As we start a new year, I have to think back over the past six years and wonder where all this is going.
I started compiling the stories on Loss Of Brain Trust in January, 2017, and since then I have amassed well over 7,000 reports covering the decline of children’s developmental health everywhere.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our schools, especially schools in the U.K. and in Ireland. The majority of the stories on kids who can’t learn and function normally come from these countries. The same issues are now showing up in the American press, and I’m sure this kind of coverage will increase here too.
We are constantly told two things: there are MORE disabled students in school who need costly services and the disabilities they have are MORE complex, MORE severe. That is something that needs further explanation. Why are more and more kids unable to function and learn normally?
This should be the logical follow-up to any of these stories, but incredibly it’s not talked about.
Just how long countries can keep increasing funding and providing more services is the big unknown, but clearly this will lead to the collapse of education as we know it.
Over the past month I’ve been labeling certain stories with the image of CRISIS because of the stunning statistics involved.
These are the statistics we have to learn to live with.
Cornucopia means "horn of plenty," and is associated with abundance. In this case, too many children with disabilities. Building more schools, while necessary, is not the answer.
It’s Time to get really worried about what’s happening to our children, especially if you live in Britain or Ireland. As much as experts and officials want to dismiss any problems with comfortable phrases like, “better diagnosing,” “no real increase,” and “neurodiversity,” statistics don’t lie. Ever-increasing numbers of disabled kids are going to bankrupt the system.
Here’s a sample from the past week:
Kansas: One in every six students receives special education services.
Liverpool, England: “A report in Spring said more than 4,000 children in Liverpool have educational health care plans (EHCPs), an increase of 46% since 2019.”
Oxfordshire, England: ‘The council highlighted the nationwide issues in this area, including forecasts that show Oxfordshire will have a £47.3 million [$56M] SEND deficit by March 2023.”
Dudley, England: “Dudley Council is hosting two information sessions about its £15millon [$18M] investment in the Pens Meadow [special] School to be built on the site of the former Pensnett High School.”
In the 2010s, autism was rebranded as neurodiversity. Ari Ne'eman was the darling of the decade. In the 2020s, gender identity is the new kid on the block that we must accept. The autism puzzle piece has been replaced by a rainbow infinity symbol, which implies sexuality. Anne Dachel shares a "disease or difference" story below. It's semantics. EVERYthing is a disease today, right? Except autism. And yet, schools tell a different story.
I’m sure many parents with children on the spectrum can only sigh reading this. “A different way of being” is an effective red herring. It promotes acceptance. Just agree that all the autism out there is a good thing, and we can all enjoy life.
Of course we also have to agree that autism is nothing new.
The article asked the question: So does the increase in autism diagnosis mean that autism is on the rise?
Unfortunately the question is never answered in the story.
Meanwhile more autism is in the news, especially in the schools in the U.K. The stories are not about neurodiversity and autism acceptance. They’re about the disaster unfolding in British schools. Inflation costs are a nightmare for schools and predicted to get worse.
It was about how bad the picture is for schools in the U.K. The predicted special ed budget deficit will be $2.7B by March, 2025. The piece talked about the “phenomenal rise” in special education students and the role autism has played in this disaster.
The stories about schools in the U.K. on Loss of Brain Trust are all about an education system that’s collapsing. Just looking at headlines it’s clear parents have to protest because of the lack of services for special needs kids.
* the U.K. special education deficit is forecast to reach $2.7B by 2025. * children are left out of school due to a lack of special school places. * more special schools are announced every single day across the U.K. * children wait YEARS just for an assessment to get services.
Here’s what we’ve recently been told:
There isn’t a consolidated and published picture of high-needs deficits, but we know from recent surveys that the national picture is forecast to be around a £2.4 billion [$2.7B] deficit by March 2025. To put this into local context, one local authority member was supporting 3,290 EHCPs in January 2018. It’s 5,323 today, with a further 923 in process. This phenomenal rise is not only creating a pressure on high-needs budgets but on schools, where it really matters. Special schools are overflowing and mainstream schools are having to meet an unprecedented level of need. The recent announcement of £2.6 billion [$3B] of capital funding is welcome but it is nowhere near enough. It’s all about autism really. Here’s what Schools Week published: Over half of the children and young people in special schools have a primary or secondary need of autism. For children in early years specialist settings, the figure is 65 per cent. 65% of the youngest kids in special ed are on the spectrum, AND stories regularly tell us that more children have SEVERE autism. Autism is driving this collapse—something no one in charge will focus on. In truth, over the last two decades we’ve been conditioned to accept that the autism rate is always going to increase. Likewise we expect to be told, each time there’s an update, that officials are not sure if this increase means more kids have autism. It just may still be the result of better diagnosing and greater awareness. There’s never a challenge to that assurance.Eventually there simply won’t be enough money to fund special education, regular education, and pay for the tidal wave of young adults aging out of the system at age 25 in the U.K. Maybe that will be the wake up call—FINALLY.
Note: Our Matching Gift Fall Campaign is in full swing. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. Paper: Autism Age, PO Box 110546, Trumbull, CT 06611 Thank you.
Anne Dachel transcribed a chilling report from California on the perils adults with disabilities and their families face. Competing interests are everywhere. Control of budgets, often well into 6 figures, comes into play. If you have applied for Guardianship or Conservatorship, you know the agony of the process. This story delves into how wrong the process can go.
Deborah Findley’s son, Andrew, grew up with serious health problems, including autism, Lyme disease, and other conditions. Now 21, he is severely disabled and requires 24-hour care.
When he turned 18, his mother was advised to seek a conservatorship for him. That’s a way for someone to assume legal guardianship over an adult incapable of caring for themselves. Being his conservator would allow her to make medical decisions on his behalf, along with other choices regarding his care.
But when she and her husband petitioned the court to become Andrew’s conservators, they got a nasty surprise.
California’s Department of Developmental Services filed a competing petition. The department said that DDS should be Andrew’s conservator because of alleged abuse by his parents. The judge followed the agency’s recommendation and Andrew’s parents were shut out of his care.
Note: Operation Warp speed was President Trump's pride and joy. All that was missing was a Superzero cape that had Pfizer, Moderna and J&J on the back. The President-elect who was going to appoint Bobby Kennedy to a Vaccine Safety Committee and drain the swamp, flooded the swamp for pharma. President Biden happily took the baton and has kept the program going and going and going and..... Everything is politicized today. You can't flip a coin without one side complaining about the other. Anne Dachel shares the transcript from Tucker Carlson's program. Blame blame bo bame banana fana fo fame fee fi mo mame blame.
Tucker Carlson exposes the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine - and how Democrats are now blaming Trump
Well, they finally got Big Orange. You were starting to think it could never happen. How could it happen? Once you accused a man of racism, fascism, sexism, embezzlement, perjury, sex crimes, mental illness, treason (The last of which, by the way, is a death penalty offense, let us remind you) and then you impeach him twice on related grounds and after that, you send the FBI to his home to seize a handwritten welcome letter from Barack Obama, which turns out to be a state secret possession of which is a serious felony.
After you do all of that and they have, you wouldn't think there'd be a lot left to accuse the guy of. You'd think they'd have run out of sins, but no, it turns out there's one left and it's the big one.
The crime of all crimes, an offense so diabolical, so morally repugnant, so contrary to the laws of God and nature that once revealed to the public, Donald Trump is done forever. He will never again darken the door of American democracy. He will slink back in shame to his lair off the fifth tee to prepare for his well-deserved punishment. We won't see him again until sentencing. That's how bad this is. What, ladies and gentlemen, did Donald Trump do? We can now tell you. Donald Trump created the COVID vaccine. He did that himself and on purpose, with malice aforethought.
Note: Anne Dachel says, "For a journalist, Carlson seems way too naïve here. Remember Vioxx?" It's not always easy to know what's real and what's for ratings on TV news today. If you watched reports yesterday, Alex Jones admitted the Sandy Hook shooting was real after telling his viewers and listeners for years that it was fake. I live 12 miles down the road from Sandy Hook. I know families who lost loved ones. It was a horror, not a hoax. We're often lumped in with extremists because we talk about vaccine injury and vaccine induced autism. And sometimes "we" lump ourselves in with them by doing interviews with them. Ann takes Tucker Carlson to task for his reporting on Alzheimer's research.
Carlson: “So why has the point you’re making, that doesn’t seem crazy, been so discredited?
“Could it be because the spokesmen for that point of view tend to be actresses from Hollywood or actors who don’t seem to know much about the topic and are against all vaccinations?”
Kennedy: “I think that cohort is out there, but it’s very, very small.
“I’m called ‘anti-vax’ all the time because the pharmaceutical industry is so powerful both with the media—they give $5.4 billion a year to the media, and they’ve gotten rid of the lawyers, so there’s no legal interest in those cases. They have really been able to control the debate and silence people like me.
“I’m very grateful to you for having the courage to allow me on the show and talk.
“This is the second show in ten years that’s allowed me to talk about this.
“The other one being Bill Maher, which doesn’t take advertising.”
Carlson: “I just think it’s interesting, and above all, I think you ought to be allowed to ask legitimate questions without being attacked because I think that’s the basis of democracy.”
Kennedy: “We ought to be having a responsible debate. A debate that doesn’t scare people, but a debate that is real and it’s based on science.”
Carlson: “Well, I hope you start one.”
This shows how difficult it is to tell the truth about vaccines.
Recently this brief story aired on Fox:
Tucker Carlson exposes fraudulent data behind Alzheimer’s research
For decades scientists told us something called sticky plaques in the brain caused Alzheimer’s, which is one of the most devastating illnesses there is.
And then recently a Vanderbilt University neuroscientist, along with Science Magazine, took a closer at these sticky plaques, and they found, “shockingly blatant instances of fraud, fraudulent data,” according to Donna Wilcox who works in Alzheimer’s at the University of Kentucky.
It was fraudulent, and yet the FDA has continued to approve Alzheimer’s drugs that assume sticky plaques are the cause of Alzheimer’s, even when the FDA’s own advisory panel said those drugs don’t work.
Anne Dachel has been tracking the explosion in Special Education for more than a decade. We are a world full of deaf ears, told to panic over only what the media tells us to panic over, rarely the insidious, deep threats. Funding is the black hole, 1986 may have been the Big Bang. Anne has catalogued thousands of stores at Loss of Brain Trust.
We will continue Adriana's State of Plague series tomorrow. ###
This was shocking, and it should have the attention of everyone in Britain. The story announced that the debt local councils face trying to provide for special needs students is 'catastrophic'/'unmanageable.’
