Children with autism must be educated locally, parents tell Dáil committee

Children with autism “need to be in their local school and local community. The benefit to the whole school community is huge,” the Oireachtas Committee on Autism was told on Tuesday. “You are talking about diversity, you are talking about inclusion, and of things like having a sensory room in a school that wouldn’t have had it before,” said Miriam Kenny, chair of the Involve Autism group.

It also meant “having people who have got experience working with children who are autistic or children who have additional education needs. It’s not just about autistic children, it is profound and it has a profound change on the school. We need to stop segregating our children and they need to be included, but yet every child needs support that is right and correct for that child, because every child is different. I think it’s really important to say that,” Ms Kenny said.

In her area of south Dublin “we have large local schools and some of them have come forward but unfortunately, and it’s not just in our area, historically the feeling would be that our children don’t go to their local school”. They “go somewhere else, which is the wrong way to say that, but a lot of the Deis schools had come forward, a lot of the Educate Together schools [with places for children with autism]. These children need to be in their local school and local community,” she said.

Noeleen Smith of the Cavan Autism Parents Support group pointed out that, when dealing with children with autism, early intervention is essential. “We keep banging on about how early intervention is key with autism. That’s it, but what we are lacking in Cavan and around the country is early intervention classes. These are vital,” she said.

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“We have one child that went to a school in Mullagh, an early intervention school in a town which is about an hour away from their hometown, and they got a bus there every day. It was fantastic, that’s our nearest one. The child did really well and is continuing to do really well, but we need a lot more of these services, especially at that age, three and four.” However, she felt that “sending them off in a bus for an hour is not right and it’s hard on the parent”.

Looking for school places for children with autism was also difficult. It was “not easy because every autism class only holds six kids so it’s not easy to find a place”, and finding one at a distance presents other problems. “I know one parent who went to a school and there was little boy asleep in a dark room and the principal was telling the parent that he has a nap every day as he’s up so early travelling to the school,” she said.

There were also problems with secondary education for children with autism, Ms Smith said. “I know from my own experience. I’ve two kids with autism, one is nine, one is 10. When they were first diagnosed there were services there but, for one reason or another, they haven’t had services now for at least five, six years. In relation to education, in Cavan we are okay on a national school level but [it was different] when it comes to secondary.” A lot of funding was “being put into autism classes at a national school level but when it comes to secondary school there’s nothing there at the moment”.

For her it was “actually quite frightening. My children are in second and fourth class. The fourth class boy will be in mainstream but the second class one, I have no idea where she‘s going to go now when she goes to secondary school. I know that’s the case for a lot of parents in Cavan.”

Ms Kenny said that “nobody is following the lifetime or the pathway of the child from an education perspective. To me that is very concerning. It’s pot luck as to who gives you that information and at all times — my son was one of those who had been in a mainstream setting, very well supported but unfortunately couldn’t manage in that setting.” He was now attending another school.

In her view too, “travelling long-distance to school is not an appropriate school placement” for a child with autism. This was particularly so “when the rest of your community is walking by you to the local school and you’re not part of the community, your child is not part of the community”. It was “not correct education for your child”.

One parent had written to her group Involve Autism to say “we were offered a place 26km from our house. We refused the place and thankfully were able to have my son do an extra preschool year. We then got a place locally but in a different school to my older child’s school. However, this meant my son was seven starting junior infants, so his classmates are two years younger than him. He’s now eight and only in senior infants. The local school my other son goes to has 700 children but they have consistently refused to open an autism class.”