Emigrating with a child with an ASD. Central Coast Umina/Ettalong area.

[SallyKay]

Hi all,

Does anyone in this area have a child with an ASD? We plan to emigrate next September with my 3 year old and 6 year old, my husband is Australian and we have already sorted the children's citizenship. We are in the process of having our 6 year old boy diagnosed here ( taking forever as things do in the UK!) as the school suspects he is on the spectrum, mild to moderately, although you'd never know to meet him! I'm a little worried as to how he will cope with the change and also I'd like to know how the schools are in comparison to here with dealing with these disorders. Just as well I'm sure but any advice would be greatly appreciated and anyone living in the area, i would love to keep in contact for meet ups etc once we are out!

Thank you! Sally xx

[Rupert]

I have no personal experience but have been on the forums a long time and have read about many cases such as yours. In a nutshell, the comparison to UK is not favourable and you are not likely to get the same level of support as you would in UK.

 

i am going to move your thread to education to attract more knowledgeable posters, recommend you start separate thread for socialising etc once I do that as I can't put the thread in two places at once.

[SallyKay]

Thank you so much Rupert I appreciate your time and moving my thread on to a more suitable forum. Xx

[NicF]

It very much depends on where you are and what school your son goes to. There is a kid with Aspergers in my eldest sons class at school, and the school are really good with him, although I'm not sure how much extra help he gets. My OH's nephews son is on the autism spectrum and is just about to start school. His parents are sending him to a private school because his parents didn't feel the local school was the right environment for him. Some schools have special units to help kids with special needs, while others have very little help.

[SallyKay]

It very much depends on where you are and what school your son goes to. There is a kid with Aspergers in my eldest sons class at school, and the school are really good with him, although I'm not sure how much extra help he gets. My OH's nephews son is on the autism spectrum and is just about to start school. His parents are sending him to a private school because his parents didn't feel the local school was the right environment for him. Some schools have special units to help kids with special needs, while others have very little help.

Thanks NicF, yes I'm sure it depends where you are. We have two schools near where we'd like to settle. One has around 1000 pupils and the other has around 500. My son cones from a very small school of around 200 so thinking a jump to 1000 may be too much for him. This other school that has 500 pupils also has a special needs department so i have read and although my son is high functioning I felt having a school with this facility would be good. His current school I have been pleased with although on their recent Ofsted they have received 'Inadequate' in nearly every area! Shocked us silly but on the plus side it will give more hope for his next school, things can only get better so they say! x

[LKC]

Our eldest daughter has Asperger's Syndrome (although I think they now lump everything together under ASD). She is high-functioning, with a high IQ, and it is more of the social side of things that has troubled her in the past. She was bullied on and off through out year one (she is now year two), the way in which she was bullied made it difficult for the school to intervene. She didn't tell us what was wrong for quite some time, she just became very withdrawn and developed OCD, the bully was very sneaky and manipulative (as they often are), so the teachers didn't see what was going on either. It was only after she told me what was going on, that we and the school sorted things out.

 

She was seen by a psychologist for diagnosis and also for some sessions to help with the OCD/anxiety. These had to be paid for privately (although medicare did contribute to the first few sessions via a mental health care plan - this funding is very limited). The school teachers have seen her report, and have been wonderful in giving extension work to stretch her mentally, and have also become accustomed to her 'quirks'. Quite a lot of the time she is just like any other child, but at other times she can be quite hard work, and the teachers kind of know how to smooth things along. Playtime and things are quite difficult for her, she has some good friends who are used to her different way of looking at the world and who accept her for who she is (the school purposely kept her with this group of friends at the start of the new year), but when she is feeling overwhelmed the school allow her to go and sit in the quiet in the library to read.

 

When she was first going through the diagnosis stuff, the teacher that she had at the time did say to me that there wasn't much in the way of funding for things like ASD, and particularly when a child is high-functioning like Sophie is, there is even less in the way of support. Having said that, because she is high-functioning, there is very little needed in the way of intervention anyway. It is more about managing situations to prevent the meltdowns, and picking up small changes in her behaviour that alert you that something is 'off'.

 

It was a relief to me when she was diagnosed. The anxiety and OCD issues could have been caused by far worse things, but Asperger's we could deal with.

[Quoll]

Bring all your diagnostic information including cognitive assessments, skill level and adaptive behaviour assessments along with any speech/language assessments. If one wouldn't know it to look at him then chances are he isn't going to score low enough across the board to get disability support in schools (generally 2SD below the mean). If his scores are low enough to comply with disability eligibility (just having a label is nowhere near enough these days) then he might be allocated some (usually) aide time but for the most part he will have to be an independent learner in the classroom and his local school will be obliged to accept him so it rather depends on where you will be living.

 

Anecdotally - from parents who have moved from UK to Aus (and, often, then back again) and those who have moved to UK, provision for statemented kids in UK is generally better than the service their kids have been offered in Aus (hence the move back for quite a few!)

[helen benzie]

Hi Sally we moved to griffith nsw in march this year my daughter is now 16 she is autistic we find all the schools here are great very helpfull what ever school you choose a mainstream school or speical school people over here are a lot nicer to. i dont live in the area you are moving to but would like to keep in contact. helen

[SallyKay]

Thank you all for your helpful comments and Helen it would be lovely to keep in contact! LKC, we are pretty sure Joshua has Aspergers but we will see. He is a quirky little character too and can be highly anxious, likes things looking right, symmetrical etc and has his little habits. I've found the lead up to diagnosis so hard as people make judgements and his behaviour can be very extreme at times. He's in normal school also but has his ' moments' and he has a quiet space he goes to. His anger can be extreme and this is one thing I find hard to deal with. I think once I gave diagnosis I will feel relief too, it's been going on since he was 3 years now! Be lovely to keep in touch also. Thanks again! X

[LKC]

I think that anxiety tends to come with the territory, particularly with Asperger's for some reason. For Sophie, the anxiety came as she was being bullied. The bully was befriending her and then excluding and laughing at her, and Sophie didn't understand that she was being laughed at rather than with, so she kept on going back for more. A far as she understood, at home we laugh when we are happy and having fun, and she didn't understand that there was a difference. It was utterly heartbreaking.

 

Having said that, now we have the diagnosis, we can keep on top of things. We are in the UK on holiday at the moment, and her ASD is certainly more noticeable at the moment because we are out of the usual routine. She is stimming far more frequently, toe-walking and whilst she is beautifully behaved as always, I can see that there is an undercurrent of anxiety there which I am keeping an eye on. Her hand washing OCD has reared it's head, but we just go along with it because I know that when we go home things will be back to normal again.