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looking at moving to dubai with job, but need to do some homework first
my youngest son, 9, has a statement of special needs, and has been diagnosed as autistic, specifically moderate speech and language difficulties.
Before I approach the schools, any advice/help in suitable schools would be a great help.

many thanks, great forum !!

hi there, try this site http://www.rashidc.ae/en.htm

Rashid Pediatric Therapy Centre. A fairly large, modern, well run (I have visited there a few times) centre. It relies heavily on sponsorship from the commercial sector - but is very well supported.

Multi-racial, multi-lanuage.

I'm sure there are other schools. GAB may be able to help with others this as she seems to be the education guru!

ooops that should read, multilingual

There's also Dubai Center for Special Needs (I'm not sure if that's the correct name). At least, there was a few years ago. Not sure if it catered to expat children though.

Most mainstream schools won't or will be reluctant to register special needs students. That's not to say it's impossible - I am aware of parents who've successfully enrolled their special needs children. Can't remember which schools though. Probably DESS, JESS, English College, Dubai College, American School, Dubai American Academy would be good places to start. Maybe Regent, Winchester, Emirates International (there's others but can't remember names now).

In conversation someone mentioned a "SENSES" center and it appeared to be a place that dealt with special needs children. Sorry that's as much as I "know".

A friend of mine has an autistic child and is finding it quite hard to find the right support for his little boy. There is an autism centre in Sharjah and Dubai but my friend feels he's wasting his time taking the child there. He's 6 years old and hasn't started schooling yet. The centres don't have the facilities or the trained staff to look after the children properly and their educations are suffering very badly because of this.

My friend is saving up to take his little boy out of the country as he feels his child just won't get the help or education he needs here. He was actually refered to a very good child phsychologist in Dubai who basically told him not to bother with the centres as they're just not good enough. He's finding it very frustrating and is obviously saddened that his child isn't getting the assistance and support he despreately needs.

another one you can look at is "Al Noor" (think it means "the brightness" although my arabic is very rusty).

www.alnooruae.org
alnoor00@emirates.net.ae

Mrs arniegang is by profession a Special Needs Teacher and she agrees totally with Chocs.

dbxsoul wrote:another one you can look at is "Al Noor" (think it means "the brightness" although my arabic is very rusty).

www.alnooruae.org
alnoor00@emirates.net.ae

Ah, that's the one I was thinking about when I said Dubai Center for Special Needs.

I'm not really with it today ...

Actually you are probably thinking about
www.dubaiautismcenter.ae

Many thanks to one and all for sharing their knowledge and experience
Judging by the number of views and responses, SEN @ Dubai is a very sensitive area indeed. I will now speak to the schools but my gut feeling is that i will stick with the 20hrs a week that Bucks LEA has given us, the provision we have in place is too good to risk for the job on offer.

cheers again to you all, you have been a great help
AEC

For anyone interested in this delicate subject please click on the link below for more info.

http://www.expatwoman.com/vbulletin/for ... genumber=4

Hopefully the link works, failing that, www.expatwoman.com (information board), is where you need to look, page 4

more dialogue on the same issue
regards
AEC