Post-19 Education Brain Dump

Why might it be of interest?

The local authority will likely want your young person to attend a local college (this can include colleges in neighbouring boroughs) and to continue to live at home – with a social care package – as this is the cheapest option for them.

If you don’t want your young person to live at home you may be asked to consider a local college and supported living.  However, this is an unusual arrangement and there are not many young people who are at college full time and in supported living post 19 (there are some slightly older young people in this arrangement) – your young person does not have to be the guinea pig!

If you feel your young person would benefit from living away from home you need to be familiar with the waking day or 24 hour curriculum as this is likely to be some or all of your justification for them living away from home while at college.

There is a huge difference between a waking day curriculum and your young person going to a local college and either being in supported living or staying at home with additional support – know what these differences are.  See the heading further on in this document.

You need to be prepared and informed.  There is a lot of common information in this document and the Colleges Making the Right Choice document.

Other documents you might find useful are:

• 24 hour curriculum
• Post 16 Education Options
• School Placement
• Colleges – Making the Right Choice – Workshop 2024

• Visit ALL possible colleges – local and residential – in your own borough and neighbouring boroughs
• Visiting provisions yourself is a good idea – if you haven’t visited you may be missing information about the college that would help your case – for or against

• don’t rely on other people’s opinions

• Try to visit well ahead of when you need to make a decision – ideally make initial visits in the year BEFORE your young person finishes school
• You can always revisit likely colleges
• Visiting colleges will help you decide what you want / don’t want for your young person – it may not turn out to be what you thought
• You will need to be very clear about what you want for your young person and why – and consistent
• Speak to professionals working with your young person to get their view – our young people are often very different at school / home / social activities
• It’s not enough to show that a college can meet your young person’s needs – you need to know – and show – why other colleges won’t meet their needs
• Consider all aspects of the college – not just the educational provision
• If you can, ask the college to confirm that they can’t meet your young person’s needs – ideally in writing
• Most colleges won’t carry out an assessment until they are the named college
• But that doesn’t mean they can’t give you an indication of whether they can meet your young person’s needs if you provide them with enough information – the EHCP and any reports you have from professionals and yourself are a good starting point
• The local provision is limited which is in your favour if you want to go further afield or residential
• Consider getting private assessments – but not too far ahead of their last year as to be taken into consideration reports should be less than 12 months old – or nothing significant should have changed
• You might want a professional doing an assessment to visit your young person in more than one setting – for example at school and at home

Consider all aspects of the college

This means the educational provision – are the courses on offer anything that your young person would like to do and would benefit from – but there are a whole host of other things to consider.

What will the course achieve for your young person?  We’re not looking at just keeping our young people happy and engaged in education in these post 19 years.  We want the education they receive to be leading somewhere.  But if you are looking for somewhere that is mainly keeping your young person happy for the next few years with no particular end in mind that’s fine too!

They could be working towards paid work; voluntary work; learning life skills so they can live well in supported living; any combination of the above.

Where is the college – how will your young person get there?

• If they can’t travel independently will transport be provided?
  • You, as a parent, should not be expected to drop off and pick up – this curtails your own life and is not in your young person’s best interests regarding development of independence skills
• How is your young person on transport?
  • A long journey is not necessarily an issue but it could be – it’s an issue if your young person:
    • does not like travelling far
    • it makes for a very long day and they will be tired – early start / late finish
    • they won’t be able to access social activities because of the length of the day
• If your young person can travel independently – can they reasonably do this journey?
  • Would they need any help at any point along the way?

How many days a week does the college offer?

Full time education for over 18s is 16 hours a week – hardly what we would consider full time.  Special colleges and special education departments at mainstream colleges are likely to offer 4 days a week.

You may be able to dismiss several colleges on the basis that your young person needs full time as in what a school would offer or near enough.  Or look for alternatives for the days they are not at college.

How secure is the college or the part of the college your young person will be in?

• Is the part of the college they will be in – the special needs department – secure?
  • ie, can people go in an out unrestricted or do they need to ring a bell to be admitted, signed in and visiting a named person
• If it is not secure you can demonstrate that your young person will be vulnerable
  • You won’t know who they will be able to come into contact with
  • They may not know when they are at risk
  • They may be able to leave unobserved
  • They may need a more restrictive programme to ensure their safety and students are entitled to a programme that is the least restrictive environment*
  • Or you can argue for additional support / services to ensure they can access the course they want to do

*There’s a lot of information about least restrictive environment on the internet, mainly around educational settings but it applies across the board – in home and social settings as well.  A young person with disabilities should be able to go about their life, safely, with the least restrictions on them.

What is the physical environment like?

There may be things about the building, the campus, etc that your young person would love and / or things that they would hate or would be difficult for them.  Use all of these things to support your case.  Examples include:

• Are the public spaces noisy, echo, busy with people?
  • How is your young person with these things?
• Will your young person need to move around the college a lot?
  • Will this be difficult for them?
  • What would happen if they refused to move from room to room – is there staff provision to support them?
• Or will they spend most of their time in one place?
  • Will that be a problem for them?
  • Do they need variety of location
  • Do they need to have space to run or move around?
• Are there a lot of stairs or do they need to take the lift?
  • Can your young person manage stairs
  • Are they OK in lifts?
• If it is a large campus how will your young person manage a large space?
  • It’s not just their ability to navigate the space – will they be happy to do so or do they need a smaller building / campus?
• If it’s a small campus will they have the space they need to run around?

