Does anyone have experience of an ARP?

[EvelynTent]

We think DS who has Aspergers Syndrome would be better off in an ARP, but we worry that if he's with other children with ASD it might be even harder for him to form friendships? Does anyone have experience of this?

Is that what our LEA call an enhanced resource or autism unit/base? If so ds attends one attached to an outstanding secondary school.In ds's case (moderate autism) the friendship issue is a no go anyway because he doesn't interact with anybody if he can help it but the staff in the unit give him outstanding support and enable him to access a mainstream curriculum. For the other boys who have HFA or AS there are friendships not necessarily amongst those in the unit but with others from mainstream who are very welcome in the unit at lunch and breaktimes.

I think children with AS want friendship and children with Autism don't really mind if they have friends or not (i have one of each, dd1 has friends and dd2 is happy to be on her own). Both my dd's are in MS, dd2 was refussed a place at sn school or language unit as they felt she needs to be around more sociable children to improve her language skills.

How old is your ds? is he sociable?

Dd1 (as) gets on very well in ms, she has lots of friends but often plays on her own, she is happy in ms but each chil is different.

Thanks, yes it's the same as an enhanced resource base. DS (7) is very sociable and really wants friends - his problem is that he talks too much about the wrong things in typical Aspergers style. He's always had friends at school but since he started year 3, they've been dropping away and he's getting involved in more and more problems with other children and is increasingly despondent. I think he'd be better off somewhere where staff and other children understand him better and have training and resources to deal with him, but I'm worried about exactly the points you raise about ASD children usually not wanting to form friendships.