Australia) - https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2005L00767/latest/text
• NCCD - Nationally Consistent Collection of Data (Australia) - https://www.nccd.edu.au/
• Lives in the Balance (Dr Ross Greene’s Collaborative and Proactive Solutions) - https://livesinthebalance.org/

Transcript

Leisa Reichelt: 0:05

Hello and welcome to the School Can't Experience Podcast. I'm Leisa Reichelt, and this podcast is brought to you by the School Can't Australia community. Caring for a young person who is struggling to attend school can be a stressful and isolating experience, but you are not alone. Thousands of parents across Australia and many more around the world face similar challenges and experiences every day. We hope this podcast gives you some new insight into what others are experiencing and some new ways of thinking about how to understand and support the young people in your life. This is our third episode, and I am joined again by Tiffany Westphal and Louise Rogers, who are directors at School Can't Australia, and a regular and calming presence on the School Can't Australia Facebook community, where they volunteer many hours of their time helping to support over 14,000 members, and no doubt getting a little bit of support of their own as well. In today's episode, we're going to get into the nitty gritty of understanding how we can work with schools to get supports and accommodations for our young people. I wonder, whether we can start by maybe sharing a little bit of our experiences of how we've engaged with school. We don't have to go into too much detail, but just to give a little bit of a colour of how the engagement and the accommodations at school maybe have changed during your experience of supporting your young people through this?

Tiffany Westphal: 1:26

Look early on, I think the response from school was very much,'You need to get them back. You need to apply more pressure. You need to make sure that you know they're here on time. And, do everything you can as a parent to set things up for success in the morning so they can get out the door.' There was a lot more pressure, and that was really hard and, and very unproductive, and led to increased distress.

Leisa Reichelt: 1:50

You can have the opposite of that as well. I know when my son was in year five and year six, we spent a lot of time parked out the front of school by ourselves. Like no no one came, no one got in touch. There was just nothing from the school at all.

Tiffany Westphal: 2:06

There can often be no way to communicate distress to a school. The distress is invisible for the school, because it's happening in the car, in the car park or at home. Schools often see a kid who is regulated and is fine when they get there, and so it can be hard for them to, to notice or to be aware. So parents really need to be quite proactive in informing the school and having conversations with the school about distress, about the nature of that distress and advocating for attention

Leisa Reichelt: 2:38

And that can be pretty scary though, right? Because you can

Tiffany Westphal: 2:40

yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 2:41

like you are failing as a parent by not being able to get your child to school. To ring up a school as a parent and go, look, I'm just really struggling getting my kid to go there. I know certainly for us at first, that was... it would never cross my mind. I'm just like, I know what I need to do. I need to get my kid to school. And it wasn't until, much later that it became much more of a back and forth between us and the school.

Tiffany Westphal: 3:04

Yeah, it's really scary because you don't know how you're going to be responded to. You might be up for a barrage of,'well, you need to do this and you need to do that.' And I usually find that by time parents are reaching out to a school for help, they've got to the bottom of the barrel of the things they can do at home.

Leisa Reichelt: 3:23

Lou, tell us a little bit about your experiences.

Louise Roger: 3:26

we certainly spent a lot of time in the car park at school. I gotta say

Leisa Reichelt: 3:30

I.

Louise Roger: 3:31

Um, yeah, it's really hard to revisit.

Leisa Reichelt: 3:35

yeah.

Louise Roger: 3:35

it's, it does bring up all those, all those emotions again, um, you know, we, we home educate now. It took us a while to get there because my young person still wanted to be in school. Towards the end of grade two, uh, he agreed and I just remember being so happy, that we were going to leave and try something different. I was ready to home educate before he was. I mean, he had a story about, what he should be doing as a young person going to school and being at school. And I think it was difficult for him and it's still difficult for him to understand what it is to home educate and what home educating might look like. And I think it's because so often we call it homeschooling. And really we should be talking about home education. The distinction is important because when you educate at a home, it looks nothing like it does at school. And of course it brings its own challenges because you have to learn how to... let go of some of those ideas about what education looks like, but you also have to learn how to connect with people in the home education community, and sort of start to find your feet. Its a learning journey all of its own.

Leisa Reichelt: 5:02

It's another learning curve, isn't it? My son has had difficulties with school for a number of years and I've had homeschooling or home educating on the table for quite a while. Not that I particularly wanna do it, but I just think, you know, there, there were points where I'm just like, there's just no alternative here. My son, despite the fact that he has enormous difficulty attending school, has never been excited about the idea of home education. He would much prefer to be able to go to school, be with his peers. He really likes teachers. He doesn't want me to teach him, he wants teachers to teach him. Conscious that me teaching him is also not what home education is.

