If you have a child with autism that can be violent..

[Colouroutsidethelines]

How do you feel when you find out they have attacked school staff? How do you respond?

I am a teaching assistant. I was playing in the garden with another staff member and four children who all have an autism or ADHD diagnosis.

The child I was playing with in the construction area is in year 4 and very articulate. We were conversing nicely, talking about his favourite cars. He then got up and walked off and before I stood up, he had gone behind me, picked up a large wooden log and cracked me hard over the head with it.

It caught me completely off guard and I did cry with the pain as I ran inside to seek first aid.

Curious to how you would respond if this was your child.

I also work in SEN school and am interested to know why the child wouldn’t be blamed? As it was a deliberate calculated act of violence, creeping up behind someone, going and picking a weapon? All deliberate decisions to inflict pain.

i think social stories can be helpful here to try and instill better values in an accessible way to the child, no accountability is never the answer.

The per child budget in real terms for school education in England has been stagnating for a long time now. Total budget up (baby boom.that peaked in 2012 ish) but average spend down. Certainly over the period since the last major SEN reform (2014). Costs are up hugely (energy much higher, minimum wage is much higher - teachers obviously aren't on minimum wage but there are cooking, cleaning, maintenance staff).

There is an Economics concept called "economies of scale". It is cheaper to educate a group of (say) a hundred children in a special school that is relatively local than it is to send a few a large distance by taxi and/or provide other bespoke arrangements. That's because you're dividing the fixed costs by 100.

But the government were making the decisions on the provision of special schools (LAs can't just decide they need an additional one) whereas it's the LAs that pay for the taxis, bespoke arrangements etc (after epic efforts on behalf of the parents usually).

Sorry OP, bit off topic.

I would recommend you leave this job. The management don't sound like they have your back (literally as well as metaphorically) and you really shouldn't keep working somewhere without proper procedures, training and support.

I know it's hard when you've got attached but you often don't realise how toxic some schools are until you're out of them.

And to answer your question, I'd be mortified, but I would feel that all I could really do is my best at home and support you in getting paperwork to move e.g. EHCP processes along (if I had the skillset).

Like I said I can only comment on what I’ve seen over my career in the primary school I’ve worked out. There was categorically no violence until recent years.

I feel heartbroken for all of the children whose learning is so deeply affected every day.

In reception on meet the teacher week where the new class would be spending time with their new teacher, they were taken by a supply TA as the SENCO instructed the teacher to take a little boy with autism, range 5, violent and pre verbal out into the yard.

She thought he needed to bond with her(or keep him away from the others?) who knows! No thought for the other 27 children who also have a huge range of needs and needed her.

Just read the “ready for school” post currently going on AIBU. Lack of parenting, huge rise in tech use and UPF consumption has a lot to answer for. It’s not just those children that have SEN that need a massive amount of support. It’s the majority.

You say you don’t want comments about the school response op, but they are needed. ‘There’s no money’ is not good enough. You could have been very seriously injured. If you still have a headache I’d be tempted to get medical attention. Make sure the school knows that as well. The behaviour needs recording, investigating, and having serious words with the parent if there’s no diagnosis already about why not. Can schools not refer themselves?

No one can say from here whether that’s sheer impulsivity, over stimulation, raised badly or some sort of mental illness.

Some parents are like that unfortunately. Some erroneously think staff are trained or even paid to deal with it, others think they have to deal with it so why shouldn’t everyone else which I don’t get, some are asd themselves, some, well to be quite blunt some people are selfish entitled arseholes and I-don’t-know-what-else. Violence is increasing and there’s a myriad of possible reasons.

It sounds like things have gone down hill at your school with a new head which you mentioned before. Of course it isn't going to end well if children who desperately need specialist support are left without it.

bullshit.

I'm a qualified NN & TA for primary age children, I worked in those setting on and off from 1999 through until 2015 when i had to give up work. My son was starting primary school 15 years ago and i was having every bit of the fight then for him then over that 6 years as i am now to get the proper supervision, EHCP, funding..etc for his younger sister.