The national government is pouring BILLIONS with a B into special education, but deficits are growing because it’s never enough.
AND things are expected to get worse.
Planned government SEN reforms not enough to plug ‘unmanageable’ deficit that could rise to £3.6bn [$4.4B], analysis shows.
Local authorities in England are grappling with a £2.4bn [$2.9B] “funding black hole” for special educational needs, according to new analysis, with councils warning the impact on young people could be “catastrophic”.
Rising demand has resulted in councils’ SEN deficits growing six-fold since 2018, according to analysis by the County Councils Network (CCN) and the Society of County Treasurers. A third more children have become eligible for extra funding support over the past three years and the number now stands at 473,000 children….
…“Over the last five years, councils have not shirked from taking hard decisions on SEN support in order to try to make services financially sustainable, but we are swimming against the tide. Rising demand each year has meant our deficits have increased six-fold since 2018.”…
Thanks to our Anne Dachel for this quick transcript. Autism number continue to rise unabated. But no one is really concerned. It's just this or that or tra la la. What is changing the brains of American children? Have you noticed something OTHER than autism that has risen dramatically in the last couple of years? Shootings, suicides, inability to work or function - the kids are NOT NOT NOT all right. Everything is WRONG. And no one cares in public health, pediatrics, or Washington. Below is Marc Siegel MD on Fox News. And no, it makes no difference whether it's Fox, CNN or MSNBC or the old major 3 networks. The marching orders were given decades ago. Autism is to remain an unspoken mystery forever.
Have a chuckle, that's me (Kim) tap dancing back when autism was 1 in 10,000 and none of us had ever heard of it.
Autism in on the rise in the U.S. with on in every 30 American kids being diagnosed, according to a new study.
The 53 percent increase is a sharp rise from 2017. So what do parents need to know about this surge in diagnoses?
Next Fox’s Pete Hegseth brought on Dr. Marc Siegel for his reaction to the new one in 30 rate. He was asked, What is the why behind it?
Marc Siegel: This was pre-pandemic, so I want to start with that. It’s because parents were more on the lookout for resistance in routines, not meeting your glances, emotional withdrawal, obsessive behavior—all of that is what could go into being diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.
And we’ve always wanted to know early on because interventions work, especially with intelligent kids. They can actually compensate for this over time, and by the time they’re adults, function completely normally. I know one who’s a computer engineer.
And intervention from parents helps a lot. I know a producer who takes his son to a baseball game every single year of a different team in a different city. Kid just graduated high school. You go on to live a normal life.
So we want to know about it early. But, you know what Pete, the problem with the pandemic is we don’t know about it. With everyone locked away and not going to school, we lost the ability to screen kids for this, to intervene early, and I predict that statistic you gave is going to end up being a lot worse.
JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Assoc.): AUTISM IS NOW ONE IN EVERY 30 KIDS. (That's also one in 18 boys.)
Just last year it was at one in 44, but that "increase in awareness" never ends so the numbers will only get better, I guess. Below are a couple news reports on the findings. (The new rate didn't get a lot of coverage.)
I'm sure researchers won't rest until we reach numbers like they see in Northern Ireland, one in every 20 kids or Hong Kong, one in every 27 kids.
The number of kids in America living with autism is apparently growing at a considerable rate, according to a new study.
Published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, the new study reveals a nearly 52% increase in autism spectrum disorder diagnoses among children in the United States between 2017 and 2020….
As of 2020, the percentage of American youth who have been diagnosed with ASD has reached 3.49%, according to the data….
In the USA, we're seeing young boy/men turning viciously and vindictively violent and shooting innocent people at a rate that doesn't begin to be covered by the term "alarming." It's horrifying. It's called gun violence and mental illness but we know that the cancerous reasons run much deeper in this, the most heavily vaccinated and medicated and chemically damaged and diet poisoned generation in history.
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By Anne Dachel
Officials must not really care about the welfare of children. There’s no other conclusion one can reach.
How can the stories out every day not raise concerns? How long can they keep funding more programs and services before the money just runs out? Why is no one interested in the constant increases?
Reporters just repeat what legislators and school officials tell them about special needs students. There are more of them and we just have to keep on providing funds.
Here’s what those in charge seem more than willing to accept as normal and unavoidable.
Ireland (Autism numbers in Northern Ireland are also accepted in Ireland.)
Increasing numbers of autistic children in Northern Ireland are being homeschooled as mainstream classrooms “aren’t fit to support their needs”, a charity has warned….
Official figures published last month show that one in 21 school-age children in the North has an autism diagnosis —quadruple that from a decade ago….
As anyone looking at LossOfBrainTrust can see, the majority of my stories are from Britain and Ireland currently. Things are in crisis all over the British Isles. Everywhere there’s more funding for special education. Counties are building their own special schools, specifically ones for kids with autism.
Official evaluations show schools are failing miserably when it comes to addressing the needs of those in special education. Story after story features special needs kids without a school place for this fall. Children wait years just for an evaluation to be classified as needing special help in school.
The phrase “increasing demand” is a regular feature in news coverage on special education in both Ireland and Britain.
What do these stories tell us? Simple, there are more and more disabled children in these countries. It’s not a secret. They keep telling us about it.
Bedfordshire:
“That’s more than 6,000 children in our mainstream schools on stage two of the SEND code of practice and around 3,000 with EHCPs….
CBC’s director of children services Sarah-Jane Smedmor said: “We’ve seen that demand for EHCPs double in the last few years. So it’s inevitable we need to ensure we meet the needs of our children individually.
Note: We're seeing the result of normalizing autism over the last 25 years. From a diagnosis to a difference. From awareness and action to acceptance and acquiescence. Autism has been scooted over to something in the sexual category. The "approved" symbol is a rainbow infinity loop. The rainbow has one meaning today and it's not Oz. The red, blue, yellow puzzle piece is considered discriminatory. Schools are overwhelmed with special education students, and severely behavioral students. It's not that teachers can't teach all of a sudden. The raw material, the kids, are not of the same neurological status, meaning quality. Tomorrow, it will start to get much worse. It's Covid vaccine day starting at 6 months. I hope we're still here in 6 years when that cohort starts school, the ones who live.
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By Anne Dachel
IT’S REALLY ALL ABOUT AUTISM.
Seriously.
Autism, that perpetual mystery identified by the iconic multicolored puzzle piece is a condition rampant in kids today. We’ve learned to accept and even celebrate the disorder.
Reality
With literally THOUSANDS of stories on the decline of children everywhere on my site, LossOfBrainTrust.com, https://www.lossofbraintrust.com/ it’s an undisputable fact that autism or some other form of neurological damage has changed traditional childhood.
(We call this damage by a lot of different names: autism, Aspergers, ADD, ADHD, OCD, speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), social/emotional disorder (SED), severe learning difficulties (SLD), and many more acronyms.)
And it’s getting worse right before our eyes. Something is happening to children’s brains that make them unable to speak in many cases, unable to learn normally and unable to behave as children have always been expected to behave.
We congratulate ourselves for recognizing the sorrowful condition of children and continually call for better detection and earlier intervention, as if those improvements would solve all the problems of dysfunctional children worldwide.
I’m in my sixth year posting stories on LossOfBrainTrust, yet clearly this is a disaster that goes unrecognized, even by the people involved. Officials keep funding more special ed classrooms and even whole schools, but it’s never enough. We’re constantly told that THERE ARE MORE DISABLED CHILDREN without even an attempt at an explanation for why it’s happening.
And kids are increasingly MORE SEVERELY DISABLED. That fact is sometimes noted in news reports, again in passing, but it should scare everyone.
A story I found recently is a good example of what’s happening to children.
Wiscasset, ME:Wiscasset’s special education needs rise
The audio link above is to an interview by Wayne Rohde who produces the Right on Point podcast and the Autism File podcast, with Dr. Walter Zahorodny. Dr. Zahorodny is the Research Director of the NJ Autism Study, and has been studying the prevalence of autism since 2000. He was very open about what autism is doing to our children. He’s been watching the increases for more than 20 years, and he’s the first to tell us that they are real. More children actually have autism and something in the environment is causing it. He also makes it clear that the future is very dark because the numbers show no signs of slowing down.
I transcribed the entire interview, highlighting in bold the most noteworthy statements.
It’s impossible to dismiss the statistics and facts that Zahorodny cites here, yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been doing just that for the last several decades. In fact, he describes the underhanded methods in play by the CDC to underestimate just how bad the increases are with the DSM-5 and what Zahorodny refers to as ADDM TWO.
The most recent CDC report, the one that reports on study year 2018, is very interesting in that for the first time, they’re not really concerned with autism prevalence. They’re not really reporting. If you read carefully, you’ll find out that they changed the methodology, and they’re not really concern with what is the true prevalence of autism.
One thing that maybe nobody understands, maybe through your podcast people will begin to appreciate the fact that the CDC no longer—and the ADDM Network—no longer does active population surveillance.
We’re not trying to find all the cases of autism. That’s the old system. I would call the old system ADDM ONE. You’re trying to find all the true cases.
Zahorodny cites statistics that should cause panic in officials who get billions of dollars a year to oversee our health. Not only do the people at the CDC refuse to acknowledge that more children have autism, but they’ve successfully covered up the real rate of autism.
There’s been another stunning announcement about autism in the UK. This time it’s from Northern Ireland. An annual report released on May 20th revealed that, according to the Department of Health, one in every 17 students in the 6 counties of Northern Ireland is autistic. (This would also mean about one in every 10 boys.)
Even more alarming are the numbers exclusively from Belfast. There one in every 14 students has a diagnosis.
Boys were three times more likely to have a diagnosis of autism than girls
The proportion of schoolchildren with an autism diagnosis in Northern Ireland has quadrupled in just over a decade, according to figures just published by the Department of Health.
Note: What are schools to do with the continuing explosion of children who need special ed services? Bey9nd school, how are families to manager short and long term. Parents depend on their children in their golden years. What happens when the children still depend on the parents?
By Anne Dachel
I cannot imagine how long this can go on in the UK and Ireland. There are always increases in the number of special education students, always another new special school announced, always more money being spent. The solution is always more spending and more services, yet no one sees where this is going.
How long can a country keep this up? What happens when massive numbers of disabled students age out of school with nowhere to go?
Here’s what’s out there recently. This is the news no one is worried about.
England: The latest figures from the Department for Education are out.
