AIBU to think early intervention matters more than cutting youth benefits?

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Just reading in the news how the government will be looking at disability benefits for 16-24 and ways to get this age group in general into work or training.

AIBU to think that the huge issue with this age group is in fact due to failings much earlier and this approach is reactive not proactive?

CAMHS waiting times are horrendous. This should be the first thing looked at- not removing health elements of UC for this age group but immediately doing something to address the huge CAMHS waiting times times for 11+ aged children.

Going further I think that the HV system needs overhaul - there are so many more ND children and they need early diagnosis and intervention before age 5 for better long term outcomes. Also access to OT and SALT is awful so these children don’t get the support they need.

The nhs as well for any physical conditions obviously in some areas that too is inadequate.

If these issues were sorted out it would improve the situation for 16-24s that way. A move to just cut benefits won’t help long term whereas a plan for the above would.

You are entirely right in fact sure start was where it needed to start- but also plenty low cost community based activities in the middle years
Building the confidence to be involved is the biggest hurdle

Yes you’re right - sure start was brilliant.

I do think a lot of 16-24 year old could be helped into work or training but they need to be properly equipped to be able to do so and the strong foundations for any child with health or SEN needs is vital - they need really early intervention and consistent suppprt. If this approach was started immediately the benefits could be seen in as little as 5-10 years.

I think that you are absolutely right. What we are seeing now are the direct results of decisions made by the Conservative govt after the financial crisis of 2008 onwards. The Austerity Years.

The destruction of Sure Start, the cuts to school funding, cuts to youth services, and explosion of need for CAMHS. The dismantling of central support services for schools in favour of multi chain academies.

Combine all of that with the changes to the education system from the beginning of primary school to GCSEs. Gove making the curriculum more facts based, knowledge centred rather than skills based. Changing the curriculum in Years 1 and 2 so that many children are working on knowledge that is developmentally not appropriate for them. Increase emphasis on written exams and testing. More and more children struggling in a system that favours knowledge over skills.

It’s a perfect storm. And the people that are suffering are our young people. But we all pay the price.

I was also thinking about the early 2000s ‘gifted and talented’ programme that we had in school. It was phased out in the LA I taught in but I’m unsure if it is still in place in others ? It was really beneficial for so many of the ND children they were meeting targets and doing exceptionally well academically but needed the extra support in small groups sizes and I feel that it led to better outcomes, we need SEN support to not just be based solely on one end of the spectrum but to accommodate all needs.

Actually what needs to be addressed before anything else is why so many children are suffering mental health issues & what has caused the huge rise in SEN children.

The HV system is a mess. They seem to do a lot of developmental checks and questionnaires and then when issues are flagged there’s no support - they refer on for SALT, physio or OT and there’s not any capacity, but then the HV themselves don’t offer any support and keep saying to chase the referrals they made. Perhaps more training for HV to be able to offer some interim basic support ? Or a change to the system completely as it’s well documented that early diagnosis and intervention before age 5 is key to long term outcomes.

I don’t know how CAMHS could be sorted out but I have known and know of so many children who if they had some counselling or therapy early on in difficulties things wouldn’t escalate to the point they are burnt out exhausted and incapable of the work and training the government wants to push on them.

By diagnosing earlier and initiating camhs therapy earlier I wonder if those reasons would just clearly present themselves , and then if children are getting the timely help they need it will all fall into place.

No I mean we need to actually get to a root cause.
Why has the rise in SEN happened? Age of parent's, something in our food, our water etc etc. Without this information society can not really help.
Also with the rise in mental health issues. School is often thrown around as a root cause but is it really. Or is it the huge influence in social media. But these things get shouted down.
Changes will never be successful if we don't work on the root cause.
Early diagnosis/intervention if fine but that doesn't find the actual causes.

I read in the Guardian that Sure Start is being rebranded to be called the 'healthy babies programme'.

We still have school nurses in my city - they go round all the schools one morning a term - but it's a bit hit and miss, I booked the morning off work recently so I could go to the school nurse drop in and then it was cancelled.

I understand your point but we need to be careful not to fall into a situation of diverting resources trying to find a reason we may never find when that money could be channeled into support to relieve the resulting issues faced and improve long term outcomes.

They absolutely need to put measures in place from once a child is born!

Their current proposal is just plastering over the cracks rather than looking for what is causing the cracks.

They need to bring back the Council Run baby groups, making attendance compulsory for any parents where the family have previously had issues. (e.g. parents that use screens for childcare rather than talking to their children). I used to use the one in my local village and it was brilliant.

They then need to have far more family interventions/support for any children who are behind in development. (I teach in a secondary school and we had one child who started with a reading age of a 6 year old. With some interventions in place, a year later the child has made 4 years of progress, so although still behind, it does make you question how a child can get to secondary school still not being able to read.)

Once a child gets older, they need parenting classes for parents with challenging children, and far more behavioural interventions with the child through discussion/therapy etc...

I'd also go as far as moving away from schools having to adapt to meet the needs of every child (often at the detriment of the 29 others) and instead go back to having more practical based schools where kids do far more exercise, outdoors activities, learning essential life skills, self esteem workshops, given clear boundaries/discipline/expectations and mastering reading, writing and maths.

Early intervention measures are crucial for society.

There's always an excuse though isn't there? Benefits need to be withdrawn for there to be an incentive to work.

Labour ain't going to do it though, so doesn't really matter.

The independent review led by Professor Peter Fonagy is going to release the final report pretty soon (date not confirmed?). The interim report is already available on gov.uk

Important to stick to reliable research and not get into wilder theories.

