Posting on AIBU as the SEN boards never seem to get much traffic.
In a nutshell: we have a DC (4) who was diagnosed with autism a couple of months ago. He has been in a combination of mainstream and SEN nursery over the last couple of years but we have been strongly advised that he will need SEN schooling (and we agree this seems wise, at least for the first years and see how it goes). Currently he is non speaking after a regression when he was 20 months. The SEN schools in our area are limited and the only one which seems like it might have a spot in the near future is not at all autism specific, and extremely short staffed and under-resourced (the sensory room they had looked like it would have been great 10 years ago but very very tired). Looking around it just felt that so many children of different needs and ages were in the same group and it was a pretty intense environment to observe, and I think our DC would struggle a lot with that. In an ideal world we would find a specialist school for autism so that everything is a bit more tailored (maybe that is dreamworld thinking but I understand that there are some schools of this sort, have read also on here before).
Both DH and I have very flexible jobs from a geographic perspective (working remotely pretty much 100%) and given that DC is not yet entrenched in any system, we are thinking could we go somewhere else that would be better for him. We feel that if we are going to be starting on huge waiting lists anyway, maybe we should do that somewhere that we really feel is the best possible choice. We were lucky to receive a generous inheritance last year which means that the financial side of it all is less of a strain that it might be / we are able to consider fee paying options. I know there are waiting lists everywhere, but I wondered if there was any consensus on what the best places would be for supporting an autistic child. We would consider an international move, or within the UK. We feel under pressure to start him in a good place. Not trying to change him at all but do want to make his life as easy and enjoyable as possible, like every parent, and ideally for him to be able to make choices down the line around further education, work, etc..