Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 25 November 2020.
I was also hugely impressed when I visited that school myself. It's an exemplar that others need to follow, because attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD, can be masked in an education environment. ADHD, or other related conditions, are not as a result of environmental issues or bad parenting. How do you therefore respond to the Flintshire constituents with children at other schools, whose e-mails in the last month alone include, 'My son was not afforded decision-making that afforded for his behaviours to be fully investigated and to be put on to our waiting list for an assessment. Instead, once again, it was determined to be a parenting issue, and not ADHD, autism or spectrum-related conditions'; and, 'I'm caring for a teenage boy with ASD and ADHD. The school have labelled us as parenting problems and reported us to social services, and CAMHS in my experience fail to provide an adequate assessment outlining the needs of the children, and openly admit they won't consider ADHD until at least seven years old. The issue I have with this is the strong genetic history of both ASD and ADHD in our family, and that the two combined present very differently to just one or the other condition on their own'?