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

This is it, it shouldn’t be in the least surprising that they’re unable to fulfil these children’s needs yet they seem to be the whipping boy.

I absolutely don’t agree.

SEN isn’t due to neglect and trauma, how bloody insulting. SEN has such a stigma which this thread illustrates.

My child has an EHCP and has 2 degree educated parents who did everything we could have done ( and then some)as regards nurturing, parenting and educating. I have an early years degree and taught for several years.

I have heard anecdotally from various people that in my area, the numbers of children with SEN have hugely increased. I’m not criticising or disbelieving, by the way, my own child is Autistic.

As for the numbers of children with EHCPs, EHCPs are very difficult to get.

The poster made it very clear they didn’t mean all of the kids, just some of them.

In terms of suggestions being helpful though it would be much better to say something like 'certain chemicals may be somehow involved', which is actually still meaningful and doesn't suggest lack of any basic scientific understanding.

PS I should have also added that I am not sure aspirin is really a good idea in pregnancy either, unless for specific directed reasons.

Yy re EHCPs being difficult to get. We didn’t have to appeal or anything however even with 3 degrees between us and masses of Sen experience going through the EHCP process was one of the hardest things we’ve had to do on this journey. I’m in awe of others navigating it without all the above.

My sister is of this view. Her friend has 5 kids and all of them have a SEN diagnosis. Her take is how can ALL the kids have it and it has to be down to poor parenting and when a child is “being a brat” that the parents scream autism so they have an excuse for their behaviour. She is a teacher and says she is sick of badly behaved kids being labelled as SEN and being given a pass to act out because of Poor boundaries at home. She said her job is becoming unmanageable and every second kid is on a waiting list for assessment and the majority of them have nothing wrong with them at all but the parents insist they have to take away from their child being feral due to their own parenting. Most of the other teachers agree with her apparently…..
The funny thing is she has one child and he has SEN. Go figure.

Part of the problem is that while people pay lip service to diagnosis they still to some extent don’t really believe that children can be born with invisible disability or have much understanding or imagination about how that might impact their lives. It’s exhausting constantly explaining and there is an assumption of crap parenting rather than innate deficit. It is in my experience true that people do worry about “traits” that appear to fit descriptions of disability but are actually not as severe as they think. I don’t believe those anxious parents get diagnosis for their children (or themselves) easily or often though through the nhs or ehcps from the LA.

I’m an educational psychologist and I’m involved in the EHCP progress. Yes it is absolutely true that numbers are rising due to increased awareness, more knowledge of masking in girls etc.

However, in addition to that, the number of children with very very complex needs, who are non-verbal, unable to interact at 3/4 years old, has SKYROCKETED. This isn’t about increased awareness, these children were always known about as their needs are so great. There is so so so many more of them than every before and there absolutely must be some sort of underlying cause. Unfortunately research into the factors which may contribute to asd was shelved as many in the autistic community felt it was ableist.

I also agree with the pp who said that some of the SEN I see does relate to poor parenting and just a complete lack of awareness about child development. Children who at four spend 8-10 hours on a screen but don’t know how to turn the page of a book, for example. I think we will look back one day and be horrified at the impact early excessive screen use has on children’s brains, but it’s seen as outrageous to even suggest this.

This is exactly why it’s difficult to have this discussion. There will be children who have nurturing loving homes who most definitely have SEN. They are born that way. That’s why I stressed not all children. There are children who don’t have nurturing loving homes who are subject to what the state would deem low level neglect (as in not enough to have ss intervention) and the results of this essentially display in the way that adhd/ somtimes asd would. The end result is the same, the cause isn’t. They are just as likely to end up with an EHCP. In fact probably more likely than the many high functioning children of MN that mask well in school but fall apart at home. In previous times there was a lot more early intervention available. I truly believe it mitigated many of these factors and the end result is less severe SE needs in mainstream school later down the line.

I mean I said that my kids are massively struggling and the whole system is failing them and many others, but you focus on me being too vague about chemicals. Plenty of chemicals can cause harm, it's why we banned lead in petrol. I didn't really fancy listing them all out though as I was focusing on the issue the OP raised.

I'll tell you where my son would have been in the 70s and that's probably borstal on a fast track to prison aged 16.

Medical research has and is being undertaken on obesity and a link to autism. If you consider about 1% of the UK population was obese in 1960 compared to 25% now and the population as a whole is 65% overweight it’s a very possible additional cause as is research linking older Fathers being more likely to have children with autism.

Research like this take years and needs multiple projects with published outcomes.

I’ve been reading through this thread wondering when someone will mention screens & I totally agree. This is the massive massive change I think but it can’t be discussed easily as adults are addicted to their screens, it makes an easy life giving it to a child, and there’s big money being made.

@AliceinSlumberland
Unfortunately research into the factors which may contribute to asd was shelved as many in the autistic community felt it was ableist. do you mean the genome project?

The number of children coping OK in Primary School but falling apart shortly after starting Secondary School is astonishing.

I believe it's the Secondary School environment that needs to be looked at closely and changed. Detentions for minor misdemeanours like a missing pencil, isolations, long detentions (3 hours at a school I know), children needing to walk in silence, high academic expectations for all, even those that aren't academically able so they feel like they are a constant failure. Schools are overcrowded and the facilities were often built with a much lower pupil number in mind.

It's creating a highly stressful environment which is impossible for a lot of neuro diverse children to manage on a prolonged basis. The number of ASD girls being diagnosed or awaiting diagnosis in their early teens is very high. If the Secondary School environment was different then perhaps these children would cope much better.