You should see the shitty letters his primary school were sending me back in 2013 because they didn't want to handle him and didn't know how to. I had to fight all the way to the LA to get him what he was legally entitled to. It's fresh in my mind as i was sorting through all his paper work for his latest EHCP update now he's an adult still in special educational settings.

It's harder to GET an EHCP & Funding now. THAT is what the problem is. The kids like my son have even less support now than they did 15 years ago... but do not kid yourself that it wasn't going on back then.. i assure you it was... i saw it with my own students, and then witnessed it with my own son.

naughty boys schools. kind of like borstal before it turned into a youth prison system, but a bit less strict i think.

or thats what we called them.. because almost invariably it was young boys sent to them. One of my brothers school friends was kicked out of our primary and sent to the one local to us.. It was in an old manor house, and they had maybe 60 boys that attended from the local area. Most had some kind of SEN or ADHD and were on the whole 'badly behaved' or violent.

One lad in my year in.. 90ish bought a knife to school, he was also yoinked out of my school quicker than you could blink and sent there.

it was closed down and then turned back into a hotel in about 2005...and the boys were sent back to mainstream or other settings, or often just dropped out of the system.

There was briefly a girls one that was set up in the local cottage hospital but it lasted 5/6 years before being shut down again.

Please report this to your local authority . The incident, how the school aren’t protecting you and the parent laughing at you (probably why their kid is violent). I wouldn’t go back to work until the LA are involved.

Again, I am talking about MY experience in the primary school I’ve worked in for decades.

I am always horrified and apologise profusely. It is my worst worry about sending them to school. I hate the thought that they might hurt other pupils or staff. It’s not fair on the staff. I wish children could more easily be placed in the appropriate school for their needs.

Depends.

If I'd told school their difficulties and they had refused to.listen I would be very cross with school but feel sorry for you.

If I'd told you specifically that they do xyz if ABC doesn't happen then I'd be annoyed a bit with you too but also feel sorry for you.

Getting schools to actually listen to advice from parents is difficult, then they are all surprised that things go wrong.

If school had given you no training about this particular child and keeping safe you should complain to.them.

I wonder if she'll be laughing if he gets arrested for assaulting a woman in a few years. He won't magically grow out of it with a mother who finds it hilarious. She's encouraging him to continue.

Most decent people would deem it unacceptable to laugh at the OP, not just the OP.
The parent will be even more shocked or embarrassed if their son gets arrested for assaulting a woman in a few years, presumably she'll then laugh in the police or victim's face out of shock or embarrassment.
The OP has said absolutely nothing that suggests she behaved unprofessionally in this. You are just trying to make her in the wrong when she isn't

Or was it the dad that laughed in your face? It feels even worse if its a dad laughing at his son assaulting a woman.

Was he “told off”? I think if he is highly articulate, he would know that what he did was completely out of order.
From what you’ve said, he doesn’t have a mental age if 2 years and even if he did, a two year old would be told that it’s dangerous/unkind etc.
I think we are doing some children who despite their diagnosis clearly understand and can communicate, a real disservice by not expecting decent behaviour and just excluding them from school. Such actions will fail them in the long term both educationally and socially

No you weren't, or you'd have said 'in my experience' you're trying to speak for all of us.

"The increase in SEN and violence in schools is off the charts. I can hand on my heart say that we didn’t have these issues 10/15/20 years ago. It’s a very recent phenomena. We need to ask ourselves as a society, what is driving the increase?"

Think yourself lucky that the schools you were in didn't have it, but don't try and tell everyone on this thread that it didn't happen everywhere else, it very much did, and parents of my age with kids who are now older teens/young adults can corroborate that as the time you're talking was when FB support groups were taking off and we were all talking about it.. you could also go back into the threads here on MN itself (been posting here since 2009) and find plenty of evidence of it

You need to take off your rose tinted glasses about the past.

