Is using the term 'special needs' offensive now?

[STOPSCRATCHINGTHECRADLECAP]

I've just witnessed a FB conversation in which a mother with children with special needs says that 'special needs' is offensive and it's now 'special educational needs'.

This is new to me, I've not heard of this.

How long has this been the case?

in rl I never hear sn, and as we are past education now SEN is not relevant.
what i find offensive is someone telling me how I should describe my adult child. I don't want some "professional" telling me. I use severely disabled and a wheelchair user. all this additional needs/sn/SEN/ impairments....just too confusing.
I have a family member who described a workmate with LD's as less able. he insisted that was right!!!

I started my nursing career working with The Mentally Handicapped then Learning Disabled then People with Learning Difficulties(shortened to PLD's) and from patients to client. While the diagnosis and lebelling was improved and changed (or abandoned in some cases) and very much for the better , I did wonder where the Committee for Re-naming and Making Staff and Parents Feel Stupid was based .

wonder

FFS, EVERYthing is offensive these days. It's pathetic

Well, not everything. But certainly using the term "snowflakes" on a thread like this one, yes, that is offensive.

ODFO Hoppity. I’m so tired of the perpetually-offended-by-offence brigade. Can’t take a bit of criticism? Who’s the snowflake?

I work frequently with children and adults with lots of differing needs. We never use the term “special needs” but we might said “bobby attends a specialist school”. We do say Bobby has SEN or behavioural needs or social and emotional needs dependent on what the needs are. We might also say Bobby has complex needs or a high level of needs or “there is a high level of need with Bobby”. We’d never say Bobby is disabled but “Bobby has a physical disability” or we’d name the disability itself, “Bobby has Cerebal Palsy”. We’d never refer to Autistic children or Autistic people but “people/children with Autism”.

I don’t find it at all difficult to remember or ridiculous in any way. It just seems like common sense.

I’m mixed race and feel horrible when people call me half-caste. I wouldn’t want to have that effect on someone with a disability or an additional need.

Also, at work often it is important and relevant to refer to someone’s condition or needs but I hear people referring to people’s health conditions or race or sexuality all the time, “You know Donna? The one with the special needs kid?”, “that gay fella”, “the coloured girl” and in all honestly I don’t understand the need to use those ways of describing someone and can fully understand why it could become offensive. Especially when you are constantly referred to in relation to a health condition/sexuality/race.

A lot of these terms have caused offence because they reduce people to stereotypes and I’m ok with awareness being raised about how that can make people feel. I’m sure most of the time the vast majority of people mean absolutely no harm but when it’s you that’s constantly labelled it does have an impact. It’s the difference between growing up being “Alice’s son, Tom” and “Alice’s little lad with Downs, bless him.”

MumUnderTheMoon I can see that might be relevant for things like autism. But I am disabled and I was diagnosed. In fact most adults with disabilities are disabled because of chronic illnesses either acquired or genetic.

And the reason the language keeps changing, is because as soon as it becomes mainstream used, stigma is attached to the language, So if additional needs becomes mainstream, it will soon be deemed offensive.

Pretty much all medical/polite terms, once they've been in circulation for a few years, become terms of abuse.

A new word/acronym needs to be found and, in turn, that eventually becomes used in an abusive way because it's so well known.

No point worrying about it, just go with the flow, as it's not changed to make your life harder, it's changed because the common usage of the term is changing to become one of abuse. And the people who resist it most seem to be those who are still harbouring negative attitudes - if my mother is anything to go by, as, despite knowing full well that the conventional term to use in one particular case is a child has Down's Syndrome, she will say 'Oh, I know what it's supposed to be, but where's the shame in saying they've got a MOOONGOOOOOL baby? They've only got themselves to blame for not getting rid of it, anyhow'.

(Yes, I know she's a fucking twat. She always has been.)

'It's a private medical diagnosis, why should that be disclosed to any stranger?

Schools cannot disclose a child's diagnosis to another parent who asks. Workplaces, same for employees.'