As of January 2022, there were 473,255 children with plans in place, compared with 430,697 the previous year, marking a 9.9 per cent increase.
The number of children subject to EHCPs and statements, which predated the plans, has increased each year since 2010 and the latest figures indicate further dramatic rises are likely, as demand among parents for assessments is increasing.
The figures show that requests for an assessment for a plan have rocketed by almost a quarter from 75,951 in 2020 to 93,302 in 2021. This is the highest figure since the data was first collected in 2016.
This was really bad news for children with severe disabilities.
“The latest release of pupils with high level special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) shows that the government do not have a plan to support children and young people with high level special educational needs and disabilities," said NEU joint general secretary Kevin Courtney.
England: An Ipswich MP introduced a bill calling for universal dyslexia screening.
By Anne Dachel - visit Anne's site Loss of Brain Trust How can they ignore “increasing complexity of need”?
Looking at the stories I’ve posted from the last week I’m stuck by the common denominator all the officials and experts continue to ignore.
How is it possible that story after story reveals the fact that there are more disable children and that the disabilities are more severe?
In his interview of top CDC autism researcher, Dr. Walter Zahorodny, in the film, Autism: The Missing Piece, Michael Smith asked him about the increases in autism.
Here was what Zahorodny had to say:
I’m always struck by the fact that people think the prevalence is increasing because we’re just getting better at identifying subtly affected children.
That’s definitely not the case.
Autism is going up and has increased significantly across every group that we look at: boys and girls, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, all up significantly. Children from rich communities and poor towns, up significantly.
Interestingly enough, we’ve seen the widest or the broadest increase among the children who have the highest level of impairment of autism, not the subtle, mild levels of impairment.
So I do consider escalating autism prevalence to be a public health crisis.
The cliché now to me, epidemic is a cliché. People talk about it in many different ways. The public’s not sensitive to that term anymore.
If there’s a stronger term, I’d be in favor of using it.
But when we saw autism prevalence go from one to two percent, nobody objected or seemed concerned, and now we’ve gone from two percent to three percent, and I also see no significant concern or urgency.
On the other hand, we’re seen autism escalating very progressively in the last 10 and 15 years, and I’m a little bit concerned why nobody really sees this tsunami right there in front of us.
We saw a very significant rise in prevalence between the 2012 and 2014 cycle. It was over 25 percent in a 2 year period. That’s very significant.
Anyone skeptical about Zahorodny’s claims just needs to look at the thousands and thousands of stories on Loss of Brain Trust. They’re the proof. They’re all about increases, more severely affected kids and more waiting lists.
Anne Dachel continues to catalog the thousands of stories about the explosion in Special Education. They stories may seem repetitive. But think about the children whose lives have been shunted off the main track into the morass of special education. Think about the parents grieving, worrying, angry, fighting for their kids. We need to keep shouting, and Anne sure does at Loss of Brain Trust, her site.
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It’s all about the money, at least as far as the U.K. is concerned. Ever increasing numbers of disabled students cost more and more. Local county councils try to keep up, but as we’re seeing, there’s a “funding black hole”/‘bottomless pit’ when it comes to special education.
Here are examples from stories last week in the U.K.:
Hull:Northcott Special School in Bransholme is to extend its age limit for pupils A £1.5m [$1.9M] package of upgrades at four Hull schools aimed specifically for pupils with special educational needs has been approved by councillors. The largest spend will take place at Northcott Special School in Dulverton Close in Bransholme where £600,000 [$750,000] is being allocated to expand the age range of the school from five to 16 to three to 19.
Overall, it will see the school's overall capacity increase to a total of 200 places.
Rotherham: The council, along with many other local authorities across the UK, faces a funding deficit due to the growth in demand for special educational needs (SEND) provision exceeding the government funding provided.
The agreement will see the DfE invest £20.5m [$26M] to address the deficit over the lifespan of the agreement – from 2021/22 to 2025/26. …
“Rotherham, like lots of other places, the cost of providing [education for youngsters with SEND] has exceeded the amount of money that’s been available through that every year, which puts you in a strange kind of limbo position about where that money comes from….
Brockenhurst: BROCKENHURST residents have been invited to have their say on plans for a new £4.9m [$6.2M] special needs hub at the college….
“The new development would help us build on our strong reputation as a provider of SEND and foundation studies education, while also expanding our teaching space to support the ongoing demographic increase in 16-19 learners.”
Merton:Merton Council has been given a £28.8 million [$36.7M] bailout by the government after it faced a huge gap in its school funding.
The Department for Education stepped in after the authority was identified as having a “very high deficit” in its dedicated schools grant.
In its 2022-26 business plan which was approved in March, the council said part of the strain on the budget is an increase in demand for special needs school placements which has grew from 1,075 in 2016 to 2,252 in 2020. In the report it said 80 new SEND places will be created in 2022 which it hopes will reduce the need to rely on private schools.
Lancashire: Plans to expand Morecambe Road School in Lancaster are set to take a key step next week. Lancashire County Council is proposing to expand this special school with the creation of 34 additional places, 12 of those being in a satellite unit at nearby Lancaster and Morecambe College. …
At its meeting on Thursday 5 May, the county council's cabinet is expected to agree a recommendation to initiate a formal consultation to increase the number of special school places by 22. This will be created through the building of additional teaching space on the main school site….
Autism The Missing Piece: A non partisan documentary addressing the challenges and financial crisis of autism spectrum disorders in The United States. Watch below or on YouTube https://youtu.be/2uSsVjJbH0I or at Fair Autism Media
Subjects covered include:
Advocacy, Policy and Legislation, CDC and the escalating prevalence rates of autism Adult Transition and Services Co-occurring Medical Conditions Autism Insurance The Autism Financial Crisis
By Anne Dachel
Senior CDC autism researcher sounds alarm over the fact that the “broadest increase” in autism is among children with the “highest level of impairment,” and he explains how the agency plans to cover up the numbers
Every once in a while a film comes with really stunning information from very credible sources. That’s how I would describe the release of a documentary called, The Missing Piece produced by Michael Smith, Executive Director Foundation for Autism Information and Research.
It’s a film about autism. It focuses on the very real increase in the rate of autism and what a lot of experts have to say about it. Included are interviews by Smith with people like Dr. David Amaral, Research Director at UC Davis MIND Institute, Rick Rollens, Former Secretary of the California State Senate, Co-Founder of the U.C. Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, and autism lobbyist in California, Sheri Marino, to Autism Think Tank/Autism Healthcare Collaborative (or now Autism Healthcare collaborative), Dr. Walter Zahorodny, Director of the New Jersey Autism Study and the leading researcher for the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network (ADDM).
Dr. Walter Zahorodny says that he’s has been working on autism since 2000, and he’s responsible for the New Jersey autism numbers, considered the most accurate in the country at one in every 34 children. He’s an insider and his views have a lot of credibility.
There are a number of topics covered in this film, but what was most intriguing were the comments on what the autism numbers really are and what we’re going to have to deal with in the not-too-distant future. I transcribed the entire film, but I wanted to share the parts that truly spell disaster.
Sixteen years ago I wrote a piece called, The Really Big Lie About Autism, which was about how officials always report that they are not sure if any particular increase in the autism rate represents a true increase in the number of affected children.
I updated that piece repeatedly after 2006 because the really big lie about autism has never gone away. (Just search Google for my past stories.) Over the years whenever the autism numbers took another leap upward, there was always someone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or a uniformed public health official assuring us that that more autism was nothing to worry about because doctors were finally recognizing it in children, something they hadn’t been able to do in the past. Autism has always been around; we just called it something else.
This has been the standard everywhere in the world. No one in charge cares what percentage of kids has autism. No one is worried.
Back in 2009 a report from Britain claimed to have found the same autism rate we see in children among adults. Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge said he found a comparable rate of autism among adults by asking questions using a phone survey, something which would make it impossible to assess who might be on the severe end of the autism spectrum.
I had several exchanges with Baron-Cohen about the results of this “study” and he did tell me that he believed there were “environmental as well as genetic factors” involved in autism and at the same time saying, “We have year by year simply become better at detection.”
We can delude ourselves into thinking that autism has always been here; we just didn’t recognize it, which is what health officials keep telling us, OR we can seriously consider that for some reason, we have an ever-increasing number of neurologically impaired children who never used to be here at the rate we see today.
Note: We're grateful to Anne Dachel for sharing these stories with our AoA readers weekly. While they may seem repetitive, they are indicative of the scope of the problem the autism epidemic continues to present. Every story represents families in turmoil, school districts in a quandary and nations in trouble.
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By Anne Dachel
There’s more autism; there are more schools, especially in the U.K., to accommodate affected kids. Costs are steep, but people are accepting and in denial about anything being seriously wrong. I have been cataloguing these stories for years at my site Loss of Brain Trust.
Here are examples I found last week.
The MP from Ellesmere Port, England local MP recognizes that there’s a “huge demand” for special education, and his solution is, of course, more funding.
Part of the challenge is the huge demand placed on stretched local authorities and schools; one in six children in England have a special educational need or disability which is the equivalent of five in every class. A lack of specialist help is also a huge issue with children are stuck on waiting lists for many months before they can access support from occupational therapy to speech and language assistance...
More generally, I support calls for a National Excellence Programme to include plans to recruit more than 6,500 new teachers…
In Scotland there’s a 3 year wait for an autism assessment.
In Ireland a 4 year old has an 18 month wait for autism services.
Denbighshire, England is moving closer to building an autism school for 220 students. There is “a growing need” and former schools are ‘full to the brim.’
Dorset, England autism diagnosis center opens to help with current 3 year rate for assessments.
Minnesota: Recently proposed special education bill will help with “budgetary holes” caused by soaring costs.
Sponsored by Rep. Heather Edelson (DFL-Edina), HF3963 would create a new category of special education aid, called “high-cost services aid,” to provide additional special education funding for school districts that serve students whose total special education costs are more than three times the $19,644 statewide average special education costs per student. …
Heidi Nistler, director of special education for the Sherburne and Northern Wright Special Education Cooperative, said creating a program for one student can sometimes cost $200,000 to take care of medical and safety issues involved. Being responsible for about half of those high-service costs hinders the district’s ability to meet the needs of other special education students, she said.
South Bend, IN: Autism center celebrating “Autism Acceptance Month.”
“We still have these increasing stats of kids getting diagnosed. The most recent one is 1 in 44 kids is diagnosed with Autism, and one of the big pushes at Lighthouse is really getting kids diagnosed earlier,” said C.O.O. Leila Allen.
