‘Interesting’ article on overdiagnosing in Times.

[Soontobe60]

Just putting this here for discussion.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/9f82545c-57f5-4db2-8a47-9a8cc2304243?shareToken=c0f809004b0c59cf1b96f6b6eb6129c3

I didn't say we give them anything.

I suggested that the state makes available the money they would spend on a child's education so the parents can use it in a way that would best meet the child's need. If they wanted to use it for private provision (schools, tutors etc) then any additional money would have to be provided by the parents.

It would cost the state nothing more than it pays now but could potentially mean that parents could find settings that would better suit their child. I mentioned borderline children because a scheme like this would be most effective for them.

Would this apply to all children?

I think it's definitely something to consider.

My son is borderline in the fact that he has no learning differences and no behavioral issues but he does need a lot of physical care. He's in a wheelchair and is bowel incontinent.

Due to the fact I had to give up my job when he became disabled, we now rely on UC so I'd anticipate not been able to afford top ups unless they were maybe in line with DLA so that could be spent on it.
.

I don't think those are the same statistics as NHS quote......no idea which ias correct
"Saving lives from breast cancer
Screening saves about 1 life from breast cancer for every 200 women who are screened. This adds up to about 1,300 lives saved from breast cancer each year in the UK.
Finding cancers that would never have caused a woman harm
About 3 in every 200 women screened every 3 years from the age of 50 up to their 71st birthday are diagnosed with a cancer that would never have been found without screening and would never have become life-threatening. This adds up to about 4,000 women each year in the UK who are offered treatment they did not need.
Overall, for every 1 woman who has her life saved from breast cancer, about 3 women are diagnosed with a cancer that would never have become life-threatening.
Researchers are trying to find better ways to tell which women have breast cancers that will be life-threatening and which women have cancers that will not."

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/breast-screening-helping-women-decide/nhs-breast-screening-helping-you-decide

In the places I'm familiar with, yes: it operates on a principle similar to how nursery funded hours work. The funding follows the child wherever they go. The state still operates state schools which don't charge extra school fees.

This is a very different system so you wouldn't end up with the UK outcome of having either state schools or really posh schools with amazing swimming pools. Because of the state funding, it is financially viable to have a lot more schools which charge a small tuition fee, let's say like £1-2k a year, in addition to fancy ones. So if you wanted to run a small local private school where you just wanted smaller classes and otherwise be basically like a state school, you just need the parents to fund a few more teachers rather than a whole full school.

It's not a SEN specific thing but would probably help a lot of SEN kids who currently need state-funded 1-1, accommodations that take up teacher time, LA reviews and appeals etc etc.

It feels to me (as an immigrant outsider) that the UK is so fixated on having absolutely no inequality for ideological reasons, that they invented the most inequal system possible (you either get 30:1 or 1:1)

Another poster has set out quite a lengthy post while Ive been at work which says my answer better than I would

Im not sure what the angst or resistance is to how and why criteria and diagnostics will change over time, and it will.

I doubt that autism is being overdiagnosed, especially in girls.

Could more people with less severe needs make their own adaptations and could school policy make that easier (rules around uniform, for example)? How would that affect the kids who need really rigid rules to support their behaviour?

I've already written screeds about how authoriarian schools are harmful. You can have rigid rules about uniform that support choice. A uniform policy that offers a choice of white polo shirt, white shirt, or plain white crew-necked top gives a child with sensory needs a choice of three tops, one of which is likely to meet their needs. You don't need to relax the enforcement of that rule. Empowering pupils who can do so to manage their own adjustments is exactly what SEND kids need. Yet, we hear of schools where a pupil has to ask, disrupting the class and standing out as different in the process, to remove or put on a jumper. Such a rule deters pupils from managing their own comfort. When combined with a child who struggles to detect being too warm and struggles socially, so will be reluctant to interact with the teacher, such a rule will result in a child overheating and melting down.

What username, please, so I can find the post.

I think the class size of thirty is part of the problem. If you have zero SEND kids, or maybe one or two whose support needs don't include LD or behavioural support, you can run a class of thirty with one teacher and support all the kids (thinking back to my school days). But as soon as you have a child who needs substantially more contact time, thirty kids is too many.

I feel like sensory needs are also something that were unheard of even 10 years ago. Yet now very prominent.

I feel like sensory needs are also something that were unheard of even 10 years ago.

You may feel that way, but it isn’t the case.

1. Thirty years ago, I was cutting the care and branding labels out of my clothing, complaining about itching tights and sanitary pads, and struggling to cope with sleeping in dormitories on residential trips because of the noise of other people breathing. Sensory issues have always existed for autistic people, they just weren't talked about, and autistic girls weren't even being diagnosed.
2. In the last decade there has been a huge change in indoor and outdoor lighting caused by the abandonment of compact fluorescent lamps indoors and sodium lamps outdoors in favour of brighter and bluer LED lamps. Outdoor advertising used to be static, usually unilluminated billboards; it's now LED-based moving displays. This causes a huge increase in the brightness and spectrum of light that people are exposed to. We know that even NT people are adversely affected by blue light from screens, so it should be no surprise that ND people are also affected by it.

It's actually more unequal than that - it's a real postcode and age lottery.

@selffellatingouroborosofhate My fantasy package of school reforms would also include getting rid of backlit smartboards!

When I went to primary school we had no school uniform. When I went to secondary school the uniform rules were relaxed.

So yes you could wear sunglasses in the playground.

