Anyone else noticing the uptick in open hostility towards people with ASD?

[FFSakeDrinkSake]

As the title says. It feels like it's open season recently. In the last few weeks alone I've seen many threads questioning the validity of Asd, the credentials of those diagnosing the condition, the 'explosion' of diagnosis', the 'fact' that you qualify for extra benefits if you are autistic and/or have ADHD, the apparent drain on resources kids with ASD have on the educational sector depriving others and most recently the idea that someone (self diagnosed) can 'outgrow' autism. Most of which contain the worst misinformation about what we're trying to deal with on a daily basis and making it sound like we're just trying to .. i dont even know tbh.. scam our way through life?

Disclaimer NATAAT.

I completely agree. We home educate now as we couldn’t face anymore stress trying to get oldest DD to remain in school. She’s just unable to cope with the noise and constant over stimulation in a classroom. She has an autism diagnosis but it’s not debilitating in the way it is for some. She has some processing issues and difficulties interpreting what other people are saying. The main issue for her was the overwhelming anxiety from being in a classroom. She wasn’t naughty, she just shut down. A smaller school and more relaxed curriculum would probably be ok for her but no schools exist like this where we are.

We have 9.1 million pupils in England across all sorts of provision, and 1.6 million have SEN.

• The percentage of pupils with an EHC plan has increased to 4.8%, from 4.3% in 2023.
• The percentage of pupils with SEN (SEN support) but no EHC plan has increased to 13.6%, from 13.0% in 2023.

Why this vast increase in SEN? Are we really saying so many pupils with SEN were just undiagnosed in the past? Or are the number of pupils with SEN increasing? And if yes, why?

Ignore, duplicate of post below

Posters on here seem to think we as a country should only be spending taxes on social and health care, and that everything else is a frivolous waste or vanity project.

Councils are reducing bin collections due to their spending on social care - this in itself may seem like an inconvenience but is a really serious health and safety matter. Our roads are frankly dangerous.

For reference out of every £1 councils spend:
61p goes on social care/SEN
7p on highways/transport
4p on public health
4p on housing services

I really doubt anybody can make the argument that the social care budget should be increased given those numbers.

@rainbowsponge - re send funding, the issue is not with the amount of children who want assessing, it's with the lack of early intervention and support.

Schools don't have the money/resources/staff to do it. They're reliant on LAs to help with HNF/EHCPs but they often don't want to know, meaning children reach crisis point before any help is given (and sometimes not even then until parents have been to a tribunal (or few!).

By then the support that child need costs thousands more as they fall further behind their peers and their MH is more and more impacted. Then LAs whinge about increasing costs when if they'd put the early intervention in place it wouldn't cost them as much in the long run. LA's run their send departments BADLY. Hence why so many have poor send Ofsteds.

But why do so many children need help to start with?

@LlamaNoDrama you make a good point. But we are at the point where local authorities are unable to meet what they are supposed to legally provide as dictated by tribunals and ECHPs. How do they get the money for early intervention?

I wasn't suggesting anyone likes it. It's an explanation but not an excuse. I just think that unless you've been there it's hard to understand and inclusion is actually very hard to get right. Sadly human nature is to focus on the individual than the system. Plus this is a fight for accomodations that (you would hope) will erode NT privilege. Accepting and acknowledging that you and your children have an inherent privilege in a certain area is hard and as these balance out ultimately there are always going to be winners and losers.

[Note I'm not saying everyone NT is privileged overall - people can have other discrimination challenges and autistic people can have some inherent privileges as well - I acknowledge I do. Just that in general there is an NT privilege just as (for example) there is a white privedge. It's actually quite hard to accept that some of your success is owing to the fact that you have a head start over others, and it's not all because you 'deserve' it.]

Well that’s partly because many of our kids would not have survived a few decades ago but here we are.
My son could not swallow and a few decades ago he would have died of pneumonia.

So lots more people are living/ dying with things like cancer or disabilities in a far more protracted way.

Parental preference is a term used in deciding section I of an ehcp especially during appeal when looking at costs and transport costs. It's used in legislation too. Parents do get put a preference for a school. It isn't a myth whether they get that school is another subject but this is being looked at and Imagine removed from legislation.

But the majority of children with needs don’t have physical needs, it’s almost synonymous with Autism/ADHD/both now. We don’t see special schools full of children with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, it’s very usually mainly neurodivergence.

Just for info...

https://www.ipsea.org.uk/choosing-a-schoolcollege-with-an-ehc-plan

I do think that education and social care could be organised more effectively.

its crazy sending kids to specialist private out of country with transport costs. They should set up classes with 1 teacher to 10 pupils and LSA in each city allowing for differing for non learning disabled but autistic kids. This would be far cheaper than an educational placement of say £50,000 and transport costs.