A piece from New Jersey proposes that their rate of one in 35 is really just better diagnosing.
These numbers ask why the Garden State is a desirable place to live for children with autism and their families. Is it possible that educators and doctors in other states are not as keenly able to name autism when it manifests in youth?
Oklahoma: An autism provider in OK and 11 other states plans on hiring more than 4,000 new employees and adding 40 new locations. This is to “meet growing need.”
My stories from Loss of Brain Trust last week only confirm what we all know, namely that the number of disabled kids will continue to flood schools, both here and abroad, and the people in charge will not ask why it’s happening.
Over and over we’re told that increases are real. No one bothers to promote the tired line of “better diagnosing/greater awareness” that’s been around for the last 20 years. Instead, no explanation is given.
Bangor, ME: A new autism therapy center opens.
Steinburg said the demand for autism treatment services is only growing, and the new clinic meets the needs of Greater Bangor. …
Philadelphia, PA: Autism researcher calls for more and improved services for autistic children.
…That’s because, since the turn of the millennium, the prevalence rate of autism increased by 200%. And Miller pointed out that now, the number of children who need to be evaluated for the disorder is “incredibly high” compared to the number of professionals who have experience with it.
But long waitlists are an issue for patients since a formal diagnosis is key to accessing autism services.
“When autism was rare, a lot of systems were put in place to make sure that the person really had autism before you offered or provided really extensive or expensive interventions,” said Miller.
Regional autism provider addresses a growing need for services, adding treatment facilities in Philadelphia, Bucks County
NeurAbilities Healthcare will open treatment centers in Northeast Philadelphia and Hatboro/ Warminster Township in April, and in Center City Philadelphia in July. The nationally accredited, Voorhees-based practice launched a major expansion in 2020, adding five sites over the past two years. With its latest additions, NeurAbilities will operate a total of 12 facilities: four in New Jersey and eight in Pennsylvania….
“Many children in the Greater Philadelphia region are in need of diagnostic evaluations, treatment or both, and many remain on waiting lists.
Mississippi: 6 counties will be holding free autism screenings on April 25th.
Derbyshire, UK: More funding for “underperforming” school system.
Last week, the Government also released the SEND review green paper, which outlines a need to simplify processes surrounding special educational needs and alternative provision.
Coun Dale said: “What we’re proposing to do is invest more in increasing places at existing special schools in particular with a focus on autism, because that’s where we recognise there isn’t a huge attention at the moment and more and more kids getting a diagnosis.”
"As I was walkin' down the street one day...." It's April and precious little has changed, except for words & definitions and interpretations, and while sticks and stones might break out bones, words don't do much good at all.
By Anne Dachel
Is anything going right for kids with disabilities? It seems that special education is a lost cause, especially in schools in Britain.
The proof can be easily seen in the thousands of stories on LossOfBrainTrust.
Over the past five years I’ve compiled evidence of a massive and unrelenting decline in education standards and special needs services in the U.K. Billions of pounds have gone in the system, but it’s never enough.
A “long-awaited” special education reform plan, commissioned in 2019, has just been released, and it was immediately slammed as inadequate, despite appropriating $12B more for high needs students and another $3.4B to add more special needs places in mainstream and special schools.
In addition, the plan will train 5.000 more teachers to do early intervention, and it allocates $13M to train over 200 more educational psychologists starting next year.
A BBC report declared, ‘The system is broken,’ and with never-ending increases in the number of disabled students, it can’t be fixed.
Last year, 1.4 million pupils in England were identified as having special educational needs - the proportion has been growing since 2017.
Local counties are going broke providing for special needs students. Budgets are heavily in the red all over England.
The Evening Standard summed things up this way:
Teachers and parents today made an urgent call for more money to help fix the “broken” special educational needs system, as the government launched its plan for the future of the provision.
In a long-awaited review of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), the government said it will overhaul the system so children receive better help at school from an earlier stage, and includes plans to digitise paperwork.
But school leaders said the pandemic has caused a “staggering” increase in the number of children needing help, and more money is needed to tackle long waiting lists for services such as speech and language therapy and mental health….
Under the new reform plan, school systems are required to mainstream more disabled kids.
Councils would be legally required to set up “local inclusion plans” which would bring education and health services together, and make providers’ responsibilities clearer.
Councils would also have a new national framework to simplify funding for pupils and young people with SEND up to the age of 25.
The paper also proposes that mainstream schools need to become more inclusive and identify SEND needs earlier to improve support.
Local councils will receive funding IF they make significant changes to how they handle special education.
Surrey is a good example of the changes the national government wants to see.
Surrey County Council is to get a £100million government bailout in exchange for reforming its special educational needs provision. The council has overspent on its special educational needs and disabilities (Send) budget by a total of £118.4m [$155M] - higher than expected, with a £34.5 million [$45M] overspend in the year 2020/21 alone….
…the authority must improve the skills and capacity of staff in mainstream schools to support children with Send. The DfE said this was to “reduce the escalation of need and push to move from mainstream to specialist provision". A principle set out in its Send green paper out today (March 29) is that mainstream schools need to become more inclusive.
Councillor Jonathan Essex, who sits on Surrey's children select committee, said the need for a bailout shows "outsourcing is not the way to go". He said the council's deficit came about because the council did not provide maintained specialist places soon enough, instead having to fork out for more expensive private placements and the associated out of county transport.
Meanwhile the stories of neglect continue.
A 4 year old in England has been at home for the past 5 months after being permanently excluded due to violent behavior toward staff and other children. His mother is waiting for an autism diagnosis.
In East Sussex an autistic 7 year old has run away from school 82 times in 15 months, as reported in a piece that painted a dismal picture of handling special education in England
But if a child with SEN requires extra support costing £10,000 [$13,000] or more, an EHCP is required, so it can help identify and support a child’s educational, health and social needs.
For the academic year 2020/21, 325,600 pupils in England had an EHCP – up more than 30,000 from the previous year. But obtaining an EHCP is often easier said than done. I
In January 2021, according to support group Special Needs Jungle, 5,600 children and young people with EHCPs were listed as ‘awaiting provision’, with some waiting months, even years, to get the education that they are entitled to.
One parent summed it up this way: ‘The whole system is rotten.’
In Hampshire County, special ed numbers have more than doubled in six years, and special needs places are in ‘high demand.’
A story from Warwickshire in central England had this to say about how bad things are for kids needing help.
Figures acquired under the Freedom of Information Act show that 2,835 autistic children referrals at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust have still not had a first appointment an average of 88 weeks after being referred. The longest wait at the time the response was sent in January stood at 251 weeks – nearly five years.
Meanwhile, 1,250 children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) referrals at the trust have yet to have a first appointment, having waited an average of 46 weeks – and 195 weeks in the worst case. Berkshire Healthcare NHS Trust has 2,801 autistic children referrals still awaiting their first appointment after 60 weeks on average.
Among the 2,443 children with ADHD referrals – who have waited an average of 87 weeks for a first appointment – the longest wait stands at 193 weeks or nearly four years.
The local government try to assure people things will improve.
A spokesman for Coventry and Warwickshire CCG said: “We acknowledge that our waiting times, particularly for autism and ADHD assessments, are longer than we want. We are investing £5.4m [$7.1M] in additional diagnostic capacity.”…
Despite the unexplained, unstoppable presence of autism in schools across the U.K., members of the media, officials and educators are also calling on the public to “celebrate” “World Autism Acceptance Day” as we’re told in a number of stories.
The message to the public is clear, no matter how often you hear about the cost and increases surrounding autism, it’s really nothing to worry about.
There’s one side note from the U.S. that signaled there might be a problem here. A piece from PBS/NPR covered the fact that there are lots of kids in America who are on waiting lists, just like in Britain, for an autism diagnosis. And we’re further told that even after a diagnosis, a child might wait months or even longer for actual treatment. Medicaid is unreliable and many families don’t have insurance.
This, of course, is the future. Waiting lists and delays because there are just too many kids that no one can reasonably explain.
In the U.K. stories now repeatedly tell us that April is “Autism Acceptance Month.” I’m sure that will be happening in the U.S. as well. It makes sense since there is no talk about actually addressing why so many children have autism and reducing the rate. We’re continually told that the rate will continue to increase. I suppose there’s nothing else to do but keep on paying and building.
Here are some highlights from the past week news coverage from Loss of Brain Trust.
Hackney:Hackney Council has committed to investing £1 million [$1.3M] into creating nearly 100 new classroom places - including a state-of-the-art new building - for young people with high needs at four potential sites in the borough this year. …
It marks an ongoing period of dedicated local investment in special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision, following a 49% increase over the last five years in the number of children locally identified as needing specialist support.
Northamptonshire:Northamptonshire Police and Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service have released a short series of films to coincide with Neurodiversity Celebration Week which runs from 21-27 March.
Dorchester: School children have been quizzing adults on their experiences with neurological conditions like ADHD and Autism. It's part of Neurodiversity Celebration Week at Prince of Wales First School.
Glastonbury: The council has been seeking a more central base for these services in the Mendip area, arguing the Frome centre can no longer meet pupils’ needs and that Glastonbury represents a better, more central location….
I sincerely hope that people in the U.K. are not going to spend April telling us that we should celebrate and accept autism. From the stories I’m increasingly finding, autism is overwhelming county councils and schools there, and officials can’t keep up with the demand.
Here are just some of the reports on Loss of Brain Trust from the past week:
One opinion piece blamed parents for the special education crisis in Britain. It focused on the struggles parents have getting services, and it cited AUTISM as a big part of the problem.
As readers of my previous columns will be aware, the government has belatedly recognised that the current system is beset with problems. It is adversarial and confrontational and regularly leaves parents facing debilitating David and Goliath battles with their local councils over Education Health & Care Plans (EHCPs) for their children.
These matter. They outline a child or teenager’s educational, health, and social care needs, and set out what is required to meet them up to the age of 25. And they are legally binding – particularly important when some British institutions look for any excuses not to do their jobs.
The number of appeals against local authority decisions with respect to these are rising.
Moreover, parents are winning at an astonishing rate: more than 95 per cent per Ministry of Justice statistics….
You might think that an “independent” report would recognise what is glaringly obvious: losing at that rate demonstrates there is clearly something going badly wrong with local authorities’ decision making.
You might also think that an “independent” report would further recognise that one condition – autism – accounts for close to half of them, and would underline that. You would be wrong.