Louise Roger: 5:42

It is the road less traveled, and we don't know what that looks like. Most of us have been educated ourselves in schools. It's what we expect. So, to do something different, It takes a lot of courage. Um, but I think sometimes the journey of trying to keep doing school is going to be really traumatizing, and I think that's going to cause more damage than leaving the school path and trying home education.

Leisa Reichelt: 6:13

That makes a lot of sense. So we've, kind of established that there are alternatives to traditional school experience and home education is, just one of them. But, uh, you know, for most people, most of the time, plan A is to stay in school and make the school experience work. Tiff, can you talk us through some of the things that we should be thinking about when we're trying to get that flexibility and support and accommodation in the school environment?

Tiffany Westphal: 6:41

Yeah. This is important because accommodations and supports help reduce student stress. They are used to remove barriers that impede a student to accessing the curriculum or demonstrating their learning. They can be used to help a student feel safe and capable. They have a role to play in restoring capacity for school attendance. The first step in providing accommodations and supports is being sure that you understand what the stressors and barriers were... that the student is experiencing. And it's okay to have just a hypothesis about this if the child can't tell you. You can still request an adjustment or a, an accommodation on the basis of suspecting that something might help and then reassess, down the track and see whether it did help or not. I usually start by brainstorming with the child or listening to the child's description of the difficulties that they've experienced, making a list and uh, thinking about, well, what sorts of accommodations and supports might make it easier for the young person. I think it's important. that families understand that there is legislation that protects your right to be able to ask for, uh, supports and accommodations on the grounds of a child's disability or mental health needs. The 2005 Disability Standards for Education Act is the act that covers this. It's not a very long document. You can print it out, you can take it with you to meetings. The only justifiable reason not to provide an accommodation or support is if doing so would cause the school undue hardship. Often I hear schools say they don't want to provide a support because the child will get used to having that support and then they won't be able to have it in year 10 or year 11 And so we're not going to give it to them now. And I say, well, we need to deal with the child we have in front of us now, and that child's needs now because we might not have that child still in school if we withhold those accommodations and supports now. You should also visit NCCD website. You can request that your child be included in the school's NCCD registration. Most of the students who are experiencing School Can't are eligible. You don't need a diagnosis to be included in the NCCD, all you need is documentation from the school that they have provided supports and accommodations. So once you've collected information about your child's experience, about the stressors and barriers and about your ideas, for support, things that would reduce the stress, I would say, well, let's request a discussion, request a meeting with the child's school to discuss supports and accommodations. If you have any treating clinicians, if you have a, a psychologist or an OT or speech therapist, or even if you have a, a tutor that's been working with your child who can give some advice about supports and accommodations that would be beneficial for your child. Provide that documentation to the school. I email, before meetings, communication to a school about stressors and barriers and about what we think might work. Schools are usually really receptive to suggestions about what might work, makes their job easier, if they don't have to come up with these things. You can ask other parents in support groups what, what have they done to reduce the stressors and barriers, There are lots of places to get ideas.

Leisa Reichelt: 10:16

It does seem Tiffany as though it's very much on the parent to advocate

Tiffany Westphal: 10:22

It is

Leisa Reichelt: 10:23

I think for the early years of my son, when we would sit down and do the individualized education plan, it would be very teacher led and it would end up being'needs to concentrate on handwriting' That was kind of it, right? Over the years as I learned more I could go back and go, oh, what about this? Well, yeah, we could do that. And it's like the things that they were able to do once you asked for it was, to me, extraordinary. But if I didn't ask for it, it would never be volunteered to me.

Tiffany Westphal: 10:50

Yeah, most schools have learned about making behavior support plans. So plans are very focused on what the child's going to do differently or what the child's going to learn, and they're not nervous system focused. Parents know lots of stuff about their kids and we have the opportunities at home to have conversations with our children. Sometimes there's relationship work that needs to happen. Sometimes we need to wait until our kid's stress levels have reduced before we can have those conversations with them. But it's really helpful if our kids see us as their allies, as their bridge people, who can support them in that space, to negotiate, to try and, help communicate what their needs are.

Leisa Reichelt: 11:35

And to say no to the school sometimes.

Tiffany Westphal: 11:38

yeah. Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 11:39

We had a few situations where we would have an agreement with the school. I, I started going in with a, here's our term three plan. And they'd be like, okay, well we can do that for the first three weeks and we'll see what happens then. And I'm like, no, no, no. This is all of term three. If we can do this for all of term three, we are golden.