I absolutely agree with this. Secondary school is a completely different ball game.

Thanks for that post it’s very interesting. So there are greater needs in higher numbers. You do have to wonder about screen use not just the children themselves but also maybe the parents. Screens now allow people to essentially not have to do anything else. They can talk to friends without having to meet up, which would have given children some stimulation. I know someone who does still work in early intervention (we are lucky that we have a charity covering in in my town) and she is horrified at how many fathers (yes it is always the fathers) spend literally the whole day gaming. The whole day and often the whole night too. This is a lost generation now having children.

Oddly I would say the parents I know of autistic children (mostly more overt presentations) are markedly not overweight though I appreciate that’s less than 100 people so hardly scientific.

I try to keep factual generally, but this is wild speculation. I had swine flu during my pregnancy and was very ill (in hospital) and it triggered two other conditions that impact on the baby. I was induced 5 weeks early as my son was at high risk of being stillborn. He has autism and my other child doesnt.

I would not be surprised to find that there were surges of sen after surges of viruses. I looked for ages for a paper showing a link but couldnt find one other than a few papers linking extreme maternal stress and high fevers at a key point in pregnancy raising the risk of autism slightly. A few saying women hospitalised by viruses having a bigger chance of a child with autism. But i dont understand medical research well and assume its not a clear link or people would be talking about it more.

I'm not sure we can blame Covid for everything
I went to a parent carer information evening in December 2019 so just a few months before Covid hit and the People hosting the event said that the rise in children needing special school places had risen dramatically in my LEA and I know that all of the special.schools in my LEA( we have two primary, and two secondary )have doubled in capacity over the past few they were expanding, the buildings etc before Covid
So unless my LEA is particularly unique there is something else going on.

"Yes it is absolutely true that numbers are rising due to increased awareness, more knowledge of masking in girls etc."

My DD was diagnosed 12 years ago aged 3. Finding resources and support groups was nigh on impossible. Thankfully that has changed over the last few years.

Cautious that I don't really want to add to the various armchair theories here but this is one I am not actually aware of any research on and since people have talked about various aspects relating to this. (If anyone does know I would be interested to see it).

A few posters have mentioned this category of children with (presumably autism?) who are non-verbal and have large amounts of disruptive behaviours, as being a growing category or one which seems more represented today than in the past.

Could it be we are seeing this because this is what chronic stress looks like in autistic people?

(Which is two questions: Is it likely that autistic stress manifests in this way? In my understanding it is, but I am cautious that I am not that knowledgeable about autism; and is it likely this is what's happening in this case?)

If you are working with this group do they tend to improve once given proper support (or does that support not really exist, because you can't "support away" modern life?) I feel like there is a perception that there is a specific "non verbal and violent" type of autism vs a "quirky and sensitive" type of autism (aka the old Kanner vs Asperger argument) but these are stress responses, aren't they? And I have definitely seen threads and resources explaining that the delineation of autism into "types" is unhelpful specifically because autistic people can move between different levels of functioning based on their stress levels and the environment around them, throughout their lifespan. And that some developmental delays in autistic individuals could even be caused by this type of stress, not directly, but because if you are under the amount of stress that causes you to literally shut down, then how do you even start picking up social skills, or toilet learning, or speech development, or access skills you previously used? And we know that once someone falls a little bit behind it can be difficult to catch up because there is a feedback loop where they have inadequate skills so accessing the activity or interaction is frustrating or aversive so they avoid it which leads to even less skill practice.

I feel like this would fit in with the idea that modern life is so much more overstimulating, fast-paced, everyone has to fit into a box where we are all the same (though I find this a bit confusing because I always thought that was more what it was like in the past), families have to be two-income and grandparents work to older ages or are already infirm when their grandchildren are born, so children are in outside care longer and younger, there is a lot more commuting in cars rather than walking everywhere, curriculum/homework in infant school rather than a slower pace and more flexible classrooms.

So the theory being that autistic children with this high level of needs might have always been there but in a different environment their stress level would not be so great, so their level of need might not have been so great.

That's correlation, not causation.

It's actually far more likely that it's simply a result of autistic people reproducing more. Think about it; in previous eras, autistic folk were effectively removed from the gene pool through social and educational ostracisation (and quite often institutionalisation).

In the last 40-50 years, though, high-paid jobs are far more information-based and require much less in the way of social interaction, which puts those jobs far more within reach of a lot of us.

With higher-paid jobs comes a level of social value, which means our social deficits relative to the general population are more and more forgiven. And, with social value comes a vastly increased opportunity for reproduction (on average across the population, not necessarily on an individual basis).

A potential corollary of this is that, as the economy becomes more and more information-based, that autistic population is only going to increase well beyond the base 1-2%; it wouldn't surprise me if it got as far as 10% in the next few generations.

@HerculesMulligan very true. I'm just countering the argument that parents with SEN-registered children are the ones pushing for a diagnosis when in our case it's always been the school pushing it. I agree with much of what they're saying and I'm happy for a diagnosis if it means he can access more help. They see him most in this setting after all. But I do think in our particular case it's partly a maturity issue, partly that particular classroom set up. As he's gotten used to it, he's miles better in school compared to a year ago, and even three months ago. I'm well aware the wheels could totally fall off in later school life, as Mumsnet posters like to remind me whenever I post about it lol. I suspect he'll lose his SEN status in later primary and possibly gain it again in secondary but who can predict.