But the first thing that I want to talk
about this morning is a report that's
come out from a think tank which has
been forwarded by my good friend and
colleague Jeremy Hunt. And the report
basically says that we are
overdiagnosing
over diagnosing young people with regard
to their mental health. And Jeremy's
argument is that
a young person's development is messy.
It's complicated. It's difficult and it
always has been. But what we're doing is
we are medicalizing the normality of
childhood. We are giving a diagnosis
that's leading to an EHCP which uh for
many of you uh you will know that is the
certificate which basically enables
greater support at uh school for young
people. And this is all well-intentioned
and it's done for the right reasons, but
ultimately it is creating a real limit
on just natural and normal childhood.
And it is creating an unsustainable
pressure on the public purse. And I've
been thinking a lot about this. I've got
two boys. Uh they
grew up
in the way that I would expect boys to
be, rough and tumble. They weren't
always the most focused, sometimes
easily distracted. Uh they needed to
burn off energy and for me that was the
normal part of childhood.
But I could easily have seen how looked
at it from a different angle. My kids
could have been seen as not being as
attentive as they need needed to be at
school. But would it have been right to
to to have that as a diagnosis? Would
that have helped them? Would it have
helped the school? Would it have helped
me as a parent? Or would it have painted
them into a corner, defined them in a
certain way and perhaps influenced their
future behavior?
I want to find out what you think about
this issue whether we are overdiagnosing
uh uh children because I think we are
and I think that it is as I say driven
by good intentions but ultimately what
it's doing is really narrowing the
definition of a normal childhood
and in doing so we are making more young
people more children feel as if they are
not normal as if they are something
different. And I think that in itself
can have perhaps a stigmatizing effect.
Now, I'm not suggesting that no children
need help. Of course, I'm not saying
that at all. What I'm saying is the kids
that really need help should get help.
But the children, the young people who
should be able to just, you know, graze
their knees, uh, run about, burn off
energy should be allowed to do so in the
way that I think we have done for most
of human history.
And I'm not the only person that thinks
that. on uh Nick's show earlier on this
morning, uh Jane Harris, who's from a uh
disabled children's charity and she's an
expert in speech and language as she
said to Nick that she disagrees with
some of the reports findings about
overdiagnosis, but she did agree that
there has been a narrowing of what is
considered normal childhood behavior.
Let's listen to what she told Nick
earlier this morning.
>> An EHCP usually is requested by a school
because they or a nursery because they
know that a child is struggling and they
know they don't have the expertise and
resources to help that child. But surely
that child is struggling because he she
might have some kind of seen as send
right.
>> Yes. But also
>> but they are linked surely Jane.
>> Well they are they are but the key point
is that if schools were run in a
different way some of those children
might not need an EHCP. Right. If we had
ch schools that actually worked in a way
that supported these children. One of
the things that's happened in our
schools over the last 1015 years is
they've become more and more rigid. So
there's kind of rules in schools now
like you can't, you know, use a ball in
the playground. There's rules in schools
like, you know, children all the time
have to keep their eyes on the teachers.
Well, an autistic child couldn't do
that. 50 years ago, a child like that
might have coped in school and might
never. Some of those children, not all
of them, some of them would absolutely
have always need an EHCb, but some of
them would have coped, but it's that
we've changed the culture of schools to
a point that more and more children need
something different from what our
schools are giving them.
