To be so angry that people like this are in charge of SEND budgets

[Dalmatron]

Has anyone seen the thread on twitter/X about the Warwickshire Councillors at the scrutiny panel for SEND spending?

I am so angry!

Some quotes:
(Talking about institutions) "They had better ways of dealing with them at that time. Let's go back to those ways"
"I don't know what the fix is, I just look back at years gone by those people by whatever means, it was right at the time".
"Is it something in the water?"
"Families are swapping tips to get diagnosed"
"Why are there so many people jumping out with these needs? Where were they when I was at school?"
"Why do so many people have this badge of SEND and special needs?"
"To stop this spend fix the problem at source"
"the plea of a Mother saying Little Willy has ADHD when Little Willy is just really badly behaved & needs some form of strict correction"

How can people like this be in these positions? Why has nothing been done to remove them or apologise? I felt sick watching these clips.

Warwickshire Council thread

Until people look honestly at the root cause ie the education system then we will never understand.
These students are the canaries in the mine often highly intelligent but bored and frustrated by an education system that has unrealistic expectations.
I think if everyone was tested we would understand its a difference and the disability is due to the environment we put them in.

I've been thinking about the different presentations of ADHD recently, having realised I fit the profile (and it actually seems more relevant than the ASD diagnosis I received as an adult). Particularly ADD, without the hyperactivity. Often overlooked, because being a daydreamer isn't disruptive.

So I do wonder if parenting plays a part, in terms of how neurodiversity presents itself, and therefore whether it's noticed or not. Children from more difficult or chaotic backgrounds are likely to have more trauma too, so again this would factor in and make it more obvious that something was up.

Are you referring to autism?
Because its a massive spectrum.and for many people its massively disabling it doesn't matter what environment you put them in they wll.still be disabled
And no.its not just the learning disabilities they have its,the autism too

I am not in the UK so we have a completely different education system here. A lot of what you are seeing in UK is also happening across the developed world.
Many posters are saying oh but we used to institutionalise these children etc. However that practice has stopped for decades now. Therefore it’s possible that the rise in more complex cases of SEN is a genuine rise. My BIL is 40 and went to a special school as a child. He has a long list of diagnoses that I won’t go into because it’s not my place. What I will say is the profile of those accessing the special school has changed over the years. The needs are more complex. Some of the children that would have traditionally gone to this school are now in mainstream.
There is now way more ASD classes attached to mainstream schools then ever before. There are more children then ever before with a SEN diagnosis in mainstream schools.

There is research to be done here on a mass scale otherwise society could be sleep walking into a disaster.

@Crunchingleaf I agree. It feels like the proportion of people who just cannot cope with regular life without many adjustments is just going up and up. The problem is we exist in a global world with many inhabitants who can cope and will work without adjustments, and we have to compete in order to stay relevant and financially comfortable. We’re so used to calling ourselves a wealthy country we forget we have to actually stay one to maintain the lifestyle we are accustomed to. And that means high productivity, a low unemployment rate, and a public which doesn’t require the level of support it does at the moment to do basic things or look after themselves. I just don’t think there’s a way out now, the U.K. will continue to slide so the public will demand more money not realising the reason its sliding is because they don’t make any.

@Grandmasswag I do agree with some of your points, but we need to be so careful when making assumptions about others' parenting. Your comments about your friends' children and questioning Nd because the school don't see an issue is one example.

DS2 was an anxious child. However, we encouraged him to go along to activities and hobbies and believe me it took a LOT of encouragement. Eventually, he really took to them and enjoyed going along. He never missed school and did well, always getting positive feedback from teachers. He could be emotional at home but nothing that rang alarm bells. Then at the age of around 10 it all fell apart. He struggled to control emotions, could be violent and destructive, he couldn't sleep and he did not understand what was happening to him. He could no longer cope with any out of school activities. Through all this we encouraged him to go to school which he still managed to do and guess what? He was 'fine' in school according to his teachers. He just bottled it all up for home.

We're now more than five years down the line. He has an ASD diagnosis (NHS not private) and doesn't go to school at all. In fact he hardly leaves the house. Years of masking led to this burnout. I always thought there was something 'different' (and I want to emphasise what an amazing young man he is) but he always 'coped' and everyone, including school told me he was fine and that any issues he had were down to his home life. He has an older brother who was raised the same way and is doing great.

Are there parents who make excuses and seek diagnoses where there are none? Maybe. Are some parents 'lazy'? Yup. But sometimes parents do know when something is not quite as it should be. Take a look at the Not Fine in School ste and you'll see so many parents desperately trying to get help for their child. Many do not have a diagnosis, but their parents are anything but lazy.

Sorry, this is much longer than I intended, but it's an issue that frustrates me.

All these people are autistic and many of the list have invented or created things that have absolutely changed the world. In not supporting ASD we are potentially missing out on so much good and innovation and art.

