Moving back to England to get treatment for my 4 year old autistic daughter

[marciana]

Hello, we are a family of 4 who left England in 2009 because of the crisis, we decided to come back to Brazil, as they are all English, but I am not. We found out our youngest is autistic and now we want to move back to England, as we think she´ll have better treatment and schools will be adapted to this reality.
I´d like anyone to help me with 2 questions: what´s the best area to get good primary schools and maybe ABA, speech therapy and anything else that might help, and secondly, is my view of England true or am I fooling myself?

There is no good 'area'. There are occasional schools that suit and do well by occasional children, and occasional parents that can make the system work for them.

Mostly it's a bit of a slog unless you strike it lucky. Horses for courses and all that.

I would suggest visiting lots and lots of schools and appraising them from the pov of your dd's needs before committing to anywhere.

Do you have jobs lined up?

I'm afraid that it is a postcode lottery regarding good schools and speech/play therapy. In our county 3 areas are pretty bad but luckily ours is great, unfortunately there isn't much else going for it.
I don't know if you will have to go through diagnosis before you get DD statemented, if you do that may take some time as some areas are very slow on diagnosis. Presumably as there are so many kids with autism and so few places and money for them.

What is the provision like in Brazil? Are your family settled there? Do you have jobs there/ can you get jobs easily over here?

I sound a bit negative but we have found that basic provision has been good but the extras which would have been really helpful are out of most peoples reach. Someone else may come along with a better answer for you

Agree with the others... very much a postcode lottery.

E.g. Dd's school appears to be supportive but other than that we only had very little Salt (for which we fought mire than a year). OT was a joke, and no Aba (most areas will only fund it after lenghly legal battles if at all).

Do you have family over here? What about jobs? Housing? What are your circumstances in Brazil? What support do you have over there?

To be honest, I would not move to England just because of the autism provision. Rather the contrary. Sorry to be so bleak.

I don't have had much dealings with the local authorities yet, but if ABA is the main reason for moving, then US would be a better bet. If you can't move, there are a lot of ABA consultants who travel and maybe possibly do consults via Skype.

Try doing some research locally, you will be surprised. I was looking into it and I even found a few ABA schools in India!
Offcourse if you could afford it to do it all privately, then in my limited experience London is the place to be after USA.

If you're moving back to run a home programme Swansea apparently funds them very easily and without hassle. It might be worth finding the Treating Autism group on Facebook and asking there. I have no idea what schools are like round there though.

Agree with zzzz and chocjunkie

Also agree that there is no one good area... Rather it is the package you put together yourself.... The school... The treatment etc

I wouldn't come to the UK for their autism provision tbh. We're way behind most of the rest of the world. ABA is considered controversial and educators are scared of it. Extreme lengths are gone to to prevent parents from accessing it and in nearly all cases you will have to fight your case at a tribunal against a barrister.

Sorry.

Don't come to Scotland. We don't believe in ABA here. Only a handful of families have it funded in the entire country

Don't come to the south west! Three year wait for OT and get to see salt if you're very lucky! Go to London more choices to go private there as well. Although personally if you have the chance to train yourself in ABA and stay in Brazil that's what I'd do. The upheavel , moving countries, houses etc.could be a massive stress and upheavel for little use

I can only speak for my family (international) with a severely dyslexic son who also has asperger's and is dyspraxic.

Although we have had a terrible time so far at his mainstream school, at least we have the choice of specialist dyslexic schools and also private specialist dyslexic teachers.

This is unheard of where I come from (not too far from Brazil) nor is there much help in France.

I totally understand why you would want to move back to England.

And yes; lifestyle, housing, weather is all a lot better but I prefer to have the specialist help available to my child. When I was at school, I so remember the children who would double every year and who were classed as lazy, stupid etc ... they must have been dyslexic :O(

We have three boys, two of which have autism. Knowing that they - and us!- need specialist help and support is the reason we ate NOT moving back to the Uk, even though originally planned.

We are in Germany where overall - touch wood- provisions have been outstanding. But I have heard and read that Spain is quite advanced wrt provisions for children with autism. Would that be an option for you at all?

Thank you all for your answers, I guess I might stay where I am for the time being, at least my daughter is getting some help here, I don´t want to mess that for her.