Here’s what the British government has failed to address:
Looking over the stories I’ve added in the last week, all I can think about is what I’ve long called “the really big lie about autism,” namely that all the kids on the spectrum are nothing new. They’ve always been here—we just called them something else.
That myth has been in circulation for the last twenty years, and true to the narrative, whenever the folks in Atlanta (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) get around to updating the autism rate, there’s never been a real increase.
“Better diagnosing”/”greater awareness”/”expanded definition” are always the explanations for more and more and more autism.
We once again prepare for April, Autism Awareness Month, and it’s time for the media to remind the public that autism is something we should celebrate. There will be calls for inclusion and acceptance and talk about neurodiversity.
All this flies in the face of reality when you look at the stories from the U.K. Even though officials still routinely tell us that they’re ‘excited’/‘delighted’/‘proud’ of the newest autism school or additional school places, they’ve got to be worried about the increases that never level off.
I would love to see a single reporter somewhere in the world bring up the obvious: When is this going to stop?
Is the rate of one in every 44 among U.S. children finally getting it right?
Or more specifically, what about one in 39 in North Carolina or one 36 in Minnesota or one in 35 in New Jersey or one in 26 in California or one in 22 in New York?
I just have to ask these things because no one else is. I guarantee that when we’re lighting up the world in blue next month, no one will bring up the uncomfortable questions.
One of the reasons I’ve compiled LossOfBrainTrust stories over the last five years is to show what officials and governments have long ignored. Something is terribly wrong with the health of our children, especially with their ability to learn, communicate and socialize.
Here’s a look at some of news over the last week. This will continue until special education takes over the schools.
By far the stories I’ve been posting on LossOfBrainTrust are from England, not the entirety of the British Isles, and everywhere it seems schools are going broke educating massive numbers of disabled children.
Consider that the United States has four times the population of England which is about 55 million, yet nothing like that is happening here. This is an incredible thing to watch. Most puzzling of all is the fact that there is no end in sight. Over and over officials tell us numbers are going to continue to increase. The country is helpless to stop it. There’s nothing to do but keep on paying.
IF this were happening here in America, I think many advocates would demand to know WHY kids are flooding special ed classrooms and WHY enormous costs never level off.
Here’s what is normal and acceptable in England:
Yorkshire:We are seeking the go-ahead to expand provision at a North Yorkshire school, so it can meet the needs of children and young people with complex needs related to autism.
…The number of children with complex needs, including Autism, is expected to continue to grow over the coming years….
Slough: The cost of “adult social care.”
HISTORIC financial issues have forced Slough Borough Council (SBC) to spike council tax to the maximum allowed as it potentially faces a £479m blackhole.
Parents in the autism community have long been wary of anything that comes out of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For over 20 years this agency has failed to show the least interest in the explosion of neurological/developmental problems plaguing our children.
Every year or two the CDC updates the autism rate affecting a mind-numbing percentage of kids, currently around 2 percent, with no alarm or explanation for why it’s always going up. In fact, officials routinely remind us that they have no evidence that there’s ever been a real increase in the number of children with autism. They conveniently remind us that it’s probably just more better diagnosing and greater awareness. All the powers that be buy into that claim.
Now there’s a new pronouncement from this agency and it begs the question: What are they covering up now?
With little media coverage the CDC, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently moved the goalposts on childhood developmental milestones. Among these changes are things like crawling, walking and talking. Crawling is no longer a milestone, walking has been moved from 12 months to 18 months and talking from 12 months to 15 months.
The CDC defended this new timetable by saying it will improve diagnosing development delays like autism.
In an effort to spot autism and other developmental disorders more quickly, the CDC has changed the major milestones up a little bit. …
Previously, the benchmarks reflected where 50% of children should be with that milestone at that particular time. NOW, the CDC has changed it to reflect where 75% of children should be meeting a certain milestone.
The AAP’s Peter Lipkin assured us, The earlier a child is identified with a developmental delay the better, as treatment as well as learning interventions can begin.
How is waiting till a child is 15 months to be concerned about a lack of language skills going to help doctors identify autism earlier?
This explanation doesn’t make sense to any thinking person and many suspect that the milestones have been extended or eliminated because so many kids simply can’t make them today. A normally developing, healthy child is becoming more and more a rarity.
One professional group isn’t buying the claims of the CDC/APP.
WSBT anchor:Questions tonight after updated guidancehas been issued for young children. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC have updated milestones for kids who are learning to walk and talk.
No big surprise that once again, stories from the U.K. are predominant on LossOfBrainTrust. There are more stories from Schools Week that spell D I S A S T E R for Britain. Someone somewhere should be asked about the five stories recently published on their site.
After a four month investigation Schools Week makes it clear in their coverage that special education cannot continue like it is currently. The numbers and the costs are cannot be ignored. More disabled kids are coming.
STILL, Schools Week fails completely to ask the obvious: Where are they all coming from? Why are there so many students today who can’t function like students have always been expected to?
SORRY, those questions are not allowed. We’re only supposed to call for more money and more support. The solution is more special schools and more special needs teachers. For some reason, if anyone asks about the never-ending increases, it’s considered an attack on the disabled.
So we struggle on. What is important about the Schools Week stories is the scope of the coverage. It’s not about expanding a special school in Norfolk or a new autism classroom in Derry—all the local stuff we’re do used to. Instead it’s about special education in the whole U.K.
The devastating toll of failing mental health support systems on families and schools is revealed in a four-month investigation by Schools Week.
Thousands of children are stuck on waiting lists for expert help, with schools digging into their own pockets to fund support Therapists once provided to schools free now cost hundreds of pounds a visit • Schools accuse parents of “fabricating illnesses” as collapsing support drives rifts.
I added some really apocalyptic stories from this past week. I can’t say that strongly enough. No one ever ventures to ask what the long-term affect on society will be from the relentless increases in the autism rate among 8 year olds or the astonishing special education figures told to us as asides in news reports. I’ve compiled these figures over the last five years.
I mean things like:
Kalmath Falls, OR: 18 percent of students are considered as having special needs.
Hays, KS: 19 percent of students have special needs.
Lewiston, ME: 21 percent of students have special needs.
Brainerd, MN: 22 percent of students have special needs.
Scotland: 32 percent of students have special needs.
Nothing ever levels off.
Two stories from Schools Week in the U.K. would have me shaking in my boots if I ran the Department of Education over there.
One piece from this past week revealed that no one in charge even knows what the figures for special needs mean.
Heads say the system is 'completely overwhelmed'
Special school heads say their classrooms are “bursting at the seams”, but government does not collect data to monitor how the sector is coping with rising demand for places. The number of pupils with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) has risen from 237,000 in 2015-16 (2.8 per cent of all pupils) to 326,000 this year (3.7 per cent). …
Headteacher Rachael Booth said they are “bursting at the seams …It’s not the local authority’s fault, it’s the whole system.”…
“The system is completely overwhelmed,” he said. “Schools are doing their best, but more and more children are missing out on the specialist provision they need.” The percentage of pupils with an EHCP in mainstream schools increased from 48.7 per cent in 2019-20, to 50.4 per cent last year.
One thing that is very hard for me to understand is how no one in charge in the U.K. (or elsewhere) seems at all concerned about what the never-ending increase in special education numbers means in the long run. Can this continue forever? How many special schools will they have to build across Britain?
Disabled children don’t outgrow their disabilities.
We see the constant news reports telling us that government officials and educators are ‘excited’ and ‘delighted’ to announce another new special school or the creation of more and more special ed places in mainstream schools. Costs are in the millions. We’re told that everyone expects numbers to continue to increase. People acknowledge that more “high needs” students are a big part of this. (And any parent dealing with a severely autistic child knows what that really means.)
I continue to compile these stories which should have officials desperate for answers because when the system finally goes bankrupt, no one will be able to say they had no idea that the situation was really so bad.
Eventually things will have to implode. It’s simply unsustainable that any country could care for massive numbers of handicapped adults aging out of the schools (and in the U.K., since 2014 special ed services are provided until age 25) while at the same time educating more and more special needs students.
There are signs of worry on the part of local government officials in Britain, but their usual answer is that the national government needs to cover more of the cost.
Every week when I look through the stories I’ve collected on Loss of Brain Trust, I search for the one that really got my attention.
This week it was one from the U.K.
The Northamptonshire Telegraph ran the story, North Northants pupils forced into expensive out-of-county placements as special schools are full to bursting.
Subtitle: The north of the county's high needs budget has a deficit £2.3m [$3.1M U.S.]
The story painted a pretty bleak picture of the cost the county council is facing.
A funding squeeze and a lack of places for some of the north of the county's most vulnerable school pupils are causing significant budget pressures for education bosses. Because many of our special schools and mainstream units are running at, or over, capacity, children are having to be educated in out-of-county schools that have spaces, which come at an eye-watering top-up cost.
There is an ongoing increase in the number of Education, Care and Health Plans (EHCPs) administered in the county and North Northants Council's education department is also having to deal with a £2.1m [$2.8M] hole in the special education budget inherited from Northamptonshire County Council - plus an overspend of £300,000 [$402K] and rising in this financial year.
"Our special schools are running at a very high level of capacity," he said. "Many actually are over capacity as tribunals are requiring them to take over their published number to admit (PAN). …
The government's Department for Education funds schools using its Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) which is split into four portions - one of those is known as the high needs block. The report to Schools Forum members said: "In recent years there has been considerable growth in pupils identified as having SEND and in those requiring an EHCP, pupils requiring alternative provision and pupils requiring specialist provision. This shows no signs of abating. "As a result, many local authorities have found that the high needs block has been insufficient to fully meet identified needs. …
"Currently, there is year-on year growth in these areas and with this sustainable demand on the HNB."
Mr Goddard said that there was a historic overspend of £2.115m [$2.84M] brought forward from the former Northamptonshire County Council which disbanded in April 2021, and that there was already an added £300,000 [$406,000] overspend for this financial year, which is expected to grow further. He said: "We're having to use high-cost out-of-county special school placements because our special schools are full and that's causing expenditure. There's ongoing growth in the number of EHCPs across the system.
I’ve been looking at stories about special education for five years now for Loss of Brain Trust and things show no sign of quietly settling down. Every once in a while some story will mention the percentage of kids who have special needs or else cite the current autism rate. I’ve faithfully written about all these numbers.
The latest U.S. autism rate is one in 44, up from one in 54 the year before.
Of course that’s nothing. Over the last few years I’ve seen one in 39 in North Carolina, one in 26 in California, one in 22 in Northern Ireland, and one in 14 in Toms River, NJ.
