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 will “go on” with getting violently attacked at work until I find another job! As I’ve said many times now.

Unfortunately the school is now so understaffed because so many have left, there isn’t anyone else to swap with! Believe me, I’ve asked.

I would love for any of you to come and work in a primary school facing the challenges we are with the sheer volume of SEN needs and tell me we aren’t trying our hardest to cope.

I was with a friend last night. Head of year 8 in a secondary school. Her current cohort is 68 percent of students with SEN. Let that sink in.

I have, never ever said this.

I don’t need to.

I worked in primary education, then specialist education, then alternative provision (a PRU).

That’s how I know how committed you need to be to it in order to do it, because it is tough and if you’re not “all in” you’ll really feel it. Like you are now.

It would be incredibly unlikely that anyone I worked with in any of those settings would be talking about SEN children as resource draining, because of how committed to supporting them they were.

Must be a difficult job to do if you don’t actually want to.

But as I said. Your job is to work with the children in that unit. They’re your professional priority, and if your focus is their behaviour and how unfair their presence is on the other children, you’re not putting them first.

As a professional, I don’t get that. As a parent, I’d be disappointed.

Ooof that’s a bit unfair. I also work in the primary sector with some very very challenging children. They can negatively affect their cohort in many ways and we struggle to keep everyone safe. Their presence is often unfair on the other children and it does no one any favours to pretend that it isn’t. Do we support them, yes. Should they be in an alternative provision, also yes. Discussions about resource are important and mean that the children (who are the priority) by which I mean ALL the children, get the dedicated support they need.

(edited for punctuation errors!)

Again, I’ve never said they are “resource draining”

Ive said that violence has no place in schools.

My “issue” is that OP is assigned to work with these children, and doesn’t appear to want them there and considers their presence unfair.

The issue around resource is valid. But in my view that’s like being a Y5 teacher and prioritising the Y3 class. They’re not your job.

I also know all too well that if you’re not invested in working with challenging kids, it’ll make you absolutely miserable to do so. You’re either all in, or best out of it, for your and their good.

The wages are so rubbish for TAs so perhaps OP should be valued.

You have. You have spoken about how other children can’t get the support they need because of the behaviour of others, how your staff are spending too much time dealing with those children.

That’s probably the case. But your specific job is to work with those children. They’re your priority, so they’re not taking you from anywhere.

If you’d prefer to be with children who present less challenge then that’s fair enough, but that’s why on a professional level I think you’re best off out of there, because if you’d prefer to work with other children then you can’t be at your best in there. Which isn’t going to work for you or them.

Absolutely no idea what you mean.

TA pay is shit. But what that’s got to do with how they’re deployed is beyond me.

Next person may be worse (not saying that OP is) or there may not be anyone else there at all because not only are the wages bad but you get hurt in the bargain

It’s easier to fill those vacancies with people new into the profession, because they don’t remember a time when those children weren’t there.

It’s not as much of a culture shock, because all they know is the current system and current levels of intervention etc.

That does cost schools a small fortune in either agency costs and retention/replacement etc, but we do find that people who started in schools when TA work was more general do struggle more. It’s more of a shock to the system.

(I work in education recruitment services)

yes that makes sense

I think it definitely used to be more of a general role

shame there can’t be both

The TA role has really changed. My DM used to be one and it just seemed to be assisting the teacher with supplies and helping some of the kids with things like reading. She didn't change nappies and it was rare for a staff member to be hit. It's too much of a change in job description and it doesn't sound like the pay has gone up enough with the added responsibilities.

It hasn’t.

Most of the schools I work with pay the exact same for support staff whether they’re specialist or not.

Many of them pay NMW regardless of whether you’re a general classroom support in Y2, or a behaviour support assistant in a SENd hub.

SENd schools and alternative provisions sometimes pay very slightly more, but we’re talking a couple of pounds an hour.

Every now and then teachers will get a pay rise due to strike action or pay scales moving, many of them get a SEN top up too, but it never seems to trickle down to support staff seeing the same increase.

The pay is awful, it should be much better.

My son has 2:1 and that includes changing him multiple times a day.