Tiffany Westphal: 11:54

And that we need to be responsive to signs of distress.

Louise Roger: 11:58

We need to be responsive to our young people. And so, putting timelines on when they're going to be doing things that's not responsive, that's, that's expecting them to conform. It's easier if all the kids follow the processes and do all the things. And, and if you don't actually have to make modifications for individual students, but we have a student population that is varied. Different kids are going to be at different stages of learning. They're going to need different things to help them with their learning. There are teaching methods which allow for that variation in the classroom. And part of that is also having those individual plans, but the purpose of them is to meet the need of the student.

Leisa Reichelt: 12:47

They also have to be acted on, don't they? I have no idea how a teacher with 30 kids in the class is able to keep in their mind all of those individual accommodations that's, that can't be an easy thing to do. And I think part of your role as a parent is to make sure that, that that's not being put on the back burner and forgotten about.

Louise Roger: 13:05

Yeah, it is.

Tiffany Westphal: 13:06

Can I just go back and say, you know, what you were saying before about responsive. Provision of supports and accommodations needs to be responsive. We need to be aware of signs of distress and use those as indicators that we're not yet got things right for that student. So I was constantly monitoring my daughter for signs of distress and those are red flags saying, hello, hang on, maybe there's something not quite right here, or some stress that we haven't quite identified., So yes, your question about different of supports and accommodations. So often we think about supports and accommodations in terms of things that enable a person to access the curriculum or things that enable a person to demonstrate learning. I think we also need to think about being able to, feel safe at school as well. So we need to think about the nervous system needs. So supports and accommodations need to target nervous system needs of a student. How about I give a few examples of, um, difficulties and how we accommodated them. So one of the difficulties my daughter experienced was difficulty managing the workload because she has dyslexia and dysgraphia. and she developed lots of anxiety about completing work. And so one of the supports we put in place was that she would only ever be graded on the work that she completed. So she wouldn't lose marks for the things that she didn't complete. That was a really simple accommodation that didn't cost the school anything And because she wasn't in year 11 or 12, there was no external assessments. It was possible. Lots of people don't realize they can ask for that sort of a simple accommodation.

Leisa Reichelt: 14:56

For us, that was a game changer, absolute game changer to realize that not every single assessment had to be done. That there were other ways to assess a child other than them ticking off the list of all of the assessments that that had to be done. And, that made a huge difference to my child as well. But like, gee, the first time a teacher said to me, well, which assessments would he like to do? I'm like, oh, there's a choice. It was, yeah, it was a game changer.

Tiffany Westphal: 15:24

Difficulty completing work in the same amount of time as peers, due to attention difficulties or executive function difficulties or anxiety. The solution is reduced workload So it's simple. Instead of doing 10 maths questions and they're expecting the student to do the first five.

Leisa Reichelt: 15:42

Or you've got the alternative. Right, which is give them more time.

Tiffany Westphal: 15:46

Yeah. Or more time. Yeah, that's right. Um, that one can become difficult. Because it can mean that they end up doing more work than other people. So we need to make sure that the student still has enough time to rest and relax. We need to make sure that they're not using lunchtime or recess to finish work because that time's important for nervous system regulation and for social, connection and, uh, belonging. And, and that's really important time too. We shouldn't be robbing students of time from other things that are important for their wellbeing in order to complete work.

Leisa Reichelt: 16:22

My son was able to get more time to do a maths exam. And being good at maths is kind of a big part of his sense of self, but he was getting like not good scores in maths and so they just let him have more time to do his maths exam. And with that more time, he was able to actually demonstrate his learning and do really well. I think we get brought up with this idea that everyone's gotta do this amount of work in this amount of time and that's how we compare everybody. But actually that's not a fair way to compare all kids who have got these different needs and and disabilities.

