Robert Foster
We used Richard's firm as we had already been through a protracted, painful process to get our eldest son assessed under the EHCP with our local authority. This had been a slow process, (often outside of the statutory milestones), with poor communication and little understanding of how we would get to the right outcome for our child. Whilst we had better experience with some of the individual practitioners who assessed our child, we also had frustrating experiences including an educational psychologist who did not actually see our child in person. This resulted in an assessment and initial plan where we simply did not have any guidance as to what the right educational placement was and significant delays in even naming a placement even after most children already had their school places decided. Richard was a recommendation from the manager of the special needs playschool our child had been attending, and was an excellent one. He quickly assessed the situation, patiently and cogently set out our options and took us through the process of issuing a pre-action letter to the local authority to force them to name a placement. Richard then took us through the process of both appealing against the placement named by the local authority, which was blatantly inappropriate, and into the tribunal process. He was diligent, patient with us and excellent at taking us through the process step by step. He was also excellent at dealing with the local authority and identifying when they were pushing boundaries and when to push back. As a result of Richards and Bethans input, we were able to get the right assessments done independently, identify the right placement and get our child into an excellent specialist school that is already benefiting our son. Was it cheap? Probably not, although I suspect you could spend a lot more as well. But, more importantly, was it good value for money? Completely. Whilst we are lucky we can afford to do so, I fully believe that we would not have been able to achieve the outcome we did without Richard and his team, and our son would not have the placement and package of care that he did. Highly recommended.