Would you feel the same way if a nurse complained about the NHS? Are they not still able to perform their duties and care for their patients while still thinking the system is broken?

Every TA I know feels the same as me. We get agency staff all the time who last one or two days and are never seen again.

We advertised for an HLTA and had 3 applicants! All three weren’t deemed good enough for the role at interview and no one was appointed.

The role has changed drastically. Before I was deployed here I had a key worker group in Nursery and did all of my planning and parents evenings. Massive responsibility and no pay increase.

We do the job because we are passionate about helping children. It hurts when you feel you are failing all of them due to a broken education system.

I’d feel the same way if they were saying their patient didn’t belong in their hospital; and therefore in their care, because I would still see it as a lack of desire to care for them. Like they were doing it through gritted teeth.

HLTAs are vanishingly rare. People don’t do the qualification anymore, so it ends up being newly qualified teachers who really would prefer teacher pay.

That’s a big leap from EYFS to working with a SENd Y4, very different. I’m not surprised it’s been difficult, sounds like a real baptism of fire.

Are you able to focus on the ones in your care, rather than whether you’re failing “all of them?” The 4 in your base are your responsibility, they’re the specific group you’re assigned to focus on, “all of them” isn’t really your issue - currently.

It was the same, 20 - 30 years ago. LAs played every dirty trick in the book then:

1. For instance, parents used to write to ask for their child to be statemented. LAs usually claimed not to receive any letter, unless sent by signed for delivery.
2. Then the LA ignored the parents, because actually they needed to ask for their child to be assessed for a statement under Sx of the relevant act.
3. Phone calls were denied.
4. LAs subjected parents to intense bullying in meetings and slanted the minutes to make the parents look stupid
5. Statements were written with no provisions specified - meaningless and unenforceable. There might be some hours of TA support, but then they were used for half a dozen children or to push another child in a wheelchair round the school. The child could end up soiling themselves, because they couldn’t cope without their support
6. No LA ed psy ever recommended special provision
7. 10 children put forward for every one unit place; and parents didn’t know units existed anyway
8. Parents often had to appeal to the tribunal and LAs played every dirty trick in the book. Some went all the way, deliberately to lose parents’ money, to give a message to all the other parents
9. Some children, as young as seven went home and cried for several hours, because they couldn’t cope in mainstream - or school refused big time
10. Children with SEN were pushed into MLD schools, if they couldn’t cope in mainstream, but didn’t have switched on parents to seek what they really needed at tribunal - like those with dyslexia, language disorders, autism, etc
11. There was less information on the internet
12. My LA’s officers used to taunt parents at tribunal “It’s 3:2 to us!”
13. LA ed psys used to say resources were wasted on working class children, because they didn’t get the input from their parents….

Does it all sound familiar? I believe it’s worse now, because education was extended from age 16 to 25 in the Children and Families Act 2014, but with no extra funding; and funding probably never kept pace with costs; but LAs were dreadful even then! Many parents I knew had to appeal to the tribunal - the parents of one of DD’s school friends were nearly bankrupted, because they were self employed, with the stress to get two children a year apart to her specialist school at tribunal. IIRC, one appeal was £45,000 and that was 20 years ago!

This is why schools need to request EHCNAs for those pupils it is necessary for. Then support parents to appeal inadequate EHCPs. TA provision can be detailed, specified and quantified in F of EHCPs. Then that provision can be enforced.

But I do. And I do it very well for what it’s worth. It’s the violence that concerned me after my injury.

the thing is, the people with the experience, and patience are often like me. i worked as a Classroom assistant, i have quals as a youth MHFA & a TA, i have worked with kids from age 2 up to age 16. ( i prefer the 2-8yo personally, lol)

I have LOTS of hands on experience and personal experience of ASD/ADHD & DCD.

However, i had to stop working because much of that experience is from my own kids who have SEN... when i've tried to return to work, i've been overlooked because schools would rather hire parents as volunteers than pay me for my quals/experience.

Now my own kids are at college, i'm too disabled to work with those kids if i wanted to return to the classroom.. who's going to employ a TA who uses crutches/a wheelchair with children who're a flight risk?