Those are only a few. I’ve got lots more, but it really doesn’t matter. Autism will never be a real problem and neither will the percentage of kids who are considered special ed.
I’ve been collecting those percentages too, and they’re chilling: Staten Island: 24 percent of students are SPED, Ireland: 25 percent, Rumford, ME: more than 25 percent; Hamilton, Ontario: 26 percent, Clark County, KY: 30 percent, Scotland: 32 percent. It just gets monotonous after a while. None of these numbers matter at all. I don’t know why reporters even mention them. There’s never any follow-up questions or real concern.
There’s one glaring truth that can’t be ignored: With ever-increasing autism numbers and greater percentages of students with special needs, we will see rising costs to society, and it turns out that in the U.K. and Ireland, those costs are disastrous.
A couple of years ago I came in contact with an economist who knew all about what autism will be costing us. Toby Rogers, PhD studied the official reports from NIH. Here’s how he summed things up.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Those are the government’s own figures. No one pretends that things will ever level off or improve. The numbers are real, yet there is no alarm from officials.
I added a number of stories to Loss of Brain Trust this past week which testify to the impact disabled children are having on schools, especially in Britain.
What is a continual mystery to me is why no one questions why this is happening. They just keep calling for more funding, more services in mainstream schools and more exclusive special schools, specifically ones for children with autism.
Adults are often seen in photos with the stories. They’re typically smiling as they cut the ribbon for yet another autism school, built so students won’t have to be sent to costly out-of-county schools.
Hopes to expand? I’m sure these smiling adults are very well-intentioned, but these stories about autism numbers are really scary and should have everyone’s attention. Questions should be asked. Why are there always more affected children? When is it going to stop? Why are they’re never any answers?
Seriously, no one anywhere is talking about these issues. There is absolutely no alarm over what’s happening.
The story is brief, but we’re told that autism is a big part of special education in Kent.
Autistic Spectrum Disorder remains the most common primary need type with 41.2% of children and young people with an Education and Health Care Plan having ASD identified as their primary need.
Note to The President: We're going to need a 1000% raise for SSI. Thank you.
By Anne Dachel
We’ve been warned.
The recent story from Naperville, IL projecting the annual U.S. cost of autism at a stunning $1 TRILLION by 2025, three years from now, shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Few US estimates of the economic burden of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are available and none provide estimates for 2015 and 2025. We forecast annual direct medical, direct non-medical, and productivity costs combined will be $268 billion (range $162-$367 billion; 0.884-2.009 % of GDP) for 2015 and $461 billion (range $276-$1011 billion; 0.982-3.600 % of GDP) for 2025. These 2015 figures are on a par with recent estimates for diabetes and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and exceed the costs of stroke and hypertension. If the prevalence of ASD continues to grow as it has in recent years, ASD costs will likely far exceed those of diabetes and ADHD by 2025.
Back in 2015, the autism rate was one in 68, and I’m sure the current one in 44 rate was pretty much expected by those doing the numbers. No official ever makes the claim that the autism rate has finally stabilized. We’re conditioned to see another leap in the statistic every year or two.
Incredibly, the experts concluding that we’d be paying $1 trillion a year for autism by 2025 did get national coverage as we see here.
One thing the stories on my website testify to is the normalization of disabled children. We calmly accept it if our children are labeled having ADD, ADHD, OCD, dyslexia, autism, speech delay and any of the related disorders in the DSM 5.
We have normalized all of this. We’re way past the time when anyone seriously cares why these conditions are increasing so dramatically among our kids. Research regularly finds a possible association with genetics. The focus is always on intervention. We really pride ourselves on how we provide for special needs students in our schools.
With COVID the main feature in U.S. reporting right now, we have to look to Britain to see this really playing out as I show on Loss of Brain Trust.
$1.3 billion has been added to the special education funding this year for England and Wales alone.
The stories amazingly come with photos of smiling government officials and educators. Clearly no one is in a panic over these increases (which they’re always talking about) or the massive amounts of money being spent. And no one ever assures us that this is the end of the increases, in fact we regularly hear about projections of even more special needs students in the coming years.
Here are just some of the statements recently in the news.
Wales: Welsh Government announced that £18m [$24M] will be made available to provide extra support for children and young people with ALN [Additional Learning Needs]…
£8m [$11M] will be allocated to schools, nurseries, local authorities and Pupil Referral Units to move learners from the old Special Educational Needs (SEN) system to the new ALN system, as the roll-out of the Additional Learning Needs Act continues.
Lancashire: This 2022/23 dedication schools grant (DSG) allocation includes £869,940,171 for mainstream schools, £158,303,915 [$210M] for the special educational needs block and £80,654,601 for early years education. …
Nottinghamshire: Local MP Brendan Clarke-Smith is proud of the increase in school spending, including the $1.3B, “a record 13 percent increase on this year” in special education funding.
Essex: A special school is expanding.
Ramsden Hall Academy works with up to 100 secondary-age and Year 6 male students who have an Educational Health Care Plan (EHCP) for Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs.
We've added part II of Anne Dachel's transcription. The video has been removed. And Anne faces suspension from Facebook for running it. Happy Season of illness, death and doom.
Dec 16, 2021, (Australia) Kalkine Media Explosive revelations about the FDA and Pfizer's COVID vaccine [PART 1]
The highly confidential Pfizer documents, which have been synonymous with the extreme lack of transparency revealed by the actions of pivotal governmental agencies, over the past 20 months, lead critics of the official narrative to demand “show us the data,” is finally being revealed–well sort of, the first few hundred redacted pages out of a trove of 451,000.
What led to the disclosure?
The crack in Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) iron dome-style data safeguarding, arrived in the form of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release with the request filed on August 27, 2021, to access all the Pfizer documentation that the FDA had relied on to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use authorization. An agency that has received a FOIA request is required to ‘determine within 20 business days after the receipt of any such request whether to comply with such request,’ as set out by the 1967 FOIA law. It took the FDA though three months to release the first 91 redacted pages, on November 20.
Kalkine Media anchor, James Preston: With billions of COVID 19 shots having been mandated by various governments, the desire for more information surrounding the process of their creation and approval from governing bodies has reached fever pitch.
The FDA or Food and Drug Administration who is in charge of regulating the vaccine in the U.S. was recently hit with a freedom of information request from a group of 30 scientists and academics from across the globe wishing to get an insight into the approval process of the Pfizer vaccine.
It always amazes me how, especially in Britain, they talk what’s happening to the health of children, and yet no one is alarmed. (Maybe there is concern over what the costs are getting to be, but that’s it.)
WHY, WHY, WHY
No one is asking, “Why can’t Billy learn like kids have always done?”
“Why are so many students qualifying for special schools and why do so many kids need special ed plans in regular schools?”
“Why is autism a category in itself, to the point where we have to have whole school to provide an education for those affected?”
Instead, as my website shows, the powers that be just stumble on, complaining about costs while adding more and more accommodations for kids who can’t learn normally.
Right now we’re always focused in children/students, but the day will soon arrive where across the population, we’ll have to recognize that people can’t function and they need critical support.
Will we ever wake up?
Here’s another week in the decline of education and childhood worldwide on Loss of Brain trust.
U.S. stories
Spokane, WA: A new autism school will open on Jan 4. It’s got space for 20 kids, but there have been “more than 50 applications.”
New Orleans, LA: “In response to a growing population of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder” a service provider is partnering with a local school.
The supervisor is ‘so excited.’
Rothschild, WI: A ribbon cutting ceremony was held for opening of new autism center.
Berlin, CT: The city also cut the ribbon on a new autism center. Ten to 15 families are currently enrolled and more are coming.
God bless our Anne Dachel, the transcription Queen. She took the time to write out Robert Kennedy's 28 minute interview with Wayne Rohde on his Right to the Point Podcast. Time is precious, and by reading the content quickly, we hope you will then buzz over to Buzzsprout to listen to this and all of Rohde's interviews.
During the 28 minute talk Kennedy revealed the lengths Fauci went to in order to turn his agency, NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, from a backwater entity, set to be abolished, into a powerful force controlling our public health decisions.
As Kennedy put it, “He captured the AIDS crisis for his agency” in order to gain access to billions of research dollars, and “that really was the beginning of his power.”
Kennedy explained that Fauci has never been held accountable for promoting the unproven, deadly drug, AZT for AIDS patients.
Instead Fauci went on to gain more power over research and funding from the U.S. Government.
Kennedy explained how Fauci joined forces with the pharmaceutical industry to the point, as Kennedy said, “He is a partner in the pharmaceutical industry.” This includes dispensing research dollars to universities.
As a result, there is essentially no oversight: “So the whole system is now corrupt. Every aspect of it has been has been completely corrupted by pharma.”
As far as the current pandemic is concerned, Kennedy revealed that under Fauci’s watch, plans to handle a pandemic had been in the works for years.
Before COVID there were a whole series of corona virus pandemic simulations that the intelligence agencies were doing.
It’s all going according to plan, as Kennedy said,
They’re manipulating populations on a national scale. All that propaganda, the fear mongering, the scapegoating, the isolation tactics, the lockdowns to induce this system that the intelligence agencies call Stockholm syndrome which makes people grateful to their captors and leaves them with the feeling that their only path to survival is total compliance and total obedience to the captors, anger at people who anger the captors—and all of these techniques that I talk about.
Wayne Rohde:Welcome everyone. Thank you for listening today. …
Today I have the distinct honor and privilege to have Robert Kennedy, Jr. on the program. So welcome, Mr. Kennedy. Thank you for joining us today.
Robert Kennedy, Jr.: Thanks for having me, Wayne, and for all your years of work as an advocate on this issue. You are our go-to person at CHD [Children’s Health Defense] when we have a question on the VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System](system. You’ve made yourself kind of the world’s expert on how VAERS works. So thank you, thank you for being such an extraordinary useful resource for all of those years.
Rohde: Well, you’re welcome. I appreciate it. There are so many of us out here that are willing to help and provide it. That’s what a great thing about our advocacy group here is….
What’s it like to have the number one selling book out on Amazon? What’s it like there to know that your book is number one?
Kennedy: I’m really happy about it.
We’re waiting to see what happens with the New York Times list and how they handle that because clearly they are going to do everything in their power to keep us off that list.
It’s important. It’s an important statement. As you know, people in our community have been silenced for many, many years.
We cannot speak on mainstream media at all. We can’t write editorials in the paper.
