Violent children should be stopped regardless of other factors

[Hamalam]

The part that struck me about the Southport findings was the way AR seems to have been given leeway because he had an ASD diagnosis. Oh he’s carrying a knife and a hockey stick but he has ASD, as if that’s ok. It’s an attitude I have met a lot with my child school, where they and other children suffer from violence meted out but other children.

Oh but they have SEND / are in care / have a bad home-life as though that’s excuses my child being a victim. I really hope that one of the lessons learned by schools, police etc is to look at the threat or the violence and the danger to others, regardless of any ‘excuses’ the perpetrator might offer.

I work for an IAS service and there seems to be a stark divide. We have so many parents who fiercely are screaming out for help, very aware their children are heading to a very dark situation. Dangerous sexualised behaviours. Violence. So on.. we find those parents often get the least help as relevant services see they recognise the risk and that therefore is a protective factor. We've had cases where the police have told the parent to take them to the police station and refuse to take them home.

The other camp is parents who use autism and adhd to avoid their children ever being accountable or the idea that even children with significant needs can learn. They are really difficult to work with.

Autism, adhd and other needs make learning harder but you adapt how you teach them. We do a HUGE disservice not giving this support young.

Even asking the question is bonkers. Violence is never the right answer.

But there are no places for that to happen. Not just that, but at what age would you start? 5/7/9/11/15?

I’m saying we spend the money to create the spaces. And start from youngest school age. No 5 year old should be punched in the face in school, should they?

I am guessing by this response that you have never been involved with or visited any of these places?

are you proposing these people are put in these places forever?

PRU’s are schools not with residential so I fail to see how this makes a difference, they already exist and the majority of ‘these children’ already attend there. It just puts them all in one place. Exceptionally difficult to manage.

mental health units are already rammed full, and the criteria to be sectioned is extremely high. Even when people are sectioned as in VC’s case, guess what, they come out; many MH conditions fluctuate and are lifelong, therefore managing this is a long term thing and not straightforward.

YOI’s, you can’t put someone here until they have committed a crime. Again they are full and temporary solution. These kids have to come out. They often come out more damaged and worse than before due to the experience of prison.

you are suggested a very ‘lock up and throw away the key’ solution. Whereas actually we need to spend more money on prevention and rehabilitation. These people will need to live in society at some point and punishment does not work to enable people to do this. It makes it worse. You may remove the problem for a year, or 5, but that problem will come back with a vengeance if we take this approach.

I agree with your basic premise, but a concern I would have is that with younger kids, the school would end up not dealing with normal behaviours appropriately. This is something I've seen before, with zero tolerance policies that were applied in a really stupid way, or even in a nursery that simply expelled kids going through a very normal biting phase that would have passed with appropriate management.

For some reason it seems like no matter what policies they adopt, there will be a fair number of these people in schools who don't seem to have any sense about how to actually implement them or what is normal and abnormal childhood behaviour.

I agree with the OP. Was also reading about the poor boy pushed off the Tate Modern by an autistic man, who was in fact in some kind of supported living but had been allowed out alone!

All these young lives ruined or extinguished, wrong place and time.

Read my lips. I DON’T CARE!

If these people cannot behave in a non-violent fashion in society, they don’t belong in society at all. They sure as heck have zero right to be around other kids. So yes, we lock them up, they come out and offend, we lock them up again. Repeat and repeat. At least they’d only offend once every few years, whereas right now kids are getting repeatedly attacked while school staff look on utterly helpless.

You’re a classic ‘what about the poor bullies?’ sort of person, with not one iota of sympathy for the victims whatsoever.

Yep, despite being a known threat and violent, it was of course his human rights to have 4 hours a day alone to do what he wanted of course.. he’s now a 3:1 I believe due to his repeated attacks on staff.
am assuming he’ll still have posters arguing he should still be allowed trips out though

I think realistically the children who are in mainstream schools acting violently towards other children, probably need to be in specialist provision rather than “locked up.”

