SEN in Copenhagen and Geneva - any experience?

[schplappo]

We may be moving to either Copenhagen or Geneva. Our DS has ASD (so far doing fine in mainstream but he's still very young).

I'm hoping that one of you might have experience of SEN provision in either Copenhagen or Geneva and would really value any information about positive and negative experiences.

Also, if anyone has any experience of to what degree ASD is stigmatised in either Denmark or Switzerland, that would be really helpful.

Thank you!

I will speak to DH when he wakes up about ASD in Denmark. DH is from Jutland, not Copenhagen and has always said that if we were to move back he would only consider the private schools (which are heavily subsidized) for our DC.

We have not moved back because we found provision in Jutland to be very lacking compared to where we are now but it might be better in Copenhagen. If you can get New Jersey/ New York as a transfer I would jump at that. Our programs here are amazing (DS will be 4 later this month and is in a class of 4 kids, has therapy daily and the most amazing team of teachers a parent could ever wish for). For all the bad talk of American education, they do a much better job here with SEN compared to the UK, Canada and Denmark.

Someone in Denmark started a company that only hires people (adults) with ASD, they do computer programming. I saw it on the news. Don't think it's stigmatised at all, seems not to be. What is "SEN provision"?

user it is stigmatised in Denmark. Just because you saw something in the media doesn't mean everyone is so accepting.

Our experience with DS in Denmark has been that everyone brushes it under the carpet and tells us that DS is completely normal for his age. He isn't normal for his age which is why we have copious amounts of therapy and DS is in a specialist unit at the local school where he is in a class with 3 other kids. He could not cope in a class with 15 kids. You would find him flapping his arms after 5mins and squealing.

Danish culture is that everyone must fit into the bell curve of normal and not be an outlier. If you fall outside of 'normal' there is huge pressure to get back into the boundaries of 'normal'. I asked DH last night and he is speaking to a couple of colleagues in Copenhagen to get better answers for you. His concern is that what they tell him might be the acceptable answer and not the truth so he is asking as many people as he can (about 4-5 families he knows personally as well as through work).

SEN = Special Educational Needs. SEN provision is the therapy programs and special classrooms as well as aides and special equipment and staff trained to manage conditions such as epilepsy, food aversions and allergies (which from what I have seen in DS's class tend to be more severe with this group of children compared to my DD's class).

Thanks Want2Be - I really appreciate your DH asking for me. We would only be looking at private international schools. Unfortunately, USA is not on the list at the moment.

Im in jutland. The turn around of all the professionals in ds' life AFTER we got a diagnosis was remarkable. He had been getting help before but now we get more and the plans for his future have changed rapidly. He is 5 so still in nursery.

Our experience with DS in Denmark has been that everyone brushes it under the carpet and tells us that DS is completely normal for his age. Amen to that. It was only when his dpeech therapist "dropped the bombshell" that something was wrong that anyone took it seriously. It wasnt a bombshell for us because we had been saying it for 2.5 years.