To think that there should be enough funding to provide the sort of care/ education a severely autistic child needs

[Reallytired]

The tax payer spends huge amounts of money keeping people like Rosemary West, Moira Hindley, Ian Braedy, Harold Shipman, Ian Huntley behind bars in high security prisons. (OK I know that some of the people I have named are dead)

Yet a severely autistic child who has committed no crime is often denied the sort of education and respite package they need. I realise that boarding schools for severely autisic children are often in excess of 100K, but surely they and their families are more deserving than the mass murderers I have named.

I have to admit I have mixed feelings about the death penalty and I would probably disagree with these awful murderers being executed. However I think we as a country could do more for our most vunerable citizens.

Agree completely with your first para Riven. IME if they (ed psych etc) aren't going to recommend your child for specialist provision, it just never gets mentioned to you as any sort of possibility. And the NHS SALT DS originally saw seemed completely unaware the city had an MLD Language Unit .

I am sure we will get to save up tokens from crisp packs soon to fund SN children, I am fed up of collecting vouchers from supermarkets, food packs and newspapers just to put books, computers ect in school. I am fed up DS1 has to share an LSA as there is not enough funding, I am fed up with education as a whole.

But there will not be money for schools, hospitals and pensions all the time we allow it to be spent on worthless studies, have health tourists and let people choose state benefits as a lifestyle, and welcome anyone and everyone to come and live here, regardless of if they are useful and contribute or just milk an over burdened system already

Riven - It costs about 38000 a year to educate a child in the specialist EBD unit in my LEA. Keep that child in mainstream and you are going to save a fortune even if the have a full time one to one, because a most LSAa are paid a pitifully small amount not to mention during term time only. Proper special schools are phenomenally expensive and I would count a full resource base attached to mainstream as special provision with the accompanying costs. The inclusion I am talking about would not include such resource bases as you mention as they are not money saving options, hence why they are fairly rare.