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

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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.

@Supersimkin7what the fuck.

SEN spending of £100k per year upon children that will probably never have a job is a poor allocation of limited resources.

I posted the £100k comment in relation to autistic DS, whose IQ is a whisker under 160. (What’s your DC’s, btw?) As for never having a job, I’d say there was a very good chance the DC he left behind in mainstream will end up working for him.

Please educate yourself about what autism actually is (and isn’t). You’re going to see a lot more of it, whether you like it or not! 😂👌🏻

I’m the parent of an autistic kid, but not one who would ever be violent to a teacher.

I would be appalled, but it’s hard to say how I would respond as I don’t know enough about this particular child to understand if he understands about right, wrong, and to take on board that he has caused pain - if his theory of mind is strong enough.

If it were my own child at a young age I would have been mortified, made her apologise, followed it up at home and made her write you an apology letter. But of course that assumes all the things I know about my own child and what she is capable of. I would have made her tell her Dad what happened herself (with Dad briefed in advance). At the same time I would have asked for (assuming there wasn’t one in train already) a meeting relating to an EHCP as this is clearly unsustainable.

I would have had several sleepless nights over it.

Yes, the public airing of revolting views like this is what happens when the likes of Farage convince the congenitally stupid that there are easy solutions to complex problems.

But I digress… 😂

Agree completely.

Nobody will say it but we are spending completely irresponsible sums on children very unlikely to hold down employment as adults.

Respite for my son costs £100 an hour regardless of where it is. 'Just' providing care isn't cheap.

We absolutely can’t, or shouldn’t anyway.

I’m shocked anyone genuinely advocates for putting children in environments that don’t meet their needs because it’s cheaper for the tax payer, and even more shocked anyone would admit to those views.

We’re educating many non-disabled children who won’t hold down employment too, are they going in the warehouse too?

What a staggeringly discriminatory outlook.

Would you work for free?

You’re going to have to elaborate.

Teachers and support staff may work for horrendously low pay, but it’s not free. Care staff don’t work for free either.

If you’d like to play that game, providing round the clock care for our disabled child would otherwise be someone else’s job, so I do work for free.

With no education, that would increase from unlikely to for certain. At what age would you decide a child isn't worthy of an education?

I was going to say, what a question to ask someone who cares for their disabled child around the clock which would be far from free if the state had to provide care.

We are spending money on children with a neurodevelopmental disability.

Do you begrudge “irresponsible” spending on physically disabled children, or on healthcare for children with diseases? Or only if they are a bit ill/disabled and are likely to become acceptable-levels of ill/disabled in future?

As I said upthread, I’m willing to bet DS IQ is far higher than those on here who want him ‘warehoused’ - listen to yourselves FGS.

I have been in multi agency meetings for my relative where their behaviour has been described as violent attacks or “serious attack” by staff in their specialist setting who have been truly invested in their wellbeing and education for years you can still call a spade a spade.

Do you work in a special school? My response as a parent would be influenced by that.

You keep mentioning your son's IQ as if that makes him more deserving of the support. Who exactly is guilty of that, if not you?

Words like “cheap” and “basic” do not belong in the same sentence, when talking about care for disabled children and young people with complex neurodevelopmental problems and challenging behaviour.

Who do you think is going to be willing to work in this respite centre, for children who apparently can’t be in schools, because staff shouldn’t be expected to keep them in their sight and below their level all the time?

People are only going to be prepared to work there, when the children and young people are properly assessed for staffing. The staff want to know someone has their back. If they need 2:1, 3:1 or 4:1 in their waking hours, the last I heard (about 15 years ago) was £250,000 pa for 2:1! It takes 3 full time staff to provide 1:1, so 3:1 is going to be at least £325,000 and 4:1 £400,000 pa. Then, the staff really need back up from clinical psychologists, speech and language therapists, consultant child psychiatrists, etc to tell them how to handle the behaviour - none of which comes cheap!

Challenging behaviour arises from unmet needs per The Challenging Behaviour Foundation.

It is as @flawlessflipper says, cheaper to give them the education, which meets their needs, such as how to communicate to get what they want, social skills, how to self regulate, etc in an environment, where they can cope!

Language is an intrinsic and extrinsic regulator of emotion - and children can sound very articulate (because they can regurgitate what they have heard very well); but it doesn’t mean to say they know what it means; or if you asked them how to play Monopoly, they could put the language together to do so; or they understand empathy? Teaching children with social communication problems to say sorry, can just give them the message, they can do whatever they like and all they have to is say sorry, to make everything alright again!

It’s not about IQ, that isn’t correlated with ability to work.

Well you think it shouldn’t all be about money. So would you work for free and learn the charge? If not then you admit it is about money as the staff need to be paid and schools funded. We can’t be spending £150k on one child per year unless they need incredibly complex medical care, round the clock nursing and a ventilator.

They're already being warehoused in underfunded state schools.

It's completely accepted that it isn't possible to provide bespoke education for every child in the country, why should SEN be any different?

What's the upper limit you'd be prepared to pay for non-SEN and SEN children? The country is flirting with financial collapse. What would you cut to find it? UC? PIP?

I’ve got no issue with paying staff and funding schools so that all children can receive an education that meets their needs.

Of course it costs money.

“Every Child Matters,” which means that both mine and @Vinvertebrate’s children do too - regardless of their respective IQs.

I think cutting it from our most vulnerable is a fairly horrendous move to be pushing for.

Evidently you don’t.

Surely the answer is to fund state schools correctly and also make sure that SEND children who aren't able to cope in mainstream school have somewhere appropriate to go that does meet their needs and make sure that is also funded correctly without the need to ''warehouse'' any children?

Education is about far more than whether a child will go on to work or not.

Critics of the cost of SEN provision never seem to take issue with LAs spending huge sums of money on representations defending indefensible cases against unrepresented parents. LAs know they aren’t going to successfully defend these cases yet still spend the large amounts they do.

We can’t be spending £150k on one child per year unless they need incredibly complex medical care, round the clock nursing and a ventilator.

You obviously haven’t got a clue how expensive care is. Round the clock nursing care would cost more than £150k pa.

See the case of Matthew Garnett at £13,500 a week in an Assessment and Treatment Unit, where from what I have seen, people get precious little assessment or treatment, except anti psychotic drugs:

https://www.learningdisabilitytoday.co.uk/news/nhs-spending-534-million-a-year-to-lock-away-people-with-learning-disabilities/