Dyspraxic child followed by a SESSAD, age 9
The SESSAD (French home and school support service for children with disabilities) support worker arrives for the home support session. She opens the homework notebook and sees a typed sheet stapled next to the handwritten work. The writing is neat, almost too neat, and an adult might assume a parent did it instead. A small sticker in the top corner, a scan with her phone: she reads the protocol the family agreed on with her three months earlier, confirms the typed sheet really is the child's own work, and can reassure the mother, who was starting to hesitate.
This case concerns dyspraxic children followed by a SESSAD, an ITEP (French institution supporting children with behavioural or emotional difficulties) or a home support service, where an adult from outside the family (or a new support worker) needs to confirm what's happening at homework time.
How it played out
Wednesday, 4:45pm. The SESSAD support worker arrives for the weekly session, covering for the regular worker who is on leave until Christmas. She read the file that morning in the team meeting: visual-spatial dyspraxia, occupational therapy for two years, a PPS (French individualised schooling plan) in place for Year 5, and permission to submit typed work for longer texts. She knows it on paper.
She sits at the small table in Malo's room and opens the notebook. His mother glances over: “The French homework is done, but I'm not sure it's right for him to type this much, shouldn't he practise handwriting more?” The support worker doesn't want to open with a lecture in front of the child. She takes out her phone, scans the small sticker at the top of the printed sheet, and turns the screen towards the mother: “Look, this is exactly the protocol we agreed with you in June, it needs to stay in place, otherwise his hand gets too tired.”
The mother reads it and nods. The session can start on something other than a negotiation about handwriting.
- You write it
- The QR is in place
- The reader scans
- Understood, without explaining again
Where to place the QR code for this case
A round 2cm sticker in the top corner of every typed sheet is the most reliable spot: the support worker sees it as soon as she opens the folder, and so do the mother and grandfather. Ideally it's built directly into the header of the Word or Google Docs template the child types on, so nobody needs to stick it on by hand every week.
Avoid long information sheets handed to the support worker “just in case”: they stay in the SESSAD folder and don't come out when a substitute takes over. Avoid emails to the coordinator: they get archived and aren't reread at session time.
Worth duplicating: in the follow-up folder the support worker fills in after each session, a laminated card with the same QR code lets the private occupational therapist who also follows Malo stay aligned with the SESSAD team's protocol.
This redundancy matters: the homework protocol is the number one point of disagreement between parents and care professionals. A well-placed QR code replaces two review meetings.
Ready-made text templates
Three templates to reuse, shorten or adjust. They're aimed at the support worker arriving for a session, the substitute covering for her, the private occupational therapist, and any care professional who will one day be involved in the child's support. They should take no more than thirty seconds to read, without going through a full PPS.
For the “About” section
“Malo is 9, in Year 4, and has been followed by a SESSAD since 2023. Visual-spatial dyspraxia diagnosed at age 6, weekly occupational therapy, a PPS in progress. Homework protocol agreed with the team: handwriting for short exercises (under 5 lines), keyboard for longer texts. What's printed is his own work, nobody does it for him.”
For the “How to help” section
“You can: remind parent-carers to accept typed work without comment, lock this protocol in at a review meeting if a family carer (grandparent, step-parent) departs from it, allow a 5-minute break between two handwritten exercises, value reasoning over neat handwriting during the session, flag it to the PPS coordinator if a teacher refuses typed work.”
For the “What to avoid” section
“To avoid: reopening the question of ‘he should practise handwriting more’ during a session (already settled with the occupational therapist), asking him to recopy a typed sheet by hand, comparing his handwriting to a sibling's or cousin's, letting a family carer impose their own standard. The protocol is a framework, not a weekly negotiation.”
Conditions relevant to this case
This case starts from developmental dyspraxia followed by a SESSAD. It also concerns children with associated dysgraphia (handwriting that becomes painful beyond a few lines) and children with attention deficit but no hyperactivity (attentional fatigue on fine motor tasks).
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Three texts (introduction, how to help, what to avoid), one shared QR code. When they scan it, the person reads what they need to know, in their own language.