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.

This is simply awful, a terrible tragedy.

I remember children attacking teachers in my class in the 80s - we never saw them again so not sure what happened to them.

I think one of the compounding factors now is the access to the internet and social media. It’s fuelling these kids. Giving them access to groups and individuals who support their rhetoric and re confirms their feelings. It’s so dangerous.

People keep saying on here and other threads that CAMHS do not take autistic people. That's certainly not true in the CAMHS service that I work in, over 80 percent of the cases we work with have autism or are waiting for assessment. But they have mental health difficulties as well.
As regards the comments re Forensic CAMHS, I have only seen them do consultation and in my view they often seem avoidant of actually assessing.

@Warmlight1 There are vast numbers of children who have committed violent acts. Most people's children have if you think about it..
really? most peoples children are committing violent acts? Where are your facts and figures from?

And this, look at on here. Poster’s affirmation of this and berating anyone who says it’s not ok…. “Oh these are BIG feelings… how brave of you to share them” as a sibling, parent or other are being assaulted or screamed at!

As a mum of an autistic and ADHD child comments such as "its because they might be autistic or might gave ADHD when someone raises mentions awful behaviour from a child infuriates me. My son is now in secondary school and the kids doing the bullying and being violent in his year towards othes were all neurotypical kids but terribly behaved and poorly parented in a couple of cases. They are still terribly behaved but in a different secondary to my child thankfully.

The kids who bullied my other child so badly he had to move schools were also neurotypical but knew they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it. These were behaviour issues not autism or adhd. He was 1 of multiple kids moved out of that school because of being bullied by neurotypical but nasty kids.

The problem is what we are told at work is that hospitlisation/restriction of liberty is counter productive for people/children with ND, so while we have had children sectioned at times, the hospital really in the end says 'we cant do any more for them, this is not the place for them', MH services wont agree to MHA assessments because they're not and wont look at the sectioning route

Criminal justice is designed to prevent young people being criminalised so they wouldnt consider recommending custodial sentences and certainly not for osmeone with MH or ND (and ND is not a MH condition in and of itself)

CAMHS wont work with this, forensic CAMHS wont work with this and they dont 'do' anything. Prevent wont work with this

I see comments that he 'would' have been taken into care, I can tell you now that the courts would see poor parents and an older child who couldnt be placed anywhere and think that by some miracle he could be supported by MH services (courts often get quite cross with CAMHS but dont really understand the limitations of that service) and he probably wouldnt have gone into care. Where would you place someone like this in any case? Residential settings dont even take kids like this now.

@Fundays12
I agree, never known a ND child to be a bully, I had similar with my son being targeted.
These comments are infuriating and insulting.

Part of the issue though is there is nothing to refer on to
I have a child who is ND and violent at my school. He is violent and threatening to younger ones - he is a persistent bully. He is threatening towards staff (although not yet violent) and violent towards his parents. He has been arrested multiple times for violence towards parent and sibling.
The furthest I got with him was an early help assessment and he had a family and wellbeing worker, who did two six week courses with him on anger management and then signed him off. During this time he threatened to attack a teacher, but the EH worker said he had made progress. Turned down each time with SS as he hadn't met threshold. I found a charity willing to do anger management work with him, but it was online so he just didn't effectively engage. He was regularly taking drugs - I was daily ringing outside agencies. It kept getting pushed back to school and basically for me to figure out what to do.

He no longer attends - his dad said I clearly didn't want to support his ND - I dread to think what he will do next.

@HortiGal really? Why is it insulting to state that you can have ND and be a bully?

You've never seen a child hit or push someone?
It's a reflection on language. People have commented about the use of dysregulation as opposed to assault.
I don't mean to minimise. Violence in the context of a disabled child who cannot self regulate or for example a psychotic adult- is seen as different but it's not if you are on the end of it- the victim. I'm saying there is a lot of it. I can't quantify it. People would classify it differently depending on the observer. That's my experience through.

In what sense do you mean 'work with' though?

Our local CAMHS of course has their CAMHS and then ND CAMHS. the ND CAMHS is the waiting list for people being assessed.

Once assessed, job done, case closed

A child may well have comorbid MH issues with their ND of course, but largely there is no therapy on offer in any case, our local CAMHS only offers group work for anxiety, no direct psychotherapy or individual therapies. I know this is different in different areas.

Oh come on, @Warmlight1 a toddler pushing another over is NOT “violence” on the scale people on this thread are talking about!!
although if you’re meaning in the context of if I was in soft play and my toddler pushed another more than once, the consequences would be us leaving the softplay, therefore a child attacking others at school should also be removed from the classroom to protect others, then I agree in that aspect.
of course as we know, that won’t happen

I remember as a kid people shouting ‘Nurse Bee’ at my gran in the neighbouring towns. My Gran worked in the local ‘asylum’ for decades and one day it was closed down for opting for ‘care in the community’. The asylum had lots of rumours for being haunted and people used to ask Gran if it was true. She’d say ‘you weren’t scared of the ghosts, but the patients inside… and now they’re all on the outside’. And then she’d go on to tell stories of the lovely patients and those who didn’t need to be in there…

@PoppinjayPolly
If you read the comment I was replying to, it is regarding posts on MN where a man is abusive or violent and 3,2,1 is he ND.
We need to stop labelling every violent or abusive person as ND, some people are just violent and abusive.
Not every child labelled as ND is incapable of behaving, from personal experience I’ve seen too many parents use it as an excuse for dreadful behaviour rather than teach their child basic behaviour.

