Misdiagnosed as EBD in the 70s and 80s

Back in the 70s and 80s, lots of children with Asperger syndrome were wrongly diagnosed with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Some of them ended up at EBD residential schools under recommendation of educational psychologists. These schools could be very nasty places with bullies and harsh discipline. The staff often had no idea behind behavioural traits resulting from Asperger syndrome so assumed it was just bad behaviour or low standards. They then victimised children with Asperger syndrome in an effort to make them conform.

Thankfully things have progressed since then.

I attended a special needs residential school for kids with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) during the early 1990s. It was generally an unpleasant place where child abuse and victimisation by both the staff and prefects was commonplace. The headmaster thought he was running a smaller version of Eton so imposed a very harsh public school style regime on everybody. He was also a mental bully who made people live under an atmosphere of fear, whilst getting the prefects to carry out the punching and shoving.

I had a statement of SEN at the time and had been misdiagnosed with EBD. AS wasn't known at the time and traditional Kanner autism was ruled out. My statement of SEN clearly stated that I was withdrawn, preferred to spend time at home by myself rather than socialise with people of my age group, and was obsessed with computers and spent a large amount of my free time in front of a computer. The solution proposed was a residential school in order to separate me from a computer and force me to mix with other kids in team sports and activities.

The school itself failed to meet my needs. It was written in the action plan of my statement that I needed social skills sessions but they were not provided by the school because the staff didn't believe in them. All the school did was provide an academic education in a harsh and strict environment. The school believed that such an environment would make kids behave, conform and come out as disciplined NT citizens with good GCSEs. Many of the staff had no knowledge of autism or SEN and could not understand the behaviour of many kids or how they reacted in certain situation. The school had zillions of unwritten rules and etiquette. Some of the rules were official school rules whilst others were unofficial and imposed by prefects and carestaff. No kids were given a handbook explaining the school rules and how the school is run when they started. They were expected to pick up the rules via social cues. Quite often the only way to find out about a rule was to break it. This would result in a blasting by the staff or other kids and often incurred penalties such as detentions. This was a very intimidating system and totally unsuited to kids with AS.

Another issue I have a grievance with is my residential school was not affiliated with any particular religion, but forced religion on the kids. The head teacher was a Protestant Christian and RE lessons focused on practicing Protestant Christianity rather than learning about religions. It was compulsory to attend church services on a Sunday and this was even written into the school prospectus. There were no facilities for kids of other religions. I don't think there was any way for parents to disapply kids from religious activities and parents were not informed about religious matters when their kids started.

There used to be loads of special needs residential schools in the 1980s and early 90s and almost every one of these including my former school closed down between 1990 and 1995. Most were badly run institutions governed by people who did not understand SEN or care much about the welfare and future of children. All they were interested in was money and power. In some cases staff had a vindictive attitude and took pleasure in dishing out pain and misery on innocent defenceless children simply because they got a thrill out of it. Often the prevailing attitude at the time was that kids need more discipline and it should be imposed by whatever means is most appropriate including the use of violence, intimidation, or fear. The primary objective of these schools was not to provide a suitable learning environment for kids with SEN, but to reform them into normal people.

This absolutely terrible. I just can't believe that parents allowed this to happen to their children in years gone by.

I was shown a brochure for a residential school near Ipswich for teenagers with EBD. The place looked absolutely horrible and there is no way in this world I would have sent my son to such a school. The brochure even stated that children could only go home at weekends if their behaviour merited it. How dare anybody say they have the right to detain children like that!