AIBU to worry about the surge in school-suggested ASD diagnoses?

I've only read your initial post but ABA isn't appropriate for anyone. In my opinion (mother of an autistic child).

I've just fought for a year against a flawed system to secure an EHCP for him as his diagnosis at aged 6 didn't result in any extra support. I think you are misinformed or not yet informed enough on how the SEN (lack of) support system in local authorities works.

Are you from Barcelona, OP?

Its madness, in our area SaLT come in once a term if lucky and then give a list of courses for the staff to attend. I am happy to attend any training needed to help me support the young people I work with. The biggest barrier is the fact that SaLT don’t fund these courses so schools need to pay for the staff to attend the course as well as paying for a days cover. Sadly schools then have to restrict training to the most essential, meanwhile the children carry on missing out.

The OP has also missed the real scandal which is the complete lack of provision for neurodivergent children for whom school is entirely unsuitable. Huge numbers of parents unable to work AND having to fund the entire cost of their children's education. It's a lifestyle choice apparently.

And let's not forget that neurodiversity is often genetic, these are parents who themselves are often neurodivergent, many having gone through life undiagnosed and having suffered greatly with no support whatsoever...and so it continues. And because our expectations are so low, and our hands so full, we don't make the demands we should, we just carry on doing our best while others pass the time pointing fingers and insulting us. I try to demonstrate to my children that the world has space for everyone which is hard when I don't believe it's true.

Utter bollocks. Doesn't fit with any 'fellow mums' experience. Ignore and move on.

What funding? I'm not aware of extra funding for children with ASD. Any child with additional needs may qualify for an ehcp which has extra funding but they're like hens' teeth according to my son's school. Like any other child and ASD child would have to have significant support needs.

"I keep hearing about 1 to 1 support - but the children they support don’t need 1 to 1 help all the time! Isn’t that a wasted resource other parents could benefit from?"

A wasted resource that other parents could benefit from?

It isn't parents who benefit from the 1-2-1, they don't support your child all day and give you a neatly folded basket of laundry and a casserole at home time.

Also, support in school isn't based on a diagnosis. It's based on the challenges that a child faces. All of this has to be evidenced for the best part of a year with interventions / outcomes all assessed in school and by external bodies.

No teacher is wanting the extra paperwork, meetings and mental load that supporting a child towards diagnosis or EHCP takes.

What has that allegation got to do with anything?

Slight tangent but very young children use terminology that they copy from adults, 'it's my anxiety ', 'my mum says I must be adhd/autistic' after some perfectly normal behaviour. Those and many more from the mouths of nursery children

Interesting the op hasn’t come back. 🤔

Do you not think that those of us who work on autism pathways (over 20 years in my case) have even the slightest inkling of what we are doing?

Also, where are you living that offers ABA as a standard intervention?

Honestly I am getting a bit peeved with this kind of post on here recently.

Autism assessors know about attachment and trauma. We don't give diagnoses "in order to get school support". Most autism pathways are health based and independent of education. We aren't diagnosing someone with a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition lightly or without due diligence you know.

I work in a school. We all say that the wait list for diagnosis is so long that we'd never wait for it before doing something. We treat need not diagnosis. Even with clear signs of need, we don't always get funding!

Unfortunately a diagnosis doesn't even guarantee parental support far less funding!

Out of the hundreds of children I've seen who have a diagnosis, I've only ever questioned one. I've seen plenty of masking and children who 'look fine' in school. Doesn't mean they are!

Interesting about a pp who mentioned change in education from Gove. Hadn't really thought about it but I would agree. It's not like there are suddenly more children with ASC but there are certainly more who aren't coping and need more adaptations in a system which is contradictory. (Inclusion and adaptation for all but also everyone learns the same thing, at the same pace and schools are penalised if they aren't doing both.)

How terrifying . U ok hun? Hugs

As a parent to a DS with ASD all I can say is you are talking BOLLOCKS!

I mean, a diagnosis doesn't equate to funding

And a diagnosis isn't actually easy to get. There are lots of things involved.

Is this impacting you? If not, why the need to post about it?

Sick to death of these stupid posts.
Can’t even be bothered to explain how hard it is to get a diagnosis, how long you have to wait and how little support there is.

IME, they say they will do that to stop you applying for an EHCP, but in reality they can't because they don't have the resources or enough funding. EHCP forces the school and local authority to provide support that they don't have the money for.

The NHS stopped being able to send speech therapists to the school, concentrating on giving group training to parents and TA's. My DD's school had no TA to send, because the few that remained were covering for teachers. So I was trained by the speech therapists in the big group, took a long sabbatical from work from which my career never really recovered from, and went into the school to do the therapy myself. So many parents are not going to be able to afford to do that, we barely could.

Ok @cremebrulait I'll bite.
My ds has a dual diagnosis of ADHD and ASD amongst other issues. He was diagnosed in primary 1 with ADHD and the end of p2 beginning of p3 with ASD.

1st, he's the oldest in his year having missed the cut off date by 1 day
2nd, ABA is harmful to all children and is abusive towards anyone with ASD! On this I speak as a autistic victim of ABA when I was a child
3rd, a diagnosis of ASD is extremely difficult and private diagnosis are rarely accepted.
4th, having a diagnosis on its own gets you no extra support or money you must have additional needs above average levels.
5th, no child is medicated for ASD so your claim about your friends child doesn't hold water.
6th a child who has been assessed as needing a 1 to 1 has been assessed by educational psychologists and other educational experts and funding from local government and Westminster to specifically pay for said 1to1 support for that child not the rest of the class
7th, ASD is a spectrum so each person's abilities should be assessed and then the course work should be set at their level and reassessed periodically to make sure their educational needs are being met.

I really do hope that you are lying about working with children with ASD as your ignorance shines through your posts and your offensive opinions belong in the bin. Fucking ABA was discredited years ago as child abuse

I have also seen this in one of our local schools, OP. Though not to receive funding or resources, but to excuse a poor handle of behaviour, lack of support from upper management and poor class dynamics. I received an awful lot of pressure concerning our son, as did other parents in the class concerning their children. I had the benefit of having has my son in another school previous to this in which he experienced zero issues. I moved schools again to one I had more confidence in and he is now doing wonderfully again. It was the school.

This is an absolute pile of bilge posted by someone who doesn't have a fkin scooby.

Your right but a diagnosis does help. In my area they always reject the first application and an ECHP is really hard to get

CAHMs adviced we apply for one now as they get rejected so often hopefully she will be accepted by the time she reaches secondary school is what they said

This.

There’s posting a goady thread and there’s spreading actual misinformation. This thread should be reported as its firmly the latter.

Grow up OP.

In my experience, the school SENCO would tell me that the school do get a little bit of extra funding and that the school can provide for her needs with that - but this was only said every time I said I wanted to apply for an EHCP. Whenever I left them to carry out that plan, I would later discover that they had not been doing anythng to support her and the conversation would start again. It was my impression that the school did not want me to apply for an EHCP because they would have to fund part of it because the pittance they did receive did not cover it.

My DD was diagnosed after going non-verbal at a new primary school - the diagnosis process was not encouraged by the school but rather supported by a GP and a new paediatrician who was willing to refer her to a specialist centre in London as they could not assess her while she had selective mutism. I had to research this myself and ask the paediatrician to do it.

The parent is so often on their own in all of this and so often the clock is run down. The schools are put in an impossible position of your child versus many other children.

For those who are stuck in long waiting lists for assessments don’t feel you need to wait for a diagnosis to push for support. schools should support based on needs and you don’t need a diagnosis in order to obtain an EHCP.