^This 100%. We’ve been begging for help for our adopted DD1 (17), she’s been on waiting lists for a long time now. She has violent meltdowns, though thankfully not at school. (Though we made the tragic mistake of underestimating the damage to DD2 (14) of witnessing her meltdowns over the years, she’s now living with my DSis and her family.)

I would like to point out, though, that it isn't as clear-cut as violent child vs victim. My DD1 has also been a victim of bullying in school, like a lot of ND children. Particularly of another girl with SEND in year 11.

This. Often too many parental excuses, and education excuses, as to why they cannot educate and discipline even younger children. . While other children are left to deal with constantly being worried about being injured. 🤷‍♀️

Yup, agreed. Anywhere but mainstream.

You are incorrect in your assumptions. Victims are a huge part of what is done here too. Many want their perpetrators to do better - to be better members of society, they want justice but that doesn’t always look like locking people away.

but as you say they will come out and if this is what’s done, they will offend again. But that’s ok, if they only do it every few years?

there are very few people on whole life sentences who won’t come out at some point. It also costs an exceptional amount of money to keep someone in custody or sectioned. Public costs would go up hugely - are you willing to pay this? It would not be small increases in taxes etc it would be HUGE.

then it would be ‘I’m not paying to keep these people’ - they can’t pay towards it or for it themselves if they aren’t allowed to be part of society FYI. What do you suggest then?

Your view/argument is a very much ‘I don’t care’ but also screams of an ‘I don’t understand’ how the system or people work.

if we can rehabilitate people they can then contribute towards society, both socially and financially. This is actually largely successful overall. It’s not possible with everyone, no, there will always be some exceptions, but they are fewer and further between than you think - they are just the ones who make the media.

Your way of doing things would see all those people who could be rehabilitated turning into more of the people who can’t due to the experiences of what you suggest is done to them. You would actually make the problem larger on scale of people, and with so many in and out constantly, you’d end up with an almost constant stream of some of them committing offences and as a result more victims.

Your time would be better spent offering it in some of these areas to get an understanding of how it actually works. You can volunteer to work with victims, if you don’t want to go anywhere near ‘these children’

There are kids in schools who are allowed to beat up other kids as often as they like. I know because my ASD child was a victim of many, many of these children. My child’s mental health was decimated by these frequent attacks. Any forms of ‘rehabilitation’ clearly were not working. What do you suggest happens to the bully?

One of the many reasons we went private schooling. These types of kids would be kicked out.

I am very sorry this happened and your childs school sounds terrible. Are you in Scotland?

Yup. It’s rife here. The teachers can do nothing but stand back and watch. The police charge the kids with assault and the outcome is a note home to their mum. It’s laughable how little thought goes to the victims here. But this is exactly what’s planned to be rolled out in England I understand with the extension of ‘inclusion’.

Ik, Labour are gung ho on implementing the same.

I understand your stance better now. Scotland policy on this isnt great.

Yes the white paper suggestions for England do seem shortsighted all round.

Our primary has an inclusion base. I don’t know much about it but it can only take 16 children full time and maybe accommodate 10 others in mainstream safely. I believe it’s for those on the autism spectrum with EHCPs.

I’m sure you could triple the amount of spaces and it would still be a drop in the ocean for our large city. I don’t know what the answer is.

I sometimes turn the thing on its head.

Is it in a young persons best interests to become involved in crime?

No

So it should be treated as a child protection issue and appropriate action taken

Is it in a young person's best interest to be a repeated victim of a violent thug and forced to continue to share a classroom with them day after day? No? Then we should stop allowing it to happen. That's the priority.

I think both are important. Violent children are not destined to become violent adults and it’s in all our interests for that not to happen. Our prisons are already overcrowded, after all, and, as has been pointed out, very few are sentenced to whole life orders anyway.

But yes, I agree that the other children should be protected in the classroom. Ideally, there should be more specialist provision rather than just throwing more children into mainstream to sink or swim.

Maybe also stop threatening to fine parents in some extreme circumstances? Then maybe at least some parents with violent children will feel able to take them out of school, which is often what posters on these threads say they should do?

And obviously make it easier for schools to suspend /expel violent children. This would be easier to achieve if there were more specialist provision for problem children.