I feel like we need to do both. Clearly we need early intervention and this will save money longer term.

But as the parent of a disabled child in that age category, who didnt get early intervention, i do want support for him now too that is beyond a pip payment really.

The situation post 16 is completely not joined up, we have an expectation of being in education or training until 18, but no transport support, we have ehcps lasting to 25 but not always places that they can use them. We have supported internships and similar schemes but the access is so variable and to some extent very narrow. My friends child did amazingly with one though.

I sat with my son to look at places who did supported internships that he was eligible for and he said "im not going to have a nice life am i" they were all jobs with no prospects long term that were very challenging for the core of his disability.

We dont owe young people a nice life, i get that but we probably could do a lot more to support them in a bigger range of jobs that fit a bit better.

Hard disagree. Withdrawing benefits without structural change achieves nothing, as evidenced by the benefits situation after 14 years of Tory rule. If you want to get young people working, and we do, you need structures to make that happen. The Netherlands did a lot of good work, but the upfront investment needed was substantial. Just removing benefits and expecting that to work is the preserve of the limited of thinking.

So many good points on this thread, I completely agree. My DS had a serious mental health crisis aged 15 (exacerbated by finding the school environmental very challenging). No support available from CAHMS. We were able to pay for two years of private therapy and he is now so much better and has just gone off to university. He was also able to access a fantastic youth group in our area. We were so lucky to have the money to pay for therapy and to have such a group on our doorstep. Most people don't, and if we hadn't I don't like to think where he would be now. It's desperately unfair.

Equally my friend's DS has finished college and is struggling to find a job due to his ADHD. She's worried sick. He badly needs a supported employment scheme that would give him an foot in the door and let him build up his skills and confidence.

what has caused the huge rise in SEN children

There hasn’t been such a big increase in the percentage of DC with SEN as some people like to suggest. The most recent statistics released this year show 20.8% of pupils have SEN. In 2010, it was 20.9% or 21.1% (depending on which statistics you look at - I think it is a rounding issue adding up SA, SA+ and SSEN). In 2005, it was 18%. Going back several decades to the Warnock report in 1978, “some 20% appeared to need some form of special educational help. This may even be an underestimate…”

Agreeing with you on here. I don't think the rates of SEN have gone up, so much that the jobs market has narrowed, life is busier and less forgiving and a lot of entry level jobs have gone. So there's less work adaptability for ND people and fewer employers prepared to give them a chance. On top of that, there is a mental health crisis with young people and it's not being caused by benefits.

So nice to have thread that acknowledges the complexities instead of just demonising young people on benefits.

I don't even know how we'd begin to fix this but it seems like the job market isn't working for lots of people.

Is there a rise in the number of SEN children, or the number of children being diagnosed? I’m wondering how many of our generation would have been diagnosed if there was more awareness.

I also wondering about resilience, I’m neurodiverse, OCD/ADHD, and my son is ADHD, now I appreciate it affects people differently, but at his age I was so much more resilient than him. We learned (rightly or wrongly) to mask and blend in, to be ‘normal’ but in doing that we also became broken adults, but broken adults with full time jobs and lives, critical thinking skills etc.

We worked from age 16, my son at 18 was being offered a job but didn’t answer his phone when they kept calling, so lost out. Applied for some new jobs, asked him to keep his phone on loud for a couple of days so that he didn’t miss the screening call, he didn’t want to because that meant his alarm would be too loud on a morning and would give him a headache FFS. 🤦‍♀️

I know I’m failing him by making life easy for him. If he doesn’t have a job I will pay for his petrol, otherwise he can’t go to uni, I can’t just cut him off. I feel like benefits for young people are like that too, we can’t cut them off, but also we potentially prevent them from taking ownership

There seems to be an issue with the cliff-edge cut-off of benefits like PIP. I've got two children on mid rate DLA with autism/ADHD. The descriptors for PIP are very different and its probably 50:50 if they would be eligible when older.

Currently i am doing everything in my power to help with future independence e.g. we cook together, practise other life skills etc. A friend with autistic kids said I'm actually limiting their life options by doing this because they will likely end up too able for PIP but too disabled to work full time. Sadly she probably isn't wrong as points are for things like bejng able to make a meal.

My DD wants to work.

But for various reasons (SEN & MH related) she has limitations which have so far prevented her from finding paid employment, though her volunteering CV is pretty long.

Employers need to be more incentivised to take on people with disabilities etc. At the moment we have a situation whereby people moan about others claiming benefits but then won't give them a chance.

I also think that uni students doing part time jobs to some extent take away those jobs from less academic peers of the same age. The uni students are presumably on average cleverer and better educated and possibly quicker of thought. Why would an employer want my less academic slower processing DC when they can have a uni student instead?

I’m not getting into wilder theories but pretending something huge hasn’t happened within society or the societies health is another example of burying heads in the sand.
we cannot function as a society of happy of children have SEN and cannot function or are too depressed to work/attend school/college

The Fonagy report makes it clear that there isn't a sudden surge in young people with MH conditions - other factors are in play. And this guy isn't some fly by night with an agenda, he is a world leading expert. I've worked with him in a previous work life, he has a mind like a razor, asks all the difficult questions and doesn't shy away from giving difficult answers either.

I think we shouldn't underestimate how deeply the world has changed in the last 20 - 30 years. The issue of young people, work and disability is one composed of many interdependent factors - which is why the quick fix solution posited by the right will achieve nothing.