Southport Inquiry report highlights failures and misunderstanding of autism

[ProudAmberTurtle]

The Phase 1 report from the Southport Inquiry is out has found the attack "could and should have been prevented".

It was "highly likely" it wouldn't have happened if agencies and the killer's own parents had actually done their jobs over the years. Catastrophic failures everywhere - police, mental health services, social services, schools - all passing the buck, losing information and refusing to take ownership of the risk this boy posed.

But the bit that really jumped out at me is this: a "misunderstanding of autism" meant his violent, dangerous behaviour was wrongly blamed on his autism spectrum disorder.

Instead of treating the clear warning signs of murderous intent as the serious red flags they were, everyone just shrugged and said "it's his autism" and did nothing. No proper risk assessment, no real intervention, no one stepping up.

Neurodiversity / mental health services were so terrified of "stigmatising" or "criminalising" autism that they ended up enabling actual danger to everyone else.

The parents also apparently let weapons be delivered to the house and didn't report crucial things in the days before.

A case like this should have really been with forensic CAMHS. One wonders that if health, education and social care were truly joined up, that this could have been prevented. There is such little afterthought once you’re diagnosed with autism. My dd was suicidal, a harm only to herself and there was no support. This feels the same way, if you are a harm to others, there is little support to prevent the unimaginable happening.

Its a complete lie that this could have been prevented under current systems, Ive said the same on another thread running about this. How convenient for society that the 'agencies' failed and not our growing ignorance and reluctance to deal with violent children and see them as that

We dont want to pay for services that will do something, we dont want to lock kids up, we dont want to enforce care or deprivation of liberty, we dont want sectioning, not only does it cost money but people are horrified if you talk about taking someones rights away, the courts wouldnt even consider anything like that for this boy/man given he wasnt convicted of anything and at times barely left the house. Theres simply nothing for people like this.

As a society, we 'prefer' certain explanations over others. Autism and ND are less stigmatising than trauma, foetal alcohol syndrome, personality disorder (yes I still think there is a space for these and not all of people's problems can be explained by ND). You're ND - you're just born that way. For life. Others need to understand.

At some point, we stopped expecting people to be able to change.

I have read ( most of) the report.

in the Southport case he did do something illegal and for a while was under the youth justice system. He was then discharged from it after the length of time stated in court.

this is not prevent’s job. They are specifically focused on preventing ideological terrorism which this was not.

AR was clearly autistic and had a strong sense of justice which was what led him to violence as he wanted to punish those other teens who he believed had bullied him.

the issue is around the intersection of autism and criminal behaviour. Services to support autistic children and teens largely are not set up to deal with this sort of thing - they do anticipate violence but usually as a result of anxiety and the framework is that with trigger reduction the violence will decrease. AR did not access any of the support available for autistic children (there is some) largely due to the delays in diagnosis (which have been criticised) and his family who seem to have been worried he would be taken into care (which he absolutely would have been).

Have you ever worked with forensic CAMHS!!!!

They do fuck all!!

A consultation if you're lucky and they say that this is their 'intervention'. Job done, discharged. A load of old waffle.

Forensic CAMH is still not hard science. There is no foolproof ‘medicine’ for psychopaths determined to kill. And we cannot take the risk of whatever they try not working. People seem to want to believe that ‘mental health support’ was the simple answer to this, it just wasn’t.

I see a lot of people who do very bad things on an almost daily basis. Even then I think very very few people are truly evil. But Axel is one of them.

It was referrred.

as in many areas campus reject any referrals where autism is involved as not a mental health issue. They are technically correct.

My teenage son goes to the type of school (autism specific specialist school) that AR went to. Thankfully my son does not have any violent tendencies whatsoever, his autism presents more as anxiety, but the amount of times he has witnessed the kind of behaviour, from other pupils, mentioned in the reports is shocking, and nothing is ever really done about it, and it is excused as autism related. We’re talking pupils attempting to strangle teachers, stab others with scissors, etc etc watching all sorts of inappropriate and violent things unmoderated at home and talking about it in school. It is happening everywhere, and it’s frightening.

This, at my child’s school a violent child attacked others on multiple occasions, scratches, bites, bruises, black eyes… on each “there’s been a wee incident” chat… what could your child do better to avoid these incidents and X not being upset?…
these suggestions included-
-moving when X demanded
-not sitting where X might want to sit
-giving X whatever item they had when X wanted it
-not showing any upset when X destroyed their things as X found negative responses upsetting

We’re talking pupils attempting to strangle teachers, stab others with scissors, etc etc watching all sorts of inappropriate and violent things unmoderated at home and talking about it in school.