Once again most of the stories were from the U.K. where special education costs are putting more and more schools into deficit spending and where they can’t build special schools fast enough.
There’s always the local official or the headteacher who’s quoted saying they are ‘delighted,’ or ‘excited’ about what’s happening.
Despite all the happiness over special ed spending there are jolts of reality.
A new report found that a third of English local councils aren’t providing adequate services for their disabled students.
And Indra Morris, the DfE director general for children’s services, communications and strategy group, revealed that the government was working directly with around one in three councils in the country to secure improvements.
In Leicester, in central England, they’re building a special needs nursery school costing $1.2 million for “up to 34 children.”
Officials are ‘very proud’ and ‘extremely excited.’
Over in Sefton, on the west coast of England, the city council revealed that they’re sending 126 special needs kids outside the borough for school costing “a total cost of [$8M], with an additional [$1.3M] projected to be spent next year.”
It seems there are more special needs kids.
The report states:“The continual increase in demand for High Needs support and the anticipated increase to the deficit on the HN Block over the next few years is still of serious concern as there is no clarity from the Government over how future / accumulated [dedicated schools grant] deficits will be resolved.”
In common with the picture nationally, there has been a sharp increase in the number of children identified as having special educational needs in recent years, which has contributed to a huge national overspend of over £250 million [$332M]. In Sefton, it is estimates an additional 194 children will have Education and Health Care plans in the borough over the next five years.
Many years ago I made a disturbing discovery that I’ve never gotten over, and the whole COVID-19 event is more proof that what I learned almost 20 years ago is still going strong.
I’ve been monitoring the coverage of autism in the news for about two decades now, and back in the day, I actually used to write individually to reporters and editors challenging their baseless claim that all the autism happening to children was just better diagnosing, greater awareness, and an expanded definition, in other words, no real increase.
I would explain to people that the argument, studies show link between the stunning increase in childhood vaccinations and exploding rates of autism, needed to be looked into since vaccine makers funded much of the “science “on vaccine safety and our federal health officials had endless conflict of interest waivers because they were also in the pay of the industry they were supposed to be overseeing.
I almost never got a response from anyone in the media, but one time that I did really said it all.
I had sent lots of evidence that challenged the claim that vaccines are safe for every child, and this editor wrote back to me saying something to the effect that all I shared was interesting, but “what you’re talking about is a conspiracy between federal health officials, the medical community and the vaccine makers, ANDTHERE’S JUST TOO MUCH OVERSIGHT FOR THAT TOBETRUE.”
That response has stayed with me because it’s clearly why people everywhere continue to trust that officials put the health and safety of the public foremost in their work, especially over personal interests and profit.
We have to be able to trust officials and experts in white coats. How could they possibly have other motives? They work for us.
Enter Anthony Fauci
Today we’re in a bizarre situation where the scientist involved in gain-of-function research designed to enhance bioweapons in a faraway lab in Wuhan, China that spread to entire globe is now in charge of our country’s response to that pandemic. It’s like the plot of sci fi movie that no one would believe could actually happen.
Strangely, this scenario seems acceptable to everyone in the government, the press and to many of the American people. Fauci is the go-to guy we all have to listen to.
Why? What is Fauci’s real role in this crisis? Why does one individual have so much power? What is his real end game?
We need to have answers to these questions. Everyone needs to read Robert Kennedy Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci; Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health and share it with others.
The truth is, the COVID-19 pandemic and the response of governments around the world has been in the planning for over two decades, led by Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates and other power hungry globalists.
Watch this 23 minute interview where Kennedy explains how his book exposes the truth about Anthony Fauci.
Nov 23, 2021, The New American: Fauci & Gates Using Pandemic for Totalitarianism, Warns Robert Kennedy Jr.
Newman: Who is the real Anthony Fauci, and why should we be concerned? He’s not a friendly public health expert that we see on TV?
Kennedy: Anthony Fauci is the architect of agency capture within the public health agencies.
He has orchestrated the transformation of HHS from a public health agency to an incubator for pharmaceutical product s and a promoter of the Big Pharma agenda.
He’s the J Edgar Hoover of public health. He’s managed to stay for 50 years in office, I show in my book, not by actually accomplishing any measurable successes in public health—public health has declined dramatically under his regime—but rather by serving the interests of pharmaceutical companies, by helping make this country the most pharmaceutical dependent nation in the world. We take three times more pharmaceutical drugs than the average in other western nations. We pay the highest prices for those drugs, and we have by far the worse health outcomes in the entire developed world. We’re 79th in the world in terms of our total health outcomes.
This generation of children that has come of age during Tony Fauci’s regime since 1984, is the sickest generation in history.
When he came in to NIH chronic disease rates [in our children] in our country were around 6 percent. Today they’re 54 percent.
By chronic disease, I mean, not just obesity, but neurodevelopmental diseases like ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, narcolepsy, Tourettes syndrome, autism.
Autism has gone one in every 10,000 people in my generation, which it is still today, to one in every 34 kids in my children’s generation.
During Tony Fauci’s administration, food allergies appeared in 1989, an epidemic. Peanut allergies, celiac diseases, wheat allergies, all these other food allergies, then autoimmune diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile diabetes, lupus became epidemic.
Photo from Kildare Now https://www.kildarenow.com/news/local-news/692998/kildare-school-celebrates-new-asd-bluebells-classroom-sensory-room-and-playroom-in-rathangan.html
By Anne Dachel
“The Really Big Lie” is something I’ve written about a number of times over the last 15 years. Usually I specifically talk about “The Really Big Lie about Autism,” namely the eternal claim that all the kids with autism everywhere are merely the result ofbetter diagnosing, expanded definitionandgreater awareness.
Increases can continue indefinitely and doctors will be given credit for them. In short, all the autism we keep hearing about is nothing to worry about. All we need is early diagnosing and intervention.
Key to this is the fact that experts are never worried and neither is anyone in the media. And now we can expand this mindset to cover the whole situation of exploding special education numbers, especially in Britain.
Stories announcing yet another new special school (with or without a specific mention of autism) typically include a photo of smiling council members or teachers with or without smiling students. To further allay any worry, officials and teachers regularly are quoted using words like, delighted, excited, proud andpleased.
These same stories often include dire sounding statistics as well as the oft repeated, but never explained words, increased demand.
A recent story revealed that there are 160,000 autistic students in schools in England, with 70 percent of them in mainstream schools. That reality makes every classroom a special ed room.
That same story claimed, One in four autistic children wait more than three years to receive the support they need at school, leaving families “exhausted and on the edge of crisis”, according to the National Autistic Society.
Where are all these children coming from? Why isn’t the system able to provide for them?
Note: Mission accomplished. The world is happy to be autistic. Our children were early adopters. We could all use a padded cell - I mean, "sensory room."
By Anne Dachel
Stories from the past week present two views of the decline of children everywhere in the world as posted on my site, Loss of Brain Trust.
First of all, there’s the nothing-is-really-wrong with kids who can’t talk, behave or learn like children have always been expected to. They are the new normal of the enlightened 21st century.
We can see this positive attitude in stories about neurodiversity and in the promotion of “sensory rooms” in schools, also known as “calming rooms,” for kids today who can’t handle stress.
A story from Northfield, NJ showed a colorful, toy-filled room with four smiling adults. We were told, “Studies have shown the rooms are useful for reducing and managing stress and aggression.”
A similar report from Woodstock, VA announced the benefits of a $5,000 room referred to as “Chillville” where students can “calm down for a few minutes if frustrated, angry or tired.”
In Talladega County, AL, the board of education has turned a retired school bus into a “sensory space” where “students with disabilities can escape when overwhelmed by the school day.”
“We wanted a mobile sensory room that we could bring to all 17 schools into our county,” Special Education Coordinator with TCBOE, Michelle Head said.
In addition there were stories reminding us that we need to “celebrate,” literally, all the neurologically impaired students flooding our schools.
Maldon, England’s Standard ran the story, Plume Academy celebrates 'superpowers' for ADHD Awareness Month.
A SCHOOL launched a project celebrating the “superpowers” of its neurodiverse students and those with disabilities. This year Maldon’s Plume Academy staff and students launched an exciting project in support of ADHD Awareness Month….
Hannah Wells, Plume's Deputy SENCO, said: "ADHD Awareness Month seeks to highlight the positives of neurodiversity - meaning that all of our brains function slightly differently, and this is what makes us brilliant and unique.
This situation seems kind of inevitable as the special needs population continues to soar.
The Guardian reported that disabled children who have been expelled from regular special ed programs are being warehoused in substandard “schools” according to Ofsted officials.
(Ofsted is the Office for Standards in Education in the UK)
Some vulnerable children excluded from mainstream schooling are being educated in unregulated and illegal schools based in caravans on farmland, and on industrial estates and business parks, Ofsted inspectors have told the Guardian in an attempt to lift the lid on a murky world.
…alternative provision (AP) for children who cannot be accommodated in mainstream education is complex and growing….
The landscape becomes even murkier when children who have been excluded are referred to over-subscribed pupil referral units. They may then be subcontracted to an unregistered setting. It means troubled and challenging children, some as young as five, are being sent to “schools” in unsuitable accommodation, with unqualified staff, and may be receiving little in the way of education….
There are people who see this situation as a money-making opportunity.
UK: A new school in Basingstoke which caters for children with autism has opened.
By Anne Dachel
Over the last 30 years a large group of parents have increasingly made the claim that their normally developing children were negatively affected by routine childhood vaccines resulting in a diagnosis of autism.
Those making this charge were quickly met with suspicion and dismissed as “anti-vaxxers.”
All the science was stacked up against them. Countless studies let vaccines off the hook. Parents needed to move on. Autism was just something parents had to learn to accept and live with as best as they could.
As far as the ever-increasing autism rate is concerned, no increase has ever shown that more kids have autism.
A story on October 20th proves my point. Moms.com, a Canadian site, published a piece from the U.K. called , Autism Diagnosis Increased Nearly 800% Over Last 20 Years, which was all about how there hasn’t been any real increase in autism; it’s just that more girls and adults have been recognized as having the disorder. That accounts for the skyrocketing numbers.
Another piece, Is Autism Overdiagnosed?, published on October 12th, made the case for “changing diagnostic criteria and reporting practices” being the reasons we think that there is more autism out there.
Recent studies do seem to point to an overdiagnosis of the condition. Not only is autism being overdiagnosed but research also suggests that the difference between those with autism and those without the condition are shrinking
Reports like these seem to allay fears that something really sinister is happening with the number of children with an autism diagnosis.
