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.

Obviousky an odd reaction to your injury by the parent. Perhaos they didntnrealise the seriousness as you were stood there with i assume no visible injury?

Dc has hit a teacher/ta before. This was about 9 yearsnago so before this rise in sen and diagnosis.
Our school prinary is rubbish with sen. Despite loads of issues in reception including hitting, biting and scratching they at no point agreed there was sen or other issues. It was all rptreated as bad behaviiur that they thought i coukd somehow prevent at home. We were very strict loads of punishment and it never made any difference as its audhd impulsivity. Taking things away just escalated issues meabing it went on for longer.
She was sent our of class and to other classes.
But we never saw a senco.

Anyway it eventuakky escalated at uks2 with iut of shool clubs.

From the first few weeks of reception i kneew she needed suoervision at break times. But that never happened. The social skills was awfully supported too for all year groups. Her year has over 10% diagnosed asd. Only one severe whi left to a sen school. But none of these kids was referred by the school. Others told no to ehcp if they were even told about them. And yet then several have moved to sen schools from y7.

The process is crazy - parent relying on schools to support the sen diagnosis process but the schools dont havr training to recognise it.

The school also prefer to le t the kids struggle for the 7 years rather than spend money.

imo all suspected asd and adhd kids should be entitled to sen meetings.an d extra conversation with teachers.
there should be a consequence to.the school for ignoring sen and like in op school pretending that ehcp cant be gotten.

when we finally approched gp she was referred easily.

in op situation hard to believe the school are using nursery.etc area for putting at least one violent kid.

You would expect the parent not to laugh for a start

Do we, as a society, need to accept that some SEN children shouldn't even be in education and should be safely 'warehoused' instead?

@ThisOldThang are you a parent? If one of your, presumably neurotypical kids had a catastrophic head injury tomorrow rendering them with severe SEN, would you be cool with them going in the warehouse too?

He hasn’t been diagnosed

I am not in any way condoning laughing and I can only share my own experience of parenting a DC with Autism but for me it is a little like living in the sleep deprived newborn stage permanently. Those silly things you did or the way you acted in those first few weeks of parenthood due to sleep deprivation, that is how it feels to me, only my body has been in this state for years not weeks, the help and support doesn't exist that does in the newborn stages and I am expected to put in 10x more effort than a parent of a NT child.

The OP said in the first post that the DC either have autism or ADHD and the title states the child has autism. Given OPs responses, even if this DC doesn't have a diagnosis yet (most children don't at that age) he likely will eventually.

Maybe he will , maybe he won’t, but at the moment he hasn’t and what has happened is not acceptable and that has to be communicated to the child in question. I do feel the onus is on the school to make it as safe as possible for staff and children as possible and they have massively failed to do so. A comprehensive risk assessment should be carried out otherwise the school could face serious legal repercussions .

You do know people don't develop their disability at the point of diagnosis? Ofcourse the school should be carrying out an emergency review of the EHCP, but OP has said the school will not do that. It isn't the parent or DCs fault if the school refuse to follow the legal process.

If the child doesn’t have a diagnosis, that’ll be why there’s no funding and staffing available. He’s not going to get 2:1, or even funded 1:1, without a diagnosis.

The school isn’t technically understaffed, the LA won’t grant them funding for extra staff because they don’t know they’re out of ratio if there’s no diagnosis.

I wouldn’t laugh if our son attacked a teacher. But I’d have some questions about how he was in a position to be able to do that, and who was meant to be supervising him when it happened.

If it was chosen behaviour, school and parents need to have a real look and why he’s choosing that behaviour and do something about it.

It actually says in the OP that all 4 children she was with have a diagnosis.

I expect support from colleagues and management - parents aren't generally told who's been hurt.

EHCPs, and the SEP within, are based on needs, not diagnosis. Parents may have to appeal but it is possible to secure an EHCP and 1:1 or 2:1 without a diagnosis.

She says later they’re in a hub (essentially) and none have an EHCP or formal diagnosis yet.

@flawlessflipper That’s why the funding for support will be harder to achieve, and why they feel very short staffed. Very few LAs would happily provide 2x salaried TAs for children who on paper, don’t have need.

If anyone’s letting the staff down, it’s their SENCO and SLT.

You are equating no diagnosis with no need. That is not the case. Which is why EHCPs and the SEP detailed in F of EHCPs are based on needs, not diagnosis. The DC OP mentions obviously have SEN regardless of diagnosis. The law is the same whether they have a diagnosis or not.

Many have to appeal to get 1:1 or 2:1 detailed, specified and quantified in F whether they have a diagnosis or not.

I've just noticed this update. Given this is 4 DC I am assuming it is the school not pushing to get the support in place. That is shocking. The school sounds like a sinking ship, I would jump before you get dragged down with it OP.

Ah, I saw that none have an EHCP but didn't see that none have a formal diagnosis.

It was hard enough for my son to get an EHCP just because his situation is quite unusual and that was with the schools full support. No formal diagnosis and a school who don't seem very supportive of the staff or SEN children isn't going to end well.

Apologetic, upset and mortified.

And angry. At the school system at myself, at the world generally.

Id then use it as further evidence that the setting or staffing wasn't appropriate.

That’s all well and good, but OP states they don’t have EHCPs yet either.

So where and why would this extra staffing be coming from?

They definitely do have needs, and the school definitely isn’t staffed correctly for it, but instead of blaming the children (as OP seems to be) why don’t we try looking at why they’re not staffed properly?

Nobody knows they’re not if there’s no EHCP. I don’t know where OP is but our LA doesn’t give out support staff funding like sweets. No plan, no funding.

Rather than throwing them all in a room together because they’re disruptive, SLT should be pushing to get what they actually need by getting their ducks in a row.

Apologies, autistic adult here, so literally answered the question, but the point is, I've been there. I get it and it's just awful for everyone.

My little girl is severely autistic. I'd be shocked and probably need time to process the information as I know she doesn't lash out unless extremely distressed so I'd want to know why shes done that. I'd apologise to the teacher but depending on how I was being spoken to I'd struggle to do that straight away as if someone comes at me in an intimidating or angry way my "fight or flight" response is to "freeze". I would also want to work with school to ensure the incident didn't happen again. I'd certainly not laugh about the teacher getting hurt though.

No she didn’t say that

You must be confusing my posts with someone else’s posts. I haven’t mentioned extra staffing without an EHCP. Nor have I blamed the children.

The school should request EHCNAs and support the parents to appeal if necessary. The school could also apply for high needs top up funding, which doesn’t require an EHCP - any LA with a blanket policy saying otherwise is acting unlawfully and could be challenged, legally if necessary.

But as it currently stands he doesn’t have a diagnosis does he? And you wouldn’t expect a parent to laugh when told about what their child did because it’s not funny

No, OP complains that they’re not adequately staffed for the children’s needs. They’re not going to be without funding, which evidently the school aren’t getting.

She needs to take that up with SLT.

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

None of these children have an EHCP

The children don’t have EHCPs. We don’t have 1:1 support at all in school.

These children don’t have a formal diagnosis yet

They don’t have 1:1 support because the children don’t have EHCPs or formal diagnoses. Fix those things, and then better staffing may follow.