YESTERDAY morning, CCTV footage was released of the horrific abuse of around 40 autistic and learning-disabled children at a school in north-east London. It is, easily, one of the most disturbing things I have seen in the years I have been advocating for our community.

Just when you think it can’t possibly get any worse, reality strikes.

The BBC, with the permission of six of the families affected, released the footage that was taken between 2014 and 2017 at Whitefield School in Walthamstow following a years-long investigation into the abuse that had previously been uncovered by an Ofsted visit.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch it all because it was that disturbing, but what I did see was beyond belief.

Disabled children, some of them non-verbal and struggling to communicate, were locked in what can only be described as padded cells with no windows. They were sometimes detained in the so-called “calming rooms” for hours at a time with no food or water. Clearly distressed, and that is the understatement of the century, some of the children can be seen actively self-harming while locked inside. Others appear to be physically abused by school staff members.

A child is locked in a small padded room in CCTV footage obtained by the BBC (Image: BBC) One parent recalled her son frequently returning from the school with injuries to his nose, only to learn later from the CCTV footage that he had been so distressed he was hitting himself repeatedly in the face for extended periods of time.

Another told how the abuse her son suffered caused him to have a seizure and led to a diagnosis of epilepsy – which can be brought on by stress.

The BBC revealed earlier this year how six staff members from the school had been found to have abused children in their care, but that despite this, none of them had been referred to the disclosure and barring service and some even remained in post at the school.

A police investigation into the abuse also recently concluded and failed to bring a single criminal charge despite the CCTV evidence being available. If a crime is not being committed in this footage, I would love to know what the CPS does consider to be a crime.

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The lives and wellbeing of these children have been decisively ruled as unimportant at every step in this process, and had it not been for the uncovering of a box of USB sticks that contained the 500 hours of footage the truth about what happened to these kids may never have seen the light of day.

In a similar report, the BBC also found that autistic children were mistreated at other schools across the UK – with one found to have been locking children in cages.

It should not have to be said, but if your first instinct as a teacher or person that works with vulnerable children is to lock a child in a cage, you are vastly unqualified for the role that you occupy.

We love to pat ourselves on the back for the neuro-inclusive steps we are making as a society. “Neurodiversity” has become a buzzword, cheapened by its corporate overuse that often equates to little tangible result beyond a website sticker and a guaranteed interview here and there.

Every modern business in 2024 is undertaking some kind of neurodiversity initiative, probably owing in most part not to a desire to make the lives of neurodivergent people better but most likely because awareness of neurodivergent conditions is steadily on the rise and if they fail to keep up they are more likely now than ever before to suffer the consequences.

Neurodiversity has become a buzzword, inspiring art displays and corporate rebrands (Image: High Beeches) We need not pretend that we’re doing all that we can to make the world an easier place for neurodivergent people, the Scottish Government itself recently shelved world-leading legislation that would have made huge progress. We’re barely scratching the surface, and what we are doing is largely performative at best.

We are so incredibly far behind in comparison to other movements of progress. Can you imagine a reality where any other child in the UK in 2024 would be locked in a cage? And in a place of education no less – but autistic people can be stripped of their basic human rights and violated repeatedly on camera and there will not be even a single shred of accountability.

Though the blame here lies squarely with those in the footage and those around them who enabled it, we are not immune from a wider responsibility.

This is the direct result of how we approach neurodivergence more generally – the clinical, medicalised approach to neurological difference rather than the compassionate, human one. When you other a population and exclude them from all aspects of society, you dehumanise them. The horrors that footage depicts are the result of that systematic dehumanisation.

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It’s a really sobering reminder of where we are actually at in terms of autism acceptance and how we still view and respond to autistic traits as though they are a problem to be trained out rather than a difference to be accommodated.

I can’t imagine much worse than to be in the throes of a meltdown, which will have been brought on no doubt by a multitude of other factors, than being locked in an inescapable space with limited or no ability to communicate.

And it won’t have stopped there either. Being dysregulated to this extent can take weeks and even months to recover from. Putting an autistic person through this is torture, and that isn’t an exaggeration.

What the worst of this is for me, is knowing how avoidable it was. How those children will be unnecessarily traumatised for life. A compassionate approach that was, as it should be, genuinely tailored to the individual needs of those children would have prevented any disruption in the first place.

Autistic children aren’t “disruptive” – they are different. They need different tools to be able to participate and it’s this rigid one-dimensional approach to schooling that demands children be a certain fit that results in such bad practice for disabled kids.

Children are multi-dimensional and school should, at its very core and purpose, be a space for them to evolve and to thrive in their own way. But no one suffers more from this rigidity than disabled children who, without flexibility and compassion, are met with outcomes as hideous as this.

We cannot afford to wait any longer for meaningful legislation to support neurodivergent people. If this doesn’t inspire our government to rethink its priorities, I fear nothing will.