Our son was born in 2009 and attended PS from Early learners through to Year
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achieved good results as he was academically strong and rarely experienced any
behavioural issues. ■•I. started to struggle emotionally at school in year 4 . He would become very dysregulated and would threaten to kill himself. At the time he was 8. •••• PS a Ps) found this extremely challenging to deal with. Teachers did not seem to have any strategies or skills in this area and the focus of the staff was to not allow••• to become upset by essentially not asking him to do anything he would not want to do. As the situation did not improve the school decided to treat••■ more prevalent and dangerous escalations as a behaviour problem. At one point the school wrote a behaviour management plan that outlined that if■■I told people that he was going to kill himself he would be sent to the office with a Red Card and had to write a letter of apology to the class and the teacher. As time went on and••• threats to himself became more concerning and as a family, we requested more support from the school. This was denied at every turn, and we were made to feel like the issue was to do with our parenting. For example, during the pandemic when parents were not allowed in the school gates, we asked that. PS contact us if did not arrive at school. This was because he had threatened to jump in front of a train at the very near train station. The principal denied our requests. We asked for school psych involvement, and this was slow in coming and had little impact due to the brief involvement of the school psych. To try and get some appropriate risk management planning in place for our son based on the DoE’s own procedures we were forced to complain to■■■••■■ Education Office for support. At this time a Lead School Psychologist was brought in to support the school and help put plans in place to try and keep•■• safe. As time went on and■■I moved into year 5 and 6, the approach the school took was to send•■• home any time he became dysregulated. As a family we dutifully picked him up every time and managed his care and our work schedules the best we could. With all of this going on at. PS for a 3-year period, not one teacher, learning support coordinator, school psychologist or administrator gave any indication that they th ought■■I had autism. They just treated him as being naughty. We were on a journey ourselves to find out why■■I was struggling, and■■I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2019, Generalised Anxiety in 2020 and after waiting for almost 2 years for a very expensive private diagnosis, Autism in 2022. Overall, our experience at. PS was highly distressing for all of us and affected the mental health of everyone in our family in a negative way. ■•I will still express today, how much he hates.PS for how he was treated as he felt it was always very unfair. Even when he would beg the principal to be allowed to stay at school, she would flat out refuse and send him home. I will add however, never with a suspension, just by telling us he could not attend. By comparison••• received nothing but amazing support from•■• Senior High School ■SHS) as a year 7. As soon as•■I arrived at■SHS , without a formal d iagnosis , ■SHS staff imputed that••• had Autism and started to work with him in a very positive way . • ill loves and many of the staff there. I can not speak highly enough of these wonderful people. As a mainstream school it was fantastic to see how well■■I was supported in comparison to his mainstream primary school. He was made part of the Academic Extension program and achieved great results. In Semester 1 of Year 7 ••• was the highest achieving student in the year in maths. joined the after-school clubs of robotics media and pedal prix. ■■I was allowed to participate in excursions, which had been denied in Primary school. Sadly, though •■I was still unable to regulate his emotions all of the time and problems ensued. On several occasions in Year 7 climbed over a railing on a first story balcony and threatened to jump off. Each time this happened ■ SHS staff were able to entice to come back on the right side of the balcony. More planning took place by■SHS staff and whole maths class was moved away from the maths block as the balcony was proving to be dangerous. ■sHS staff contacted DoE to ask for the balcony to be made safer in some way to ensure that students, especia lly•■• · could not fall or jump from it, but they were told it was too expensive. As such the school had to try and ensure that did not go to any of the areas of the school with a balcony, which was very challenging. This year as a year 8, again tried to jump from the balcony. On 2 different occasions staff were unable to convince to come back over the railing safely so WA Police had to be called and he was physically removed on each occasion and transported to Perth Childrens Hospital Emergency Department. Again, as■•• behaviour escalated staff at■SHS needed time to plan and was asked to stay home from school for 3-5 days at a time. The absences then contributed to the escalations as■■I would return to school not knowing what was happening in his classes as he was falling behind. The situation became too dangerous for••■ at■SHS , and other solutions needed to be considered.
We investigated getting into one of the Specialist Learning Programs (SLPs) for students with Autism. We applied at but were rejected. We applied at•■• • and they said that they would be happy to accept the enrolment but took us for a tour around the school and showed us the 3 story buildings with easily accessible balconies. This is a risk that we are not willing to accept. We were lucky that the Principal at■■•• Education Support Centre -ESC) allowed••■ to attend there this term (term 2, 2023) on a section 24 from ■SHS. -ESC have been great at helping manage■•■ escalations as all the staff are very experienced in working with students with Autism. They have helped to coord inate■•■ differing therapists visit during the school day and even have a parent liaison staff member who can help families with advice and support navigating the challenges of educating a child with autism. The dilemma we have as a family is that academ i cally ■■■ is suited for mainstream and not education support, but emotionally he needs a high level of support, that is not on offer in mainstream settings. This is the reason that I wanted to write this submission. Our amazingly talented boy is falling through the cracks. He is bouncing around like a football between places with none of them meeting all his needs. His experience is based on the individual people running the schools and not the system as a whole ensuring that students with a disability like Autism are well funded and supported to achieve their potential. Something needs to change, and it needs to be significant. Setting up more SLPs will not help if the programs are not required to take on board the students with the greatest needs. When we were rejected from ■■■• we were told it was because■■• needs were too high. So effectively the very program that was set up for kids l ike■■I · is not available to School staff need more training and funding needs to be available if modifications to schools need to take place to keep kids safe. This is an important issue for a huge number of families. I really hope you can come up with some positive solutions, as we are doing a disservice to some of the brightest people in our communities by denying them a right to an appropriate education.