Primary school applications: what are 'exceptional social needs'?!

[bee74]

Hello

I am just filling in the forms now but can't find a definition of 'exceptional social or medical needs'?

Thank you

[katgod]

I think it is one if those that if you have them you will know and be able to fill in appropriately.wanting to go to school with your friends is not exceptional social need. Possibly being cared for by a relative who lives near the school due to a family member's illness, while still residing somewhere else could be. Wanting to go to school near a station as that suits a parent's commute would not be. Requiring wheelchair access would be.

[Renata Hamvas]

Hi bee74

Exceptional medical or social need would need to be backed up; eg by a doctor or hospital report for medical need or by a social worker/psychiatrist/psychologist for social need.

Renata

[Carbonara]

e.g wheelchair access, needing to be in a school far away from a parent with an injunction against going near the child, a family of police needing to be away from their 'constituents' for extreme reasons, an adopted child needing to be away from an abusive birth parent, a school with a specialist dyslexic unit....

Not a shy child wanting to go to the same school as friends from nursery. Or the school being easy for the childminder to pick up from.

[bee74]

ok, i get the picture. just what i thought!

thank you.

[Medusa]

But don't bank on common sense having much bearing on how these sorts of applications are processed. I had excellent evidence to document my case for an application being considered on these grounds but it made no difference. I was told at appeal 'the kind of cases this category refers to are families under the Witness Protection Programme and a child with leukaemia'.