ORRS funding question

A question for those of you whose ASD child gets ORRS/ORS funding. How is it used? Does your child go in a special unit/special school or use it for a teacher aide in a mainstream class?

Ian gets about 17 hours a week ORRS funding, he's in a mainstream class with a teacher aide. At the moment the teacher aide is there all the time and the extra time is being paid by the school, this is not a normal thing; but they've decided that until the earthquakes here calm down having Ian on his own in a class is not a good thing for safety's sake.
He's got high funding mainly due to his tendancy to bolt I think.

Sewsable wrote:Ian gets about 17 hours a week ORRS funding, he's in a mainstream class with a teacher aide. At the moment the teacher aide is there all the time and the extra time is being paid by the school, this is not a normal thing; but they've decided that until the earthquakes here calm down having Ian on his own in a class is not a good thing for safety's sake.
He's got high funding mainly due to his tendancy to bolt I think.

That's good that the school will do that I hope Mikko's isn't a bolter. He could be, preschool is very secure so no way of knowing. ACtually he got thru the door to the gate yesterday so maybe I should write that down to help our case!

Jeshiko wrote:

Sewsable wrote:Ian gets about 17 hours a week ORRS funding, he's in a mainstream class with a teacher aide. At the moment the teacher aide is there all the time and the extra time is being paid by the school, this is not a normal thing; but they've decided that until the earthquakes here calm down having Ian on his own in a class is not a good thing for safety's sake.
He's got high funding mainly due to his tendancy to bolt I think.

That's good that the school will do that I hope Mikko's isn't a bolter. He could be, preschool is very secure so no way of knowing. ACtually he got thru the door to the gate yesterday so maybe I should write that down to help our case!

Ian ran away at school while we were picking up George, he ran further into school, but despite the searches we didn't find him for a good 30 minutes (he was found just as the police walked through the gate). He's bolted from school a few times since he started (school is now fully fenced as a result) and he's left home on a few occasions too. We don't know if this is a genetic thing or related to the ASD though as both his Dad and his uncle left home and went wandering when they were kids.

Interesting about the bolting thing. Christohper did that at the pharmacy a few weeks back, i turned to pay the lady, and turned back and he had gone. I ran out the door and he was 1/2 way down the street. However he was looking for me, not sure why he thought i would be all the way down the street though

He also disapeared at school yesterday, i went to his classroom and he wasnt there, i managed to find him in a few minutes, but he has a tendency to panic and walk off in an illogical way, rather than wait for me there.

Not sure if this is ASD or just him??? He certainly isnt a bolter at home, never has been, he seems quite content to play in his room, and our house is not overly secure, in that doors are shut but not locked.

So what exactly is ORRs funding?? Im just new to all this so not sure exactly of our entitlement. Christopher doesnt seem to need a teacher aide at this point, academically he is fine, its the social times where he struggles, lunch time etc. Ive asked that the duty teacher be on watch, but that wwas earlier this year, and since then he has ended up biting someone

Unfortunately inappropriate reactions are not uncommon with our wee ones. It's something we're working on with Ian as well.
As far as ORRS funding is concerned you have to apply for it with GSE and you don't get it easily. Ian basically doesnt' do stuff at school without support unless he can see a good reason for it. He also will disappear given the opportunity and is very gifted at being quiet about that disappearing. I'm pretty sure there'll be something about ORRS on the MOE's website. If GSE or your school thought your son was entitled they would have done something about it. It covers a teacher aide for limited hours in the classroom, for Ian also half a day with a special needs teacher and some extra for resources as well.

I'd also recommend you talk to your GSE team about any courses going as well; I went to one that gets put on for schools earlier this year in Rolleston; it was very valuable for itself and also for the opportunity for our team to discuss how to support Ian in a more informal environment (3 days instead of 1 hour also helped). I suspect we came up for that as I've done a couple of other things that GSE mentioned to support Ian so they perhaps think of us when these opportunities come up.

Awesome thanks for the reply. I think at this stage he appears to be coping with the day to day classroom stuff, just a few issues at play time/lunch time. So we may cross that bridge when we need to.

It's quite hard to get from what I understand. Our EIT doesn't seem optimistic that Mikko will get it but we will be applying anyway due to the fact that he really doesn't engage at all without assistance.
If your child doesn't get ORRS then they might get help from the RTLB service from what I understand but then that is up to the school whereas ORRS comes from the government for your child specifically.

Yes, ORRS is not easy to get. We have repeatedly tried to get it, but no success because she functions quite well. We do get RTLB and SLT services, but from what I understand, that is likely to end by the end of the year. ORRS would give us a trained teacher aide rather than a teacher aide with no experience.

We did get some funding in the beginning of the year when DD started school, because she had previously run away from home (a couple of times), and I think we stressed that in the ORRS application, but we never got that - so you are lucky you got some funding for that, sable.

Currently, we pay for about 100 hours per term for a teacher aide and the school pays the balance - DD has a full time teacher aide - she is very good because she used to be a teacher in her home country but is not a registered teacher in NZ, so it is kind of the next best thing to a fully trained teacher aide.

We have issues with DD engaging with others and actually doing school work and reading. She is a clever child but just doesn't want to do the school work