Tiffany Westphal: 16:55

My daughter has also is really good at maths and we discovered that, one of the difficulties she has is that when she knows she's got a finite, a fixed time to do something in her nervous system becomes so escalated that she starts to not be able to function. And she's quite good at math, but what we have to do is say to her, look, you can have as long as you like to do this math test, so if you don't finish it today, you can take it home and finish it. And guaranteed she'll be able to finish that math test before anybody else. But if she doesn't have that accommodation, she becomes so stressed she can't do the work. And so just this simple, going'look, it's okay. You can have as long as you like', enables her nervous system to calm- and she knows that this is what's happening. she needs this reassurance. It's a simple accommodation for her. It doesn't cost anybody anything. It doesn't require any extra time from a teacher. It's just the use of some words and reassurance. You know, for a student who has difficulty with reading, or difficulty getting their thoughts out of their head onto paper, being able to access assistive technology and use, make use of speech to text or text to speech, and having someone teach them how to make use of those things. Now that's that is a, support or accommodation that's going to cost the school some money to provide that support. but there are ways that that sort of support can get funded through a school and they make a huge difference to the stress levels of a student. Sensory difficulties relating to school uniform is something that came up over the years again and again for my daughter. Um, you know, at one point we had, she could wear another piece of clothing that was comfortable, long as it was the same colour as the school uniform. In primary school. high school, we negotiated the ability to wear the sports uniform instead of the academic uniform because that was more comfortable. She used to come home from school and the first thing she'd do was race down to her bedroom and strip off this horrible uniform that she couldn't stand wearing. She was using up so much energy during the day just managing the way this thing felt against her skin, that it, it was robbing her of energy capacity do other things.

Leisa Reichelt: 19:09

These are really good examples and I think it just really illustrates that if we take the time and, and we are able to get into that regulated state where we can, understand, what our, what our young people are experiencing, and then go and have conversations about that with the school. The, the flexibility often is there to put things in place that might make it easier. There's no guarantee that it's going to necessarily work, but like that there is that ability to have that conversation with most schools that you might not realize is there.

Louise Roger: 19:45

I think it's important to be able to revisit supports if they're not working. We can't make a plan and assume that it's going to work, even if it's something a young person has suggested. You know? We can't just think that, okay, the plan's there now it's done and dusted. It needs to be something we revisit. We need to also recognize that, you know, we as children develop, they'll come across new challenges and then we'll need to, to put in new plans in place for the, for the new things that they need support with. So it needs to be an ongoing discussion that progresses with them through school.

Tiffany Westphal: 20:26

Yeah, sands are constantly shifting.

Louise Roger: 20:28

Yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 20:30

One of the things that made a big difference for us was, making sure that instructions were written. I think teachers often give a lot of verbal instructions. If you don't have a great verbal processing capability, you can just be completely lost.

Tiffany Westphal: 20:42

Yeah. For some kids they have a lots of difficulty copying things down from a whiteboard So having the, the teacher provide printed notes that a child can annotate instead of having to copy down work. Um, so many, uh, difficulties. I think, you know, another one that my child had was, We, we had an accommodation about her being able to carry her phone in her pocket because she would become overwhelmed and, and really highly distressed and be unable to talk to staff, uh, or unable to speak to a teacher when she was in this state. We negotiated that she should be able to have her phone in her pocket so that she could send a text to mum, or call mum who could then provide support to calm to over the phone or assist staff to locate her, so that she could be repatriated back home if she needed to. If it the point where she just needed to get out to, to come back home, because she was too overwhelmed. Another one that's unusual is my daughter has lots of difficulty with distraction in class. And, she uses music to eliminate distraction from voices in class, from peers talking. And it also helps with her nervous system management she has uh, playlists she's developed with her music therapist that help her feel calm and relaxed while she's doing schoolwork. So she, she has a permission to use noise canceling earbuds to listen to music while the the class is completing work.

Leisa Reichelt: 22:12

So I think what we're taking away from this is that there, it can actually be quite a lot of flexibility in all different aspects of how kids are experiencing school and how they're undertaking the academic aspects of school. Um, but we as the, the adult in our young people's lives really kind of need to take it on ourselves to be very proactive in thinking about what might help learning from our young people, what might help, and then going in and advocating on their behalf with the school. Um, and I like what you said as well, Louise and Tiff, I think as well about like how it's almost, we need to take an experimental mindset to this, don't we? Like there's no guarantees that any of this will work. It's not a failure if it doesn't work. It tells us something new. But we, we, we try different things and, um, we have to keep monitoring and seeing what's working and what's not and what's happening and what's not happening.

Tiffany Westphal: 23:12

Yeah, I think it's important to remember that we can make lots of supports and accommodations. So sometimes I've gone in with a family to a school meeting and the school's agreed to a whole lot of supports and accommodations, but we still can't get the child to go to school And so the supports and accommodations sometimes they come too late in the piece. And so there's trauma we need to find ways of building trust and safety again. Um, sometimes it's not possible for a child to return to a school where the experience has been so, profoundly distressing, that they, they, they just, that the nervous system has triggered so much by having to go back into that space. that no amount of provision of supports and accommodations is going to meet their needs for feeling safe.

Leisa Reichelt: 24:06

So what do we do then? We, we've, we've tried all of these accommodations. School's still not happening. What next? What do we do?