This. Totally agree

I have. To ND child. But to others too.

Correct. Samantha Steed is the name of the person who pressured the HT to strike out of her report than she felt he was dangerous. Samantha Steeds opinion was he shouldn't be "stereotyped as a black boy with a knife", thus condemning 3 little girls being murdered in cold blood
I hope she'd proud of herself

Know a family who can’t have knives in the house as they fear their son so much. He was expelled from every school for violence including specialist settings. What’s the answer? I fear that sedative drugs might be the only option in extreme cases?

In this case though, he had bought weapons and poison online. How? With what?

He had had several incidents beforehand of violence and weapon carrying.

His online content was utterly disturbing.

And the parents did very little. Even when he was 13/14.

3 girls who went to a dance class are dead because of him.

Adolescence highlighted the poison that can be seen by any young mind, autistic or not.

It is entirely your responsibility as a parent to monitor and control what your child sees online at home and on their mobile. It is your responsibility to ensure your child is not a danger to others at school and in public.

Those girls, their families, all the witnesses their families and the emergency services who had direct contact during this incident have all been affected by this act of evil.

Fight for services and help if it’s available, but if it isn’t parents need to make sure they are doing everything to reduce their child committing harm to others. Letting your known violent child have unmonitored access to the internet and knowing they were ordering weapons online is far from this.

This is clearly an extreme case. And we have all, almost all I would say, who have children in school have had our child had to deal with violent behaviour and the “no retaliation” rule schools say. We as parents told our two sons “screw that hit them back (which us the key word here) as hard as you can and take the detention”. And they did and it stopped. Actually they didn’t really get any detentions, and I messaged the school to say we had advised them to do this as school were clearly struggling to keep them unharmed. Equally they were told if they ever hit first or got a smack back we wouldn’t go running in claiming they were misunderstood gentle teddy bears who didn’t mean it, they would deserve everything they got.

So perhaps kids who are violent in school if they get a few return punches might start thinking before they start things in future.

This increasing violence of ever younger children needs to be stopped and if the adults can’t then don’t stop the other kids having a go.

Kids see violence, verbal abuse, as they get older sexual abuse, towards other pupils and teachers go unpunished time and time again. This doesn’t help anyone.

We all take a risk having a child. it is a huge responsibility, and ultimately the buck ends with you. These parents were fucking shocking. But there are thousands of parents sending their children to school everyday knowing their child is a danger to others and when incidents happen do nothing to punish and try to prevent at home. Fucking useless parents everywhere.

I’ve read dozens of stories on here where ND children bully their siblings. Heartbreaking one recently where the 2 high functioning siblings bully their low functioning sibling.
Also stories where a child has been targetted by a ND child over many days and feel scared of going to school.
ND and NT kids can be bullied or bullies.

This. There is a real issue with people who are not mentally unwell and can be treated (bipolar/ or depression) but are labelled autistic or labelled as having a personality disorder and no one wants to work with them so they lead miserable lives or as in this case become killers. We do need places where these kids can be helped. The parents couldn’t cope and didn’t understand and were frightened of him. Do nothing didn’t help.

I think two things can be true.
I am the parent of an ND teen. When younger he would become very dysregulated at school and hurt other children. Probably a handful of times, but significant for those children. Like a prior poster said we worked on the behaviour by having consequences and additional support informed by his needs. I don't worry about violence anymore, he has built the skills to manage overwhelm differently. It's hard and takes a lot of work and is very draining. Often one step forward two steps back. But you can't give up. I do see a narrative of many parents that sounds like giving up and I worry for their kids that they are not getting the life skills for their future. I also hear advocates say that we should be tolerating not fixing behaviour that will only limit the child as an adult.
The second thing that can be true is that supports totally let parents down. I was able to do a lot of the above because we could afford private supports and I was able to do a lot of learning myself. Some children will have more significant needs than my child and what I did wouldn't be enough. Many agencies see ND and ascribe everything to that. I even know of children who turned out to have serious health conditions that were dismissed for a long time as just the autism.

I find the topic quite hard because I have an autistic child who used to get dysregulated and whilst disregulated was destructive and violent. He mainly threw things in the rough direction of people and smashed stuff.

So I find it hard when people are scornful about dysregulation as an 'excuse' but also dont seem to have any concept what it actually is and of how you help a child learn to regulate over time. My son can now regulate better than most adults but it involved therapy, special school and maturity i guess.

But I also find it hard when people use the concept of dysregulation to explain away all violent or difficult behaviour. Its not dysreguation to order a knife and plan an event.

I think this is what they mean by a poor understanding of autism? Attributing things to autism that arent to do with sutism like conduct disorders, and combined with not actually doing the things that might support any autism but just saying 'oh well autistic people do that' its a bit of a toxic mix.

Me neither. I have known plenty of autistic kids to be the victim of it though. The default off "they might be autistic or have ADHD" when someone posts about bad behaviour shows just how misunderstood and misrepresented Autism and ADHD are.