Fonagy report due this week

Unfortunately past experience suggests that it might be 😔

An important discussion that highlights the need for better understanding, accurate assessment, and timely support for children and young people. Behind every referral is an individual experience, so improving access to appropriate care should remain the focus.

I’m smiling to myself as Fonagy and David Bell were my uni lecturers together a million years ago.

I generally have a lot of time for Fonagy; he does all sorts of interesting work and has been at the coalface of his profession for decades.

I'm partly in favour, as we cannot continue to diagnose in those numbers in the absence of postdiagnostic support, and the higher the diagnosis numbers, the less support will be available overall. There is no point spending money on assessing if there is none left for follow up support.

I believe however there is also a fair degree of sexism in the way neurodivergence - or assessments - functions in practice. Maybe because of my personal experience. Men are statistically more likely to act out distress (rather than internalise it as women tend to) in a way that's socially problematic to others. I'm tired being asked to be kind and understanding of males who are unpredictable or aggressive and who may or may not be autistic or ADHD.

This starts earlier than teens. Childhood has changed completely. Children no longer play freely without adult supervision. They can't develop the interpersonal skills involved in solving disagreements. Not allowed to take calculated risks.
They don't walk to school alone. Can't build up the self confidence required to meet challenges. I used to ride my bike around alone or with friends. Not possible now even on country roads.

We've built an environment that works against children thriving and growing into independent adults. We really need to focus on younger children's resilience and confidence.

Or, as in our experience, you wait three years for a diagnosis and then there's no help available anyway.

There is no version of solving this problem that doesn't involve putting a lot more money into providing support, and unfortunately I don't think it's very likely that an appropriate level of funding will be forthcoming.

Mmn.

This is a girder in the campaign to radically cut SEND funding for schools. My guess it will be rather like care in the community; in that it'll sound a good idea in theory (big, cold, badly run hospitals, institutionalisation, isolation, etc etc, wouldn't it be so lovely to have community provided care where people live) - and then turns out that there is no 'care' to be in the community, very little actual resources, just the person and community left without anything and required to find a way to manage. But it's going to sound absolutely lovely on paper.

Step one of this will be to devalue those working in SEND and suggest they're all madly over diagnosing for funsies (while actually working from the relatively decent documentation etc from the Blair Labour govt which did, actually, care and do things for this section of society, children and adults)
Then to discredit diagnoses a lot so the public stop having any respect for them and start expecting those with diagnoses to be hypochondriacs/just get on with it
Then to identify other things it could possibly be instead such as lack of exercise, diet, screens, mental health support, parenting styles, all of which would have a point and be really key to look at - but won't involve any actual proper research and certainly no action
It certainly won't be to look at why schools are becoming increasingly somewhere many children can't cope, or think about changing the fundamental issues

This is about removing funding and support from SEND children and getting society primed and messaged not to sympathise with the families and school staff that are going to be left high and dry, unable to cope, so when the outcry starts, there won't be public support for them. It's money driven, not child/need driven.

Thank you. This looks really important. Wonder how influential it will be?

this will need huge funding and resources, the MH provision in England is dire , I hope this won’t be the same.

@WarriorN sorry to pick up a point slightly away from the main topic, but would you mind sharing hypermobility resources? A physio I know advised me to try ChatGPT for help for my DC as it’s such a poorly understood condition but I haven’t yet gone down that route. Happy for you to DM if you are happy to share what helped, so as not to hijack this thread. Thanks.

Lots of factions have reasons for wanting to jump on the sexed brain stuff.

And crucial but easily ignored phrase 'on average'

Lots of interesting stuff in here, thanks Warrior.