Post-16 Transitions: a Longitudinal Study of Young People with ...

time to themselves. The problem for her is that negotiating an
appropriate package takes a great deal of time and is extremely
frustrating:
“…a lot of talking, a lot of meetings but no action.”
Moreover, if Marcus receives a grant, she believes she will lose her
carer’s allowance. Not surprisingly, therefore, her view of the
transition process is that it is fraught with uncertainty:
“At the moment through transition its just as if you are going across
stepping stones. You go on one stone and you clear that one and you go
to the next one and like the next problem comes up, the next change in
his life comes up so you’ve got to negotiate one at a time and its just so
scary…It’s a horrible feeling, transition, because you’ve seen him
through 16/17 years and you have got all this established and then
somebody just comes along and just takes it all away and you’ve got to
start again.”
Support
Simon is now following an NVQ level 2 brick-laying course with a
training provider and his tutors are highly supportive of him.
They have taken care to build any theoretical work on an
extensive practical base, have offered a range of social activities to
Simon (though he has in fact declined to participate) and have
allowed him to stay on beyond the formal end of the course. Much
of this has worked well. Simon’s attendance is good and he
appears to be enjoying the course. However, there is considerable
uncertainty over the level at which Simon should be aiming.
Simon himself believes he is likely to get NVQ level 2. His mother
thinks he already has level 1. His SENCO thinks he is not without
academic ability. However, his tutors believe he is struggling with
level 2 work and will not achieve the award. He was, they believe,
wrongly assessed by the Basic Skills Department of their own
organisation. However, when they asked for a re-assessment, the
result was the same. Simon’s progress is reviewed regularly with
his tutors. Unfortunately, however, since he did not come to the
training provider direct from school, liaison with his school has
been non-existent and with his family it has been limited. Simon
has a Connexions worker who could potentially help in resolving
differences of perception and there had been good links between
Connexions and Simon’s school. However, the same link does not
operate in practice with the training provider. Simon’s tutors
commented that although they did have regular contact with the
Careers Service, they had not seen anyone since it became
Connexions. There had been some changes in the Connexions PA
working with Simon and the reality seems to be that there will be
no direct involvement with him unless he or his family approach
Connexions directly or until the automatic ‘flagging’ system
indicates that he has reached the end of his current placement.
Post-16 Transitions of Young People with SEN: Wave 2 163