This is a ridiculous comment. Are you really saying within a discussion about a child's needs between professionals in a child's school, it would be inappropriate to say 'Joe has cerebral palsy' so the issue should be skirted around by saying 'Joe has special needs'? How could that possibly benefit the child?

Who said anything about other parents asking? But as it happens i think disabilities should be discussed openly. They are health conditions, nothing more and nothing less, and many of us will develop them in our lifetimes. My son is deaf. He has a disability. He does need additional support within the classroom. He isn't special. He isn't different. He's a child who finds it hard to hear. You can't hide that disability under a fluffy cloud of wanky meaningless terminology. Just use the medical terms ffs.

'FFS, EVERYthing is offensive these days. It's pathetic.'

Oh go and watch your Bernard Manning DVDs and shut up.

Unless it is very mild, it is normally visually apparent if someone has cerebral palsy.

Personally I don't care what terms people use if they are referring to my disability. What I care about is the way they say it. The currently correct term can be said in despising way, and a currently incorrect term can be used in a context that is respectful.

As I said, additional support needs has been in common circulation in Scotland since 2009. I work in schools and am the parent of a child with additional support needs and have seen no evidence of it being used in an offensive way. Special, retard and mongol still are.

I have never heard additional support.
And I am old enough to remember when special needs was only used by professionals, and members of the public had rarely heard of it.
Additional support needs will one day be considered offensive.
But of course I will use whatever term others want.
But I am disabled. Not additional needs or anything else, but disabled.

Question?
Does additional needs cover adults and children with additional needs that are not disabled?

I can't get worked up about this type of language. I say my kids have additional needs. As their needs are above that of a child their age.

SN, additional needs, disability. I use all of them for my child (ASD) although don't use 'disabled' in front of them as they don't see themselves as that, only really to medical practitioners.

I dont think that you can always use SEN as an acronym anyway. Some people might have an illness, disability or physical difference that needs consideration/adjustments but is not an 'educational' issue. Besides that, additional needs, special needs. That's just semantics. I get so tired of how words are used and misused now. What really matters is how we treat people. Just because a word might be used pejoratively by dicks doesn't mean the word is in itself pejorative.
My dd has a progressive condition so she's a little more 'disabled' than most of her peers physically but no educational issues except in PE. We quite like the term 'special needs', it puts a quite positive spin on what is otherwise a worrying health concern for her.

@ValleyClouds I realise you won't read this as you've hidden the thread but I feel I have to respond given that you directly referred to something I said!

Yes, I said 'personally I prefer' because my DS is too disabled to care. Someone could call him absolutely anything they like and he would not care or even notice in the slightest. I have to advocate on his behalf and I feel 'special needs' is not offensive, obviously context and tone are important as with most things.

Agree with several of the PP that sometimes it is easier to say DS has SN rather than Autism because that often invites people to make assumptions that he is much more able than he is. He is non verbal, doubly incontinent, has a wheelchair etc. He is very much disabled and so him being lumped in with everyone who is higher functioning is often not helpful because their needs are so different.

I think the problem comes when someone is referred to as “being special needs” rather than saying that they have special needs. For me the former is a horrible way of defining people by whatever extra assistance they need to go about their daily life- whether that’s education, mobility, communication etc etc. The latter is simply a way of saying that this person has a requirement for extra help or support in some form or another. Saying someone has additional needs is perfectly acceptable (and encouraged as this thread show!) but saying someone IS additional needs is just not ok. There’s a massive difference between identifying an individual’s need for help or support and defining a whole group of people by their need for any form of help.

Woah. This is news to me. I've been unwittingly offending people for years...

Not necessarily, Patch. Context is everything.

Clairemcnam "Additional support needs" generally refers to people who require support that the average person in their peer group wouldn't require, whether that is a result of physical or learning disabilities, mental illness, neurological difference or developmental conditions. Although all these things would also fall under the classification of disability so I'm not sure where you would use the term additional needs not related to disability.

Thanks. I asked because children and adults can have additional needs for all kinds of reasons such as bereavement, significant life changes, etc. So I just wondered. Thanks for clarifying.