Honestly, the state of the public in 20 years or so keeps me awake at night. I’m going to strongly encourage my kids to emigrate. wtf are these parents unleashing on all of us?

Bloody hell

This does not surprise me.

Schools display the attitude “X has autism (or whatever) so can’t help it” towards violence in the classroom. I know that part of the problem is that everyone deserves an education and there’s nowhere else to educate the child but what about the other 29?

Why does it matter if he’s violent because of the autism or violent and has autism? The sentence may change but the threat to the rest of the world is the same.

We didn’t have this many violent ‘autistic’ teens in the 2000s. I don’t care what anyone says, this is increasing and the future is looking bleak.

Yep, especially when the school kept referring it to as “dysregulation”… and we must “be kind to X as these situations were very upsetting to them and it wasn’t fair that my son didn’t want to play with him later that day.”
it only ended when after being sat on and punched, my son flipped and punched X back…

Agree, I’d like to know when full class evacuations because of 1 child’s behaviour started

I had lots of experience of this too - scary, frightening red flag behaviour from one of our young people (secondary age) but zero help from anyone as he was also autistic. I’m waiting to read about him in the news. Honestly terrifying.

Good for your son!

Because this group of youg people would be given another diagnosis back then, usually conduct disorder or ODD. Or just 'problem behaviour'.

I'd be curious if the autism diagnosis changed the outcomes.

We did always have violent children. There were two violent disruptive boys in my primary school in the 60s. They disappeared during the first year. I think they might have been sent to borstal? Is that possible?

Believe me if a parent is being assaulted to any great degree they will often have communicated it. There are vast numbers of children who have committed violent acts. Most people's children have if you think about it. A child being out of parents capacity to manage, regular assaults, extreme dysregulation which doesn't resolve, That should trigger support. When children are in foster care carers are taught MBAM training and also PACE. Carers have an allocated supervising social.worker and ideally a psychologist working with them. The child also has one.
It sounds trite but these strategies plus multi agency support ( as opposed to buck passing) do work if applied consistently. You want plentiful very strong stable experienced practitioners in SW and CAMHS who can manage risk. School may not be the best environment at some points it's very individual but generally kids suffer a lot without structure of some sort. Long term relationship with agencies is vital. Tailoring support around a disabled dysregulated child is resource intensive but it really can work and the earlier the better. Better for parents to receive that level of support early surely? Most parents are absolutely fixed on wanting to get it right.
We have heard a lot about children with various conditions where capacity fluctuates.

With that level of involvement there are always safety plans and good relations and liaison with police should be integral if community safety is an issue. . But the whole solution is support and re- integration into education where that has fallen down. Children can be transformed by the right mix of things. Alternative care for children whose families have exhausted their capacity can also be transformative. Often they are persistently not getting sleep.
My heart breaks for those little girls and their families. And from the report clearly it was preventable. We should and can do better.
Incidentally it's not at all clear where this fits in with recent government reforms, which kind of assumes all risk comes from.parents. Its a bit like the whole disabled children workforce, further and further depleated, don't exist.

It's shocking to read. I think now all services, including schools, are cut to the bone, there is a lot of "pass the hot potato".

In my local area an "urgent" (suicidal) appt for CAHMS is at least a six month wait. They cannot recruit psychiatrists. GPs are unable to provide psychiatric meds for minors.

Commissioning arrangements are limited. Child might get a block of "n" sessions and the episode of care is closed. Regardless of need/progress of child.

My experience is of teen being excluded from various mental health services due to being ND. When we did get an assessment, it would usually end up with an explanation that this service did not provide what we needed and signposted to another service. Rinse and repeat. Literally 10s of appts. If only the professional time could have been spent on intervention instead. It was like being in some sort of brutal pinball machine.

I had an autistic child who was hitting age 3/4. I dealt with it with appropriate consequences but my strategies were informed by an understanding that this was autistic behaviour. That meant my strategies for dealing with the behaviour worked. My dc never ever hit anyone at any stage since. Understanding autism and appropriate support from authorities is protective for the child, family and society.

My other thought is that in the early 2000s, we were just beginning to see "care" in the community. Prior, people were placed in institutions - rightly or wrongly.

They didn’t have diagnoses at all. But then they didn’t have the internet, ‘school refusal’ or ‘low demand parenting’ either

It's is true. Forensic CAMHs are very clear they don't hold responsibility nor remain on board.