To think this is a shocking waste of taxpayer’s money??

[Ticklyoctopus]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9v12dwddmwo.amp

Not the boy having some form of placement or help of course, but 300k for a little over 4 months! I’m sure this will be ‘controversial’ but I think we need to seriously rethink how much can be spent on just 1 person, unless (for example) they need round the clock nursing care to stay alive and specialist medical equipment of course.

So what do you think should happen with them. Be left at home with minimal care until they kill someone? Because that is the reality of the level of violence some of these young people are capable of through no fault of their own. Often funding decisions are not lead by quality of life, or providing an education but by keeping the young person and the people around them safe from harm.

Yes I think your post hits the issue on the head.

The model only works if you have a large number of working people and a small number of non working people (be that retired, unemployed, disabled)

The goverment is now working with a system with a falling number of working people and rising number of non working people (retired, unemployed, disabled)

This just does not work. Income going out is far more than income coming in.

I can absolutely see the welfare state being withdrawn either completely or revised back to a very basic provision. You support yourself or the goverment offers very basic support ( state care homes, state children homes, state work houses for unemployed). Perhaps they will be couched in nicer terms than that.

Essentially the rules will be - pay for it yourself and no problem. Your disabled kid, elderly person with dementia or unemployed person relying on benefits can live where they want, go to school where they want, have as much care or not as they want. The only criteria is you have to pay for it yourself.

Anyone that can't pay for their own home, bills, kids, elderly parents and have to rely on the state will have to take what they can get rather than demanding what they think they are entitled to but the country can't actually afford.

The country is in a downward spiral just now. Previous goverments have sold off industries, privatised everything, sold off land and gold, sold off council houses etc. All these things allowed the country to enjoy short term gains but longer term pain. The gains are now gone and the long term pain is here.

Disgraceful to spend that amount on 1 person, as it will be at the expense of others.

That seems to be a point lost on lots of people.

I mean what could the goverment do with £300,000 rather than this very short term benefit.

Build 5 council houses to house 5 families in basic 2-3 bed terraces saving the goverment probably lots of housing benefit which goes into a landlord pocket and vanishes. Real bricks and mortar would give a permanent or at least long term solution.

Get 300 people surgeries they are on a waiting list for so they can go back to paid employment and start paying tax again.

Build a care home or childrens home and start saving a ton of money on private carers at home

Get 300 people therapy for mental health so they can go back to working and contributing.

Okay I know it's not as straightforward as that but you all get what I am meaning.

This is just good business and a sensible way to run a country at any time.

When resources are limited and falling, then this thinking is utterly crucial ( I would say life and death really.....)

I agree, as long as the parents allow the benefits of the funds to flow through to the children.

Spending huge amounts of money for what seems to be a short-term solution is in my view a huge waste of money. Agreed there needs to be some form of rehabilitation. The problem is that earlier intervention should have happened. Schools have been unable to uphold societal norms and have been stranglehold by the agenda that’s not allowed students from an early age to set the agenda, we all live in a society and that means we have rights but also responsibilities and schools can’t enforce this due to constant requirement to accommodate the different and varied demands which is simply impossible. At the end of the day the average, quiet, well behaved children are looked over - their potential is ignored . More support in schools but also clearer expectations.

So for this child, criminally exploited, previously hospitalised with knife wounds, what would you do? What cheaper rehabilitation would you choose?

And why is the school the focus for early intervention? Why not the chaotic, alcoholic family?

I’m only reporting what I heard, but she was pretty clear that profound autism was stable and that was the measure they were using to say rates of autism generally aren’t rising. When she was asked, from her tone it was obvious that she’d been asked the question a lot and was expecting it, and she sounded tired of giving the answer. I haven’t looked into it more deeply than that.

Yes support for the families I agree, the cycle needs to be broken . There are cheaper ways of managing this and in my view we need to prevent the situation getting to this point, I know easier said than done, more intervention and more social worker involvement.

We are struggling to recruit and retain social workers though. They frankly don't get paid enough to attract the best and brightest and suffer seeing the scenes they do on a daily basis. No one wants to go to work to be verbally abused and treated as though they want to steal someone's kids away for work as well as be the first people the press blame when they have been involved in a child protection case. I have a friend who was one for a few years and she nearly had a nervous breakdown. It's a thankless job, full of red tape and high turnover.

Many of the young people with these types of packages are there because of profund autism, severe LD's etc. No amount of early intervention, supporting the family etc will solve the issues. What do we do for them?

I would feel differently about this package if it were due to disability rather than shit behaviour occasioned by a terrible upbringing

Well, this post isn't a show of complete ignorance at all...

Tend to find that the majority of kids in SCH have a degree of LD or undiagnosed mental health disorders along with challenging home lives

Thank you, I’ll assume you aren’t being sarcastic because that in turn would demonstrate very significant ignorance, and indifference toward child suffering, on your part. Because some children have very significant need and there is nothing anyone can do or could have done about it. This child has been failed, and we could have done something about it. This could have been prevented. And if you don’t care about that, about stopping these situations arising in the first place, then shame on you.

Sure, but in this case it is clearly been exacerbated by the shit parenting. These children would have a better outcome if brought up in an adequate home. They have been failed. The cycle should have been broken.

How though? People on here scream blue murder about human rights abuses if we try to do anything.

How old are you? From the 70s onwards they went to special schools and their parents were too embrasses to take them out of the house. Before that they were in insitutions.