Consider EVERYTHING about the provision that might have a positive or negative affect on your young person.  If you love a provision even though there could be some challenges you will find a way (hopefully!) to overcome them but these challenges can work in your favour if you don’t love the provision.

Educational provision

Most specialist colleges offer courses with different aims and at different levels.

You need to establish which pathway your young person would be on.

• Does the college offer courses that your young person would like to do and benefit from on the pathway that they would be offered?
• If the college offers a subject that is not usually on the pathway your young person is on is there provision to allow them to access that subject in addition to their pathway
• How is your young person’s class staffed?
  • If your young person didn’t want to do what was on the timetable how would the college manage this?
  • Would they offer alternatives
• Ask about what a typical day’s timetable would look like
  • While this is very individual they should be able to give you examples
• How many students does the college have
  • How many on your young person’s pathway
• Do students in different classes or on different pathways have opportunities to mix?
  • Perhaps there’s a canteen they all share
  • Or a sports afternoon each week where they all get together
  • Or are they just with their class
  • Or with their own support worker

Residential or local college

The first thing to say here is that residential college is not going to be the right setting for all young people with disabilities.  It is not something everyone will be – or should be – aiming for as the best placement after school for their young person.

If your young person has a good social group, gets out and about, does things they like to do, engages well at home, etc you will want to think very carefully about breaking that up by sending them away to a residential college.  Some young people need the security of home to be able and willing to try new things.  Others may need to be away from home to do the same.

You may be looking ahead to supported living and feel that this would be better achieved with the bridge that residential college can provide.  Although the young person is away from home at a residential college their days are still highly structured – it can feel less of a big step than going from home and school into supported living without further education.

Think carefully about what you and your young person want to get out of their college years and look for the college that will meet those outcomes.

The Cost!

No getting away from it – the cost of the college placement, whether that’s a day college or residential college – is a big part of the decision for the local authority.

The LA can refuse a college on the basis of cost and it not being good value for money – good use of resources.  This could be an issue if you want a day college but one that is more expensive and / or not local and has higher costs associated.

If you are looking for residential the cost will include education and social care.  This isn’t easy to establish but if the overall cost of the young person at a residential college would not be significantly more than the cost of local supported living (that includes the care package, housing costs, etc) and a local college the cost should not be a barrier.  The key is the total cost of the package – individual departments cannot argue that they won’t pay their part if the overall cost is reasonable compared to the alternative, ie local college and supported living.  The term is cost to the public purse.

To be fair this is more likely to be the case for our more severely disabled young people who will need a significant level of social care – most likely 24/7.

What the LA can argue is about what is best for the young person – this is why you need to be prepared.

 Waking Day Curriculum versus college/supported living/living at home

Basically, this says that a 24 hour curriculum appreciates that learning is both an educational need and a social need. It allows continuous learning that is consistent, from staff who are fully conversant with the young person in both a structured classroom/workshop setting and the less structured evening/leisure setting.

Because of the continuity and consistency it allows for gaps in understanding and areas for development in the young person to be identified and cross referenced and worked on in a cohesive way with day and evening staff working collaboratively on the same goals and aims.

It could be argued that a college/supported living arrangement could provide the same but there is too much potential for gaps in support and continuity for most people to consider it a reasonable alternative.

Considerations around college/supported living:

• You would be relying very much on college staff and home staff being able to work together and this is far from guaranteed given that the staff will have different agendas and work for different organisations
• There is no structure to ensure that the communication and working together that you would need to make this arrangement successful would be in place and would continue to work
• You would be dependent on individuals in each setting to be willing to work together and to understand the need to work together
• What would the process be if there was a difference of opinion or conflict between the settings
• How would the staff in each setting get the support they need to support your young person
• How would your young person cope with the change between college and home
  • For example they may engage during the college day but see the end of the college day as the end of their productive day and be disengaged in the supported living setting
• In a college/supported living arrangement there would be more staff involved day to day with your young person – how would they cope with all these people
• Would the staff in the supported living part of the arrangement have the training to provide an educational slant to their support
• Who would direct them
• Who would you go to if you were unhappy with your young person’s progress

Residential college:

• College and home staff work closely together – and may be the same staff across the day
• There is a structure and hierarchy to ensure that staff communicate well and work together
• Staff working with your young person across the day are part of the same team
• Staff will have the training they need
• There is a less obvious – and possibly no ‘hard’ difference – change between the college day and the home part of the day – and learning goes on across
• Fewer staff and greater continuity of staff across the day
• The college will have a structure of staff with responsibilities for each part of your young person’s education / social living
• You will know who is responsible for what so if there is an issue you will have a person you can take it up with – who in turn can work with any other staff who need to be involved