YET, regardless of how many times experts and officials tell us that autism is a normal and acceptable part of childhood, what’s happening in the real world is proof of the damage being done.
My site, Loss of Brain Trust, which has covered the decline of education globally for the last four and a half years, shows us the reality of how sick our children truly are today.
Note: One of the lessons of Covid is that the planet - the entire planet - can and will react and make radical changes if scared into, told to, preached at, warned of something that seems dire. Why is it that autism has barely moved the needle despite our two decades of warnings? It's as if someone - someones - declared that autism was never to be shown as a problem but instead as a version of neurodiversity. Cure was disallowed. Treatment limited only to behavioral and educational models. Grants only for genetics studies. Anne Dachel has been writing about the explosion in the need for special education services for years. Her site Loss of Brain Trust has thousands of reports.
By Anne Dachel
This past week we were again overwhelmed by stories from England along with ones from Ireland, the U.S. and Australia, even Israel—all of which describe never-ending increases in students with disabilities, specifically ones with autism, in their schools.
This is now the pattern. Numbers will only get worse. There is nothing we can do to stop it. We need to spend more and more.
Here are a few of the very concerning comments found in these stories.
Scottsdale, AZ: Bierman ABA Autism Center announced the opening of its first Arizona location in Scottsdale.
Amarillo, TX: The opportunity school has a full waiting list and is currently hiring for teachers to help more children.
Texas: Texas State University and Action Behavior Centers (ABC), a leading provider of applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy for children with autism, have entered into a strategic partnership through which ABC’s employees will have access to a customized graduate ABA degree curriculum at Texas State tailored to meet the growing need for qualified board-certified behavior analysts (BCBAs) serving children on the autism spectrum.
Colorado: Some state legislators and educators fear, however, that even with the increased investment, the state doesn’t come close to meeting [special needs] students’ needs….
But local school districts take on the majority of the funding burden. When faced with budget shortfalls, they have to figure out ways to pay for special education, like increasing the number of students with disabilities assigned to a single teacher.
Jacksonville, FL: The [autism] school was founded in 1995 by a group of Jacksonville-area parents and business leaders who saw the need….
"There is no other place for a lot of families. … They've been at other schools and not been successful," he said.
Staten Island, NY: A new Staten Island charter school opened to students for the first time this fall for the 2021-2022 academic year, offering an inclusive environment for both general education students and students with special needs, particularly those on the autism spectrum….
Ireland: Families and those working in schools would tell you that provision is still nowhere near adequate in terms of addressing [special ed] students’ needs.
UK: The shocking reports detail how vulnerable children and their families are left to fall into crisis before getting help. Youngsters are waiting more than two years for support in some areas, with delays exacerbated by the pandemic, Ofsted found….
Of the eight areas visited for the first time, seven were told to produce a written statement of action because of “significant areas of weakness in the local area’s practice”….
‘Too many children reach crisis point’…
In Richmond upon Thames in west London, another area found to be failing, children were waiting “too long” for autism assessments. Covid had led to “further delays in diagnosis”.
Almost every day British news sites announce yet another new school for special needs kids who cannot be educated in mainstream schools.
Invariably these stories contain phrases like “growing need” and “increasing demand,” that no one ever bothers to explain.
Actually it really doesn’t matter because there are always the educators and county officials who are all excited and positive sounding about multi-millions in special ed spending.
Occasionally there is a really concerning story about what more and more disabled students are costing local governments. No one has any long-term interest in pursuing this, however.
On October 7, 2021 there was an article in the Evening Standard that actually called the situation a “funding crisis.”
The piece revealed that “more than a quarter of headteachers [are] having to make cuts to balance their budgets.”
A poll of London schools found 28 per cent have made cuts this year and 35 per cent expect they will be forced to do the same next year. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which carried out the research, said the crisis is a result of 10 years of underfunding.
One headteacher was quoted saying, “We are at crisis point. It is heartbreaking to always be talking about budgets when someone comes to you asking for a new set of picture books.”…
The cost of special ed is a big part of the picture.
Funding for children with special educational needs has been particularly badly impacted by under-investment, schools said.
Headteachers in London were questioned by the NAHT for its funding survey, which also revealed nearly one-third of school leaders predict a deficit budget in 2021-22. Almost all (95 per cent) of headteachers said funding for pupils with special educational needs in their school is insufficient.
The Department of Education responded to all this by saying they are providing billions more in funding.
“This Government is providing the biggest uplift to school funding in a decade — £14 billion in total over the three years. This is a £7.1 billion [$9.7B] increase in funding for schools compared to 2019-20.”
No matter how big the funding increases are, they are never big enough.
A brief piece from Hertfordshire in southern England showed how this is all playing out.
Almost every day British news sites announce yet another new school for special needs kids who cannot be educated in mainstream schools.
Invariably these stories contain phrases like “growing need” and “increasing demand,” that no one ever bothers to explain.
Actually it really doesn’t matter because there are always the educators and county officials who are all excited and positive sounding about multi-millions in special ed spending.
Occasionally there is a really concerning story about what more and more disabled students are costing local governments. No one has any long-term interest in pursuing this, however.
On October 7, 2021 there was an article in the Evening Standardthat actually called the situation a “funding crisis.”
The piece revealed that “more than a quarter of headteachers [are] having to make cuts to balance their budgets.”
A poll of London schools found 28 per cent have made cuts this year and 35 per cent expect they will be forced to do the same next year. The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), which carried out the research, said the crisis is a result of 10 years of underfunding.
One headteacher was quoted saying, “We are at crisis point. It is heartbreaking to always be talking about budgets when someone comes to you asking for a new set of picture books."
Again my main focus is on what’s happening in Britain . Two stories in the UK Times and one in the Irish Times both assured the public that the 787 percent increase in autism over the past 20 years is nothing more than “increasing recognition” and they attributed it all on more adults and females being diagnosed with autism. That is so absurd I’m not going to bother to explain how baseless it is.
The Times went so far as to cite a scientist from the University College London who said that the current diagnosis of autism is ‘meaningless’ and that it needs “urgent changes.” Their headline asked if autism “is overdiagnosed.”
(Didn’t we do that in 2013 when Aspergers was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?)
None of this is relevant. No matter how unbelievable the stats are, no matter how many students have a label of autism, we’ll happily adjust.
Autism cannot be a problem, and it can only be discussed as a curiosity we have all the time in the world figure out.
Seemingly unbeknown to the folks at the Irish Times and UK Times, schools are, as the BBC tells us, hitting ‘rock bottom’ because of the draining cost of special education and that involves autism.
Increase demand
Across England there are stories about new or expanding special/autism schools. Almost without exception we’re told that there is an increased demand for places for special education.
It’s a nice cover. “Increased demand” doesn’t have the same impact that “more disabled students” would have. Increased damage could mean we just didn’t realize these students needed extra help.
I like to envision how the stories I’m seeing would sound if reporters actually said that there are more dysfunctional kids out there. Then the “better diagnosing” claim wouldn’t fly so easily.
Notice how educators and elected officials pepper these stories with positive sounding words like “delighted” and “excited” at the same time demand is ever-growing.
Here’s how the spin works
Kirklees: Officials propose a new special school for 132 students.
We are putting forward exciting new proposals for special school provision in the district.
There is a growing demand for special school places in Kirklees and we must ensure this demand can be met in the future….
Following a detailed study, the Deighton site was identified as a strong location for a new school as it is central, well suited to a special school and has scope to meet the demand for places.
Derby: A new school for autistic kids has been proposed to the Derby City Council.
Plans to convert a former nursing home into a school for children with autism in a city suburb have been submitted to Derby City Council.
Autism East Midlands (AEM) wants to convert the Manor House home in Manor Road, Littleover into a day school for up to 20 pupils and around 20 staff. …
…this supports a "clear community need" for an increase in the provision of specialist schooling for autistic children from in and around Derby and adds "this growing need is the main driver of this proposal"….
Thatcham: A nursery school is being changed into a special needs school.
The SEN school will now accommodate 60 pupils and 25 members of staff.
St. Helens Borough: New $10M special school is underway.
Anne Kyle, head teacher at Penkford School, added: “The Special Educational Needs children of St Helens deserve the best facilities to learn in, as they already have so many barriers to learning to overcome.
North Yorkshire County: Here yet another county looks into a new special school to save the enormous cost of out-of-area placement for disabled students. What choice do they have?
A COUNCIL facing spiralling costs to educate children with special educational needs and disabilities is considering sweeping changes to enable more pupils to be educated in their local area and save up to £650,000 [$884K] a year. …
It also follows the council highlighting how a shortage in funding for special educational needs and disabled pupils had, until the current financial year, seen funding being top sliced from the budgets of mainstream schools to cover costs….
Officers said analysis had revealed how independent and out of county residential placements cost £4.7 million [$6.3M] annually,…
The average cost per pupil for each out of county or independent provider placement is £186,958 [$254K].
In the following years I put out additions to the “Really Big Lie” story because it’s the lie that can’t ever die.
So what is “The Really Big Lie”?
This is the rule written in stone that there has not been nor will ever be a real increase in the number of children with autism—no matter what the rate.
In my original piece in 2006 I talked about my experiences when my son, who is now 35, was first diagnosed in the 1990s. Back then autism was this rare, mysterious disorder.
It’s important to note that the U.S. autism rate back in 2006 was one in every 166 children, as announced in 2004. That, of course, was the result of “better diagnosing/no real increase.”
One in 166 is nothing compared to the statistics we’ve grown accustomed to over the years.
2007: one in 150, 2009: one in 110, 2012: one in 88, 2014: one in 68, 2018: one in 59, (also in 2018: one in 40 according to a separate study published in JAMA), 2020: one in 54.
STILL each and every increase was the same, no increase in the actual number of kids with autism.
I have to point out that there have been little additions to these inexplicable numbers, additions that were neatly and quickly swept away with no follow-up.
I’m talking about news reports on research showing that in many places the autism numbers are through the roof. For instance, North Carolina: one in 39, South Korea: one in 38, New Jersey: one in 32, Hong Kong: one in 27, Northern Ireland: one in 22, and most recently Toms River, NJ: one in every 14 students, one in every 8 boys.
There’s a lot of disparity here. Shouldn’t someone try to make sense out of unrelenting increases and figure out why individual places have such horrific numbers? Is there no end in sight? When will things get bad enough for health officials to wake up to what’s happening?
