OzLozz

Thank you so much Quoll for taking the time to reply to me, and at such length. Our plan is to return to Queensland as I have family already living there. I have spent some time googling special needs schools in Qld and came across the website myschool.edu.au which appeared to narrow my search when searching ‘special needs state schools’. When I just searched for special needs schools in Qld, I found some schools suggesting yearly fees are required (some asking for $7,500) From what I could make out, these are schools that offer the exact same services that my son currently receives for nothing in the UK. Our son was placed in that school by the local authority based on his needs just like any neuro typical child would be at a mainstream school. In the UK just getting an EHCP is difficult and requires a panel of experts from numerous agencies and a paediatrician. I have some friends that have autistic children and was not granted an EHCP. They then have to attend mainstream school and fight for support and extra support for their children. In our case we are extremely lucky to have got to this stage, and now he attends a class with 5 adults (1 teacher, 4 support teachers) and 9 children. 9 children is their absolute max in the class. He goes swimming each week and has sensory play daily. I am scared to death that I will be uprooting Elijah out of an environment where he could thrive and develop at his own pace, and into an environment that may not be able to offer him enough support as he needs. We had the option to decide to put our son in mainstream and have a leading support assistant working with him, but knew that this would be the wrong decision for him. No one wants to send their child to a special needs school and it was the hardest decision we ever had to make. Now leaving it is the hardest decision. I will take on your advice and try to get in touch with Queensland Education department and ask what is required of us. I am also thinking that I will need to come out to Queensland and try to speak to someone in person before we emigrate for sure. Everything rides on this.

Hello All, I am a newbie to this forum but not a complete newbie to Oz. I was born and raised in NSW until I moved to the UK with my family when I was 15 (dual nationality) I now have a family of my own and we have plans to emigrate to Australia in the very near future. All three of my children have Australian citizenship by decent. I am a citizen, so my husband was the only issue. His visa (Partner Subclass 100) has been granted as a PROVISIONAL RESIDENT and and now we all must arrive in Australia before the end of November 2023, otherwise his Visa will expire and we are back to square one. We have invested a lot of time and money into this process and know wholeheartedly that we want to live and raise our children in Australia, our only concern is our middle son, Elijah. We began my husbands visa application when I was on maternity leave with him. Elijah is non verbal autistic with global development delay. He is currently 4 years of age and will be 5 at the end of April. After much deliberation and advocacy, Elijah was granted an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) and was allocated a place at a Special Needs School in our local area. if anyone is familiar of the process, getting a place in a special needs school is like gold dust! It took a great deal of work to get our local authority to get to this decision and my biggest fear is that we will be putting all of this at risk when moving to Australia. I have limited understanding in the Australian education system, even though I did attend primary and high school there myself! My understanding is that if we want our son to continue in a similar environment to what he has here in the UK, then we may have to pay privately and this is not really an option for us. We strongly disagree with him attending a mainstream school with an autism hub. He is completely passive and would get lost in the crowd. He has come on leaps and bounds since September and we want him to continue to progress. Can anyone give me advice on what I can do from here in the UK to help our transition? He was diagnosed in the UK but does he need to go through the whole process again in Australia? It took us 4 years to get to this stage. How easy is it to get accepted to a state special school? thanks in advance.