Same with social care - they should build communities with shops and recreation even a small cinema room
and on site wardens/ support where a lot of it is run by the disabled community to a degree. It’s a bit like coliving but for disabled with maybe a community kitchen they can dip into.

@Rainbowsponge I don't think anyone thinks that, I certainly don't anyway. Some services will always be more expensive than others too so I don't think you can directly compare funding either.

If people aren't having their needs met then clearly something needs to be done to address that and that usually means extra funding. However, whilst I say that, this whole country is a mess really isn't it. I think a lot of budgets in many areas are not used wisely. Money is wasted and could be better spent. Academies with execs being paid ridiculous salaries, the nhs with more managers than sense. LAs shipping send children further out to more expensive schools because they don't have adequate provision within their own county, or the similar mess with children in care.

I agree there is no money however that doesn't mean the la get to relinquish their legal duty to provide an education.

Angela Raynor can say what she likes until the law changes provision has to be made where detailed and specified in section f of an ehcp and can be made to be via Jr or usually pre action letter.

Timescales and assessments need to be met and made legally until the legislation changes.

The funding is an issue for the la not the parents enforcing their legal rights.

You do realise that ASD has a lot of co morbidities and many ASD have swallowing issues or fits when younger etc. Just like my son. Hypotonia is just as much a part of ASD as Downs in fact that along with muscular dystrophy where part of his diagnostic considerations eg he could not get up off the floor at aged 3 without using his hands etc

@Noras it is parents who fight for expensive private school places. They reject local special schools arguing only this school that is extremely expensive meets their childs needs, and many win.

We can’t spend more on special needs, it just wouldn’t be right. Every service must have its fair share, we can’t exist as a country that simply pays tax to support 1 system while the rest founder. We need to look at why the numbers are rising, everything else is just an increasingly unaffordable sticking plaster. We can’t have a country where 20% of schools are special needs schools, it’s unaffordable and begs some very serious questions.

Isn't the vast majority of those social care costs supporting an aging population rather than autistic people? I'd be shocked if supporting autistic people was even 5% of the spend on social care.

But you're right - there's no magic money tree and (whilst not 1-1) money spent in one area leads to less money to spend on another. And people are self interested. And there are actually very few people who would genuinely put another child's interests ahead of their own if given the option.

But none of that is an actual excuse for the narrative that massive numbers of people are paying for an autistic label for their child so that they can roll in the DLA money and not have to do any hard parenting at all. I mean it's just obviously complete bullshit that this is more than a tiny tiny number of parents/children.

The warnock report which is 40 odd years old said 1 in 5 pupils would need SEN support at some point in their education. They anticipated about 2% would be in a special school (they were very pro inclusion). This isn't a vast change from now. We just keep shuffling around how we support and classify things. Even from state educations inception they though 20% would have SEN of various degrees.

That's not to say there isn't an increase in certain types of sen that don't need looking into.

People who have worked with children for 30+ years strongly disagree. And if that were truly the case why were there better outcomes with less support 30 years ago?

Im well aware of that thanks @Perzival I worked on the helplines for a time, but it's not simply a case of a parent choosing a school and ther child gets to go there. It must be suitable for their send needs and must be an efficient use taxpayer resources before it can be named on an EHCP. Parents can't opt for a 'Rolls Royce' education just because they fancy it.

Frankly many send families get precisely zero parental preference whilst choosing a school for their send child anyway as there are so few suitable settings they often have no choice at all.

No

1 Special schools are full and kids with high needs and learning issues are forced into mainstream against parents will

2 Special schools don’t offer the teaching that specialist schools do ie access to main curriculum, several GCSES and A Levels so are not suitable for example for kids like my son.

3 We had gold standard NHS report from Great O street to say he needed 5.1 class but the only one was 40 miles away and became Ofsted poor but is now good. We persevered with mainstream which was challenging to say the least for the school and ourselves as well as him. School found it distressing to see him whack himself.

I agree. We need to be as a country looking at why so many children have SEN. Surely other countries don't have over 20% of their children recognised as having an SEN?
Just googled and in Germany it is 6.6% of children recognised as having SEN. Why the stark difference?

I think you'll find most parents just want their child's needs met not a rr education. If you worked with parents you'd know this. No parent actively enjoys or wants to fight- none. It's stressful, scary and time consuming.

I'm also going to point out that I never said it was a case of a parent selecting a school and getting it. I used it as an example of something that is being looked at for replacement. I used the term parental preference which is widely used in it's proper meaning not the meaning which you are trying to convey. Do not try to use my words to force your narrative.

I hate to break it to you but even disabled children deserve to have an education. Why shouldn't they?