Tiffany Westphal: 24:15

I think we need permission sometimes to, um. To take a break. Sometimes we need to spend time making sense of what's happened for our child to help, know, to do some sense making of what, what's happened to me, Um, why is this so hard for me to be there?

Leisa Reichelt: 24:34

When you say we should, we need permission to take a break. Who do we get permission from?

Tiffany Westphal: 24:42

well.

Louise Roger: 24:42

It's a hard one, It really is. I, I think we need to give ourselves permission for a start. Um, we, we've got to acknowledge that this is really, really, really hard. We had a parent in our Senate Inquiry submission research tell us that school attendance difficulties was more stressful to her than her cancer diagnosis. I think that's huge. That's incredibly huge. Families are going through a lot of stress. We've gotta give ourselves permission.

Tiffany Westphal: 25:16

Permission is only one part of that story too. You know, having the c the capacity to be able to manage financially or to be able to, to wrangle all of the other stuff in our lives as well is, is a, just as much a challenge. Um, so I think, you know, sometimes we have to let go of fear that if our child's not at school, then they're going to be doomed in the future. We need to remember that actually there's an awful lot more at stake here that is protective of a child's future and their capacity to, to learn and to, to become a, know, a member of society that's making a contribution, that's earning some money, that's able to live connected in to the community. so yeah.

Leisa Reichelt: 26:10

So allowing yourself and your child to take a break from trying to get to school every day, be it for a few weeks, be it for a term that can help to alleviate stress in the child. It can help parents gain a little bit of sanity back.

Tiffany Westphal: 26:27

yep. And it can give you time to do the sense making, to have those conversations about what's happened, um, to, to connect to build a stronger relationship with your child so they trust you. Uh. That you've got them.

Louise Roger: 26:44

I, I think it's also important though, to acknowledge the enormous pressure on us not to do that and to get our kids back to school anyway. From the schools, from, authority, there are rules in place. Uh, and in some states around Australia, there are potential fines and court appearances if you don't take your, young person to school. so you might be able to go to a GP or pediatrician or psychologist and get a recommendation, a medical recommendation, that your young person has a break from school to recover.

Tiffany Westphal: 27:25

Yeah, it's really important to, to have yourself covered by medical advice, um, medical recommendations, having medical certificates, for not being at school.

Leisa Reichelt: 27:36

So it's going and talking to the GP and making sure the GP is across the situation.'cause that might not be the first thing that people are thinking about doing either because child's not sick, not physically sick, but.

Louise Roger: 27:47

Mm.

Leisa Reichelt: 27:48

Having that GP can help then if you find yourself in a difficult situation with the education system, perhaps.

Tiffany Westphal: 27:55

Stress is a legitimate and, and stress and, and difficulty coping with stress it's, it's signs of, of mental health distress. Yeah. So it is an illness. being so mentally distressed that you can't function, that's an illness.

Louise Roger: 28:11

And, and it's also a reason why some of our families go into to home education Because they need that break from the constant pressure to attend school. And those families may look at some other time about going back to school, but for right now, they need a break.

Leisa Reichelt: 28:28

Yeah. And there are a range of different things that you can consider as alternatives, right? Like you've got home education, distance education, potentially alternative schools.

Louise Roger: 28:38

Mm-hmm

Leisa Reichelt: 28:38

Okay Then let's wrap it up. I think we've covered a lot of territory today and a lot of important insights for folk who are probably, if they're listening to this, it's probably'cause they're going through a pretty stressful time right now. So I really couldn't appreciate more you sharing your experience and expertise. Tiffany and Louise, thank you so much for, for taking the time.

Tiffany Westphal: 29:00

You're welcome

Louise Roger: 29:00

Thank you.

Leisa Reichelt: 29:02

Well, I really hope there was something in that discussion that you found helpful or reassuring. There is no one right way through this school current journey, but in partnership with other School Can't parents and with experts in the field, we are able to make a big difference in reducing stress and trauma for our young people and for our families. If you're a parent or carer who's feeling distressed and you're in Australia, remember that you can call the Parent Helpline in your state. We've put a link with the number to call in the show notes. We've also added links to the School Can't community, the Disabilities Act, and the NCCD that Tiffany mentioned in the podcast, and there's a place for you to share your feedback on our podcast or maybe even volunteer to share your very own School Can't experience on a future podcast episode. We would love to hear from you. And finally, please consider donating to School Can't Australia, your tax deductible donations assist us to raise community awareness to, partner with researchers, to produce resources like webinars and this very podcast which assist people who are supporting children and young people experiencing School Can't. Thanks again for listening, and we'll talk again soon. Take care.