If the environment is right anything is possible

Famous People with Autism
• Dan Aykroyd – Comedic Actor
• Hans Christian Andersen – Children’s Author
• Benjamin Banneker – African American almanac author, surveyor, naturalist, and farmer
• Susan Boyle – Singer
• Tim Burton – Movie Director
• Lewis Carroll – Author of “Alice in Wonderland”
• Henry Cavendish – Scientist
• Charles Darwin – Naturalist, Geologist, and Biologist
• Emily Dickinson – Poet
• Paul Dirac – Physicist
• Albert Einstein – Scientist & Mathematician
• Bobby Fischer – Chess Grandmaster
• Bill Gates – Co-founder of the Microsoft Corporation
• Temple Grandin – Animal Scientist
• Daryl Hannah – Actress & Environmental Activist
• Thomas Jefferson – Early American Politician
• Steve Jobs – Former CEO of Apple
• James Joyce – Author of “Ulysses”
• Alfred Kinsey – Sexologist & Biologist
• Stanley Kubrick – Film Director
• Barbara McClintock – Scientist and Cytogeneticist
• Michelangelo – Sculptor, Painter, Architect, Poet
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Classical Composer
• Sir Isaac Newton – Mathematician, Astronomer, & Physicist
• Jerry Seinfeld – Comedian
• Satoshi Tajiri – Creator of Nintendo’s Pokémon
• Nikola Tesla – Inventor
• Andy Warhol – Artist
• Ludwig Wittgenstein – Philosopher
• William Butler Yeats – Poet

Also Anthony Hopkins
And like him or not Elon musk

Not true, my husband and lots of other people I know left school before they even took their O levels. No ‘factory fodder’ amongst them. All have skilled trades and out earn a lot of their university educated peers.
The problem is the education system. We are trying to make all kids ‘fit’ and making exams the be all and end all. You didn't see the levels of anxiety in the old days because it wasn’t the end of the world if you didn’t pass your exams. Now it is much more important.
The autistic guy who lives next to me earns a ridiculous amount. Born in the 1950s, he is obviously very autistic but unbelievably clever. Neurodivergent kids can do extremely well even without support!
I started out as factory fodder btw. Taught me more than school ever did.

Tragicroundabout Appreciate that. There seem to be many children who mask very well until around end of primary.
Would like to stress that I don’t think they are bad or lazy parents, just that it’s a different way of parenting. We can only ponder. It’s just my personal hunch that never encouraging some level of discomfort from a very young age, never pushing gently or encouraging, assuming children will do everything when ‘they are ready’ can end up either causing or exacerbating anxiety later. When the theory is it’s supposed to do the opposite.

Some of the people on your list have not been diagnosed with autism, rather people have suggested it sometimes long after their death. Armchair diagnosis isn’t helpful.

Hi NaptrappedMummy, I see you have a sock account.

No, see, you are still ignoring the true cause of autism - which is genetics.

The autistic spectrum is absolutely huge it doesn't matter what environment we place some people with autism in they will.always massively disabled by their autism
Your post is naive at best

One of the problems I have with people blaming poor parenting for neurodivergence is because I experienced/witnessed first hand, how said poor parenting still resulted in neurological children.

"Poor parenting" is simulateniusly the excuse of previous generations of today's generations along with them saying that today's parents are mollycoddlers.

So what is going on? Can't be both, right?
Makes more sense that previous generations simply didn't acknowledge SEN.

I don’t think “genetics” has been shown to be the true cause of autism at all. Rather the opposite, in that they’ve been looking for years and not found the cause.

That's an interesting comment

So what do you think causes autism? I mean literally it turns out that I passed on a chromosomal microdeletion to my daughter but you say that autism definitely isn't genetic?

I'll spoil it for you. There are believed to be thousands of genes associated with ASD. Our particular genetic disorder - well most people with this rare disorder are diagnoses autistic.

I think genetics play a huge role and it’s a multitude of factors.

But you still want to blame parenting.

I don't think there is one cause of autism my son also has a,chromosome micro deletion. ,its de novo, in his case
But its more complicated than that because whilst many people with the same and similar chromosome deletions will have autism
Others won't ,and it can vary massively how people are impacted

Again no one thinks poor parenting actually causes ND. In some instances early life experiences can end up with children presenting symptoms that are very similar to ASD/ADHD (ADHD mainly). Pondering whether modern parenting methods are possibly driving more anxiety is a different but related point.

Your daughter may have a genetic condition that causes autism, but that’s not the same thing is it. There isn’t a genetic test for autism. If there was we wouldn’t have the waiting lists for assessment that we do.

So you ignored the main point of this post? That one of the cou callous did in fact blame parenting?

But not all so….

There is no genetic test for autism true - but autism is genetic.

As somebody who should have likely been diagnosed, the rest likely flew under the radar.

To say its not genetic,imo, is to say "some" autism is environmental

Given that ASD, is a neurodifferencez that cant be true.