So yes you could wear a variety of lengths of skirt or trousers. No jeans at my state school but other state schools you could get away with it.

I didn't wear a tie or blazer. My friends at different state schools had different rules on ties but weren't forced to buy the school blazer.
etc.

The low need adults I know aged 40+ with ADHD and Autism managed with clothing in school due to the less ridged uniform polices.

So how did the low needs undiagnosed ND kids cope when I was at school? I don’t remember anyone complaining about the uniform.

Then why do so many ND people seem to engage a lot with tech and the kids ‘regulate’ using tablets?

Dopamine. Autonomy. Monotropism.

?

I'm explaining why screen time can be regulating when equally modern life, lights and technology can be overstimulating in other environments.

Dopamine, reduces stress. Autonomy, when someone has control of their stimulation they're likely to feel much more regulated. Monotropism, because we focus better on one thing at a time and when we are in a focus it allows us to be able to reduce focus on other overwhelming stimulus.

That doesn't mean that other sensory input suddenly stops being overwhelming. Its not a cure, they are just tools to be used as and when needed.

Because watching something that interests you is engaging and helps you relax? Because autistic children don't understand the science about blue light? Because there's quite a difference between sitting in a low-light room with a tablet and sitting in a room that is flooded with LED light fittings?

The care tags and branding labels in the back of the neck made of recycled plastic bottles, with sharp scratchy bits where a heated cutter was used to cut them out and melt the edges so that they don't fray, are a relatively new phenomenon. They are also painful, not just annoying.

Lanyards are another pain factory because they also are made of recycled bottles and have sharp melted bits. NHS staff, whose scrubs don't have collars, get skin tags from their lanyards, so they're not just a problem for autistic people.

My secondary school had no blazers and a choice of three skirt styles and you could buy your skirt from anywhere or even make your own as long as it was one of those three styles. I was able to hit the shops and buy a lined skirt in a much finer twill fabric than most of my peers, which I was comfortable in. Modern school uniforms dictate a specific skirt or trousers from a specific manufacturer. If that coarse twill is like sandpaper to an autistic child, he or she is screwed.

Blazers are horrible to wear, even as an adult. They pull across the front of my arms when I reach forwards and press on my breasts if I fasten them because I have H cup tits. School blazers are not designed with large breasts in mind so DD cup fourteen-year-old me would have had a hard time of it in a school blazer mandated to be worn fastened.

So basically, the low-needs undiagnosed kids of the 90s coped because we weren't expected to wear a ludicrous parody of 1980s business attire to <checks notes> a place of learning that includes science labs and art studios.

Do you ever feel that some posters deliberately go out of their way to not understand?

Definitely. It doesn't fit their narrative of "back in my day..."

Back in their day disabled kids weren't legally entitled to an education. Further back autism was infantile schizophrenia and mothers were blamed for being cold towards their kids in their formative years and autistic kids were put in institutions and mistreated.

I didn't go to a school with blazers but I did go to a school that insisted on those god awful ties with the elastic or clip where you had to have your buttons done up to the top, and I was chastised daily for taking them off and undoing my button, even going as far as being told I would make other people think inappropriately. I can't remember having friends, or any good memories of school but I can remember every time I was punished for feeling uncomfortable and getting detentions for not being able to cope but just being seen as defiant, and then more detentions for being too overwhelmed to do homework, or revision, or eat, or drink, or speak when spoken to. I do remember spending a lot of time out of school and under the hospital for malnutrition because I felt too unwell to eat every single day from school, and I remember having to have bone scans to check my bone density as I was always in pain.

I remember being bone tired every single day but too overstimulated to sleep at a normal time and being called overdramatic for not being able to cope with multiple people talking over me at once and just being reduced to "she must be tired" by teachers who then said it is my fault I should just get to bed at a normal time.

I remember getting labelled a psycho and bullied by kids I couldn't get away from because they'd seen me have meltdowns and used it against me, even telling my first boyfriend I'm his future psycho ex girlfriend and ruining my relationships.

Thank God there's more understanding of autism now and people feel safer pursuing this avenue, it's just a shame that there are so many people around who either lack the capacity to understand or are willfully ignorant to autism.

Maybe they don't remember kids with sensory issues or social difficulties but I bet they remember the class weirdos, or the crazy kids in their class, or the troublemakers and the distractions, or the kids that got "special" privileges and seemed to be favourited by certain teachers.

I had school uniform - like a pp said I had to cut out labels, but also I spent a lot of time at a high base stress level because of uncomfortable clothes.

Fast forward to now and sensory input is much higher all round - noises, lights etc. No wonder more kids aren’t coping. Pity no one wants to consider minor changes within schools that could potentially make a big difference to everyone’s experience. That’s just too difficult to consider 🙄

In the last couple of days I’ve had two interesting conversations, one with a NT man - basically autism doesn’t exist, it’s just poor parenting skills (and that pans out with many NT opinions and their disgust at the possibility of changing things).
One with a ND teacher who is now retired due to chronic illness probably caused by her years in an increasingly toxic school, who thinks that far more of the population are ND, maybe up to 80%, but we’re only seeing a substantial increase now because daily living conditions are so stressful - it’s more and more difficult for those of us who are ND, particularly children, to escape it. And the world is run by those with no issues whatsoever, and like to keep that the case and seem to enjoy seeing the vulnerable ones suffer because of their “poor choices”.
Seeing more and more of these threads crop up and the shocking attitudes towards SN children, I’m starting to agree with her.