So, do these children need more
opportunities to burn off energy? Do we
need to recognize that not all children
learn in the same way? I think we've
always known this, but do we need to
formally recognize it within school
structures? Have we created an
environment where children are being so
constrained, so boxed in, so tightly
defined that they can't be their natural
and normal selves? And have we created a
whole load of unintended consequences
through our desire to better understand
children and better to support them
through their education. I I want to
hear from you. I want to hear about your
experience. I want to hear about whether
you think that actually a little bit
more flexibility, a little bit more
understanding that, you know, not all
kids are the same would actually be a
better response to this than this overly
formalized, overly bureaucratic and
frankly financially unsustainable system
that I think has uh developed over quite
a number of quite a number of years,
certainly a decade uh plus,
but also what is what is your experience
of trying to navigate the either the the
education system or or life in general
if you have a child that does need uh
additional support because the byproduct
of narrowing this definition of normal
childhood behavior and the byproduct
of having a framework of additional
support that needs to you go through
various assessments and that kind of
stuff is that the waiting list for
support is absolutely huge. I've lost
track of the number of people in my
constituency who write to me frustrated
that they're having to wait a very very
very long time for uh the the the help
that they think that they need. So, so
could we avoid having such a
uh constraint uh constrained environment
if we were just a little bit more
flexible? I think we got time to go to
uh Martin in Coventry uh quickly before
the news. Martin, what are your thoughts
on this?
Um I was just saying to your colleague
before I came on um I feel that the EHCP
is in terms of education it's a
beneficial thing for children. Um from
my perspective we didn't need a
diagnosis for our child before we got
the EHCP. Um we had a very proactive
nursery and early years team who
identified learning needs and were able
to get that assessment and we found that
in terms of providing the funding for
one-to-one education it was more
beneficial for our child.
So,
how I mean, how easy was it for you to
to get this? Because for people who get
it, I'm guessing that's a real benefit,
and I totally understand that. But, but
do you think that that that was the only
way of getting support for your kid? Do
you think there could have been a better
way? Do you think there could have been
a perhaps a less bureaucratic, more
organic way to get the kind of help and
support that uh that your your child
needed?
So in terms of easiness of getting it,
it wasn't easy, but we weren't in a rush
at that time. So as I said, we had a
proactive nursery. Um our child was just
um towards the age of three um when we
identified needs and we were able to put
in for the EHCP. It is a long process.
Um but that's mostly down to the local
authorities being overrun um
understaffed. Um in terms of not having
a diagnosis before the HCP that wasn't a
problem um until um he became in
education and we needed that diagnosis
to get other support from health care
professionals.
Look, this I I don't want to go into too
much detail about your uh personal
circumstances, but I'm I'm genuinely
interested in the in the in the point
that uh Jane was making, which is that
if if schools were better at
understanding the diversity of the
children that uh are in their classes,
that some are, you know, much better at
concentrating than others, some need
more regular breaks than others, etc.,
etc., and she was saying, "We used to be
better at that." Do you think that would
have been enough for for your child or
do you genuinely believe this was the
only way forward for you?
>> I think in order for the school to get
that funding, the EHCP has been
beneficial. I think we are fortunate
because the school that our child in is
in, sorry, is is a small school. It has
very small classes. I mean, reception,
there's less than 20. Um and the same
with year one, there's less than 20
children in each class. So I think
having the support has enabled them to
get um a one-to-one um assistant for
part of the day which has made the
difference because our child um does not
sit down and will not just sit and work
like others may. Um so having that other
person takes the pressure off that
single teacher and allows them to focus
on the whole class while someone else
supports our child. And so you think
that that the teacher perhaps the point
I'm making is that there are some
children that maybe don't strictly need
an EHCP.
I totally understand that their parents
like you did want to get something that
they believe not only helps their own
child but helps the school and therefore
by extension helps other children in the
uh in the class. So you're, if I'm
summing it up right, you're saying that
giving support to your child enables the
teacher to give more support to the rest
of the kids in the class. So would that
be a fair assessment of how of how
you're seeing things?
>> I think it that's quite a narrow view
because we're looking at everybody as a
whole. So my child's getting support and
everyone else is getting support. So
it's not taking one away from the other.
is providing everybody with a similar
amount of support to meet their needs.
And I think that's the most important
thing because if if you are in a class
of 30 and you've got one teacher and one
support assistant and I think somebody
else mentioned about some statistics
there's there's 10 children with um
PHCPS or SCEN needs within their class
out of 30 that would be quite difficult.
So I think having that support for the
individual is beneficial to everybody
and the individual involved.