And as i said, lack of funding and less teachers/TA's and less staff properly trained with how to handle these students in the classroom, is what is driving it.

Thank you.

Are you always this hostile? There has been a huge rise in violence in primary schools and children presenting with SEN. In our area alone there is a 5 year waiting list for an ADHD assessment as they are snowed under with referrals.

Maybe you need to stop burying your head in the sand and admit there is a huge problem. Like I said it is all of the children involved that I feel sorry for. The SEN children they aren’t in the correct setting to meet their needs and the other children who get forgotten about and have to witness extreme behaviour/ language and violence on a daily basis.

Completely agree.

I was at school 25 years ago (I’m 36), and there absolutely were SEN children in my school. They just weren’t diagnosed or effectively supported.

A little boy in my primary class who could not sit still, and spent most of his time either running around school or throwing things. ADHD.

A girl I went all the through school with, until she was excluded because her disengagement turned into behaviour. Struggled in every single lesson, couldn’t read by the time we left primary school. Global delay.

The boy in my secondary school who was violently bullied for playing choo choo trains and wearing incontinence pads in Y9, now spends his days counting buses. Autistic.

My partner is 45, he was diagnosed with autism in his 30s because when he was a kid he was just unsociable and a bit brainy. Definitely autistic.

Those children were there, they were just lost in the system unless they were “bad enough” to go to specialist.

The issue is more children are diagnosed than ever before because we don’t just ignore symptoms and expect square pegs to sit in round holes anymore.

The further issue is that mainstream schools are expected to be inclusive and keep children who can learn there.

Your specific issue is that the children in your care should at least have EHCPs by now, and therefore more funding or a placement change.

The children however, aren’t a problem. They’re kids in the wrong setting or without the required support who cannot manage and show that by behaving how they do.

I said that there were children that would have been described as quirky but would now be diagnosed at autistic. What we didn’t have was extreme violence, or any violence. That is my experience and I can only be honest.

They’re being violent because their needs aren’t adequately met in a setting that isn’t right for them, staff levels that don’t meet the ratios they need, and CPD training when what they need is specialists.

That’s not your fault, but you do sound like you think it the fault of the children and would prefer mainstream schools didn’t have SENd children in anymore.

That’s not how education works anymore. When I started in education recruitment 10 years ago we largely employed general TAs in mainstream. Now - SEN support and 1:1.

The education system has changed, those children stay in mainstream until they absolutely need moving. Rightly or wrongly, there’s an expectation that mainstream staff deal with those challenges too, like specialist provision does every day.

I think it's overly simplistic to view it this way.

An increase in SEN diagnoses =/= an overall increase in SEN incidence. (There were at least 5 children in my primary school class of 25 who would be deemed autistic/ADHD today, but they were either consistently excluded or sent to special schools that no longer exist).

Other things going on at the same time as your "huge rise" include:

• increased numbers of older parents (I am one fwiw) when there is a proven link between maternal/paternal age and autism
• higher expectations of attainment in English/maths etc at a younger age influencing schools' management of pupils.
• almost universal use of childcare and childminders for economic reasons.
• ? more ND people coupling up and having DC with a genetic predisposition to being ND themselves.
• reduction in Early Years services
• Closure of special schools in favour of "one size fits all" supposedly inclusive mainstream
• Massive increase in adult care costs borne by LA's impacting budgets for other areas.

I don't know if there is correlation, causation or neither, but all of those things should also be thrown into the mix before we start blaming disabled children for being disabled, and acting accordingly. "Can't" not "won't" is something that specialists in autism are consistently keen to emphasise.

Decent specialist education is eye-wateringly expensive, particularly when it's delivered by independents who have popped up to fill the glaring gaps in LA provision. LA's can deliver it more efficiently and cost-effectively (e.g. through SEN hubs attached to MS schools), but in terms of education policy, that has not been the direction of travel for many years, and what you are describing is the result.

Many on here are shooting the messenger, unfortunately.