Do you believe that more children are in fact struggling and have t- needs, and that's grown, or do you think we're just describing childhood differently?

Again, it's, it's not straightforward.

Um, as you said, I, I...

I'm a father of a boy who has, um, both ADHD, or rather I should say he was diagnosed with ADHD because it's, it's still u-uncertain what ADHD is, but-- and he's also diagnosed with autism.

Um, so, you know, it's, it's, it's difficult to kind of establish how, um, how, how you pin down what, what's going on, um, with these children.

And I think we're probably talking about different groups of children.

Um, I think there's a large group of children who are still not getting the support they require, um, who may not have a diagnosis, and they're waiting for a diagnosis, um, and they're, they're, they're, they're really struggling.

What, what authority would you-- How would you describe it?

[audience applauding]

I'm also, uh, largely in agreement, uh, in, in agreement.

[audience laughing] But, oh, well, don't worry, this won't be a, a boring, um, discussion.

I'm gonna try and, um, bring out some of the, the, the, the difficulties that I have with some of the arguments, um, that Lucy makes in the report to some extent, uh, and to some extent has mentioned here.

Uh, I, I, I agree very much there's an epidemic of, um, diagnosis, over-diagnosis, self-diagnosis.

Um, diagnostic inflation is a, is a big issue.

Um, Lucy's mentioned lived experience.

Uh-

Was it frustration? Was it anger? Was it a combination of all of them? I mean, how did you come to decide to put this together? I

think it's funny because when I first started writing about this, I had a sub-stack.

So I was writing a sub-stack about, not necessarily about my experience, but certainly from the perspective of a parent struggling with this.

And it was very much about those frustrations because most parents with kids with special educational needs, they struggle.

They'll struggle initially with the school because if they send their child to a mainstream school, the school often can't cope.

There are behavior problems or exclusions.

They tend to be misunderstood.

I mean, what do you think we should be doing, perhaps?