Autistic Spectrum Disorder
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-2712, in the name of Karen Gillon, on autistic spectrum disorder. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes that, according to the latest census publication, Pupils in Scotland, 2004, there are 3,090 pupils diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder who have a Record of Needs and/or an Individualised Educational Programme in primary, secondary and special schools in Scotland; further notes that, as it is a spectrum condition, children with autistic spectrum disorders have a range of abilities with some having complex needs; believes that a range of provision is required to meet the needs of each child appropriately and that this may include support from other agencies, and considers that the Scottish Executive should ensure that the needs of children with autistic spectrum disorders are appropriately met so that they can benefit from education and learning.
I draw members' attention to my entry in the register of members' interests with regard to the Clydesdale autism support group.
I thank the 54 MSPs who have signed the motion, particularly those who have been able to stay this evening and take part in the debate. I also thank the people on the front line—the doctors, nurses, carers and psychologists—and the many organisations that provide services for and support to the many children and adults who suffer from autism or Asperger's syndrome and, especially, their families.
Autism and Asperger's syndrome are lifelong conditions that isolate a child or adult from the world around them and affect a person's ability to communicate, form relationships and understand everyday activities. People who have autism are not physically disabled in the same way that a person who has cerebral palsy might be and, because they do not have the obvious outward signs of disability, it can be much harder to make people aware of or to help them understand the condition.
Children and adults with ASD have difficulties with everyday social interaction. Their ability to develop friendships is generally limited, as is their capacity to understand other people's emotional expressions. Imagine what it would be like to meet people for the first time or to talk to someone one knows and not even be able to understand a smile or a frown. Naturally, that can cause fear, anxiety and frustration, which sometimes result in extreme behaviours. People with autism can also have accompanying learning difficulties. However, everyone with the condition shares a difficulty in making sense of the world.
In Scotland, local studies estimate that one in 110 people are affected by ASD, which equates to about 15,000 children. However, according to Scotland's schools census, just over 3,000 children have been diagnosed with ASD. That means that almost 12,000 children in Scotland may be undiagnosed and may not be receiving proper testing and support services. Something needs to be done about that. NHS Lanarkshire, which covers my constituency, has the second highest number in the country, at 561, of children diagnosed with ASD.
It is therefore important that we raise awareness and increase understanding of ASD in Scotland. People with ASD and their families require a wide range of specialist support and advice. The Executive has done a great deal to ensure that all children in Scotland receive the education that they need to help them achieve their full potential. However, children with ASD require that bit more. They do not think or communicate in the same way as children without the disability, therefore it is important that those who offer support and education to ASD sufferers do so through specialised, unique processes. Only then can children with ASD make significant advances in social skills, in their ability to form relationships, and in their understanding of everyday activities.
Such young people and children can be taught in a range of settings. In my constituency, that can take the form of a specialist unit at Victoria Park School in Carluke, mainstream school settings with appropriate support or, on a very few occasions, residential settings. However, in whatever setting, all schools should understand and have the resources, training and specialist support to meet the needs of each individual child.
Providing effective education is not easy. We must ensure that we do not let down those who suffer from ASD when we implement a range of changes. First and foremost, we need to examine the targeting of resources and funding. If we achieve that, it will be a huge step forward. It will allow us to identify at an early stage those who are in need and to provide earlier intervention. [Interruption.] My phone is like an electronic tag.
There is no cure for autism—we are not even sure what causes it. However, if it is identified early the chances of a person receiving appropriate help and support are greatly improved. We need better training for teachers and support staff to improve awareness and understanding of autism. In turn, that will enable practitioners to provide adequate and appropriate support for sufferers and their families.
Autism is a spectrum disorder, therefore a child with ASD might need support from a variety of sources. That requires joined-up government, in the best sense of the phrase. It makes sense that education professionals work in partnership with parents and a wide range of other professionals to ensure that children and young people can access the services that they most need.
In Lanarkshire we have developed the innovative Lanarkshire autism diagnostic service, which is a team of specialist practitioners, including speech and language therapists and staff grade paediatricians that has been set up to clear a backlog of people who are awaiting diagnostic tests. That service, which used to take up to a year, is now being completed in a matter of months, thanks to the joined-up approach. Perhaps that can be examined further.
The move to mainstream has faced many challenges. I welcome the Executive's review of how successful the implementation has been. I was on the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, which examined the issue. Resourcing was always going to be the key to the successful mainstreaming of children with a range of disabilities. We need to do more to ensure that resources are available at the front line.
The Office for National Statistics has just published a summary of its research into the mental health of children and young people in Great Britain, which found that children with ASD were three times as likely as other children to be behind in their scholastic ability, with two fifths of them being more than two years behind.
Two thirds of children with ASD find it harder than average to make and keep friends, with two fifths having no friends at all. However, children with ASD can be taught social skills that give them the ability to make and keep friends and engage more effectively in the social world. The National Autistic Society Scotland runs an after-school care project in Dundee called stepping stones, which is one example of a project that aims to promote social skills and play. In my constituency, the Clydesdale autism support group seeks to do something similar.
Clearly, much more needs to be done. I hope that this evening's debate will move us further towards solving some of the problems. At the very least, I hope that the debate will ensure that people with autism realise that the Parliament takes their needs seriously and that politicians are going to do something about the matter.
It is excellent that so many members signed Karen Gillon's motion—I congratulate her on her efforts. We must focus on the needs of those with the condition and, more critically in many instances, on the needs of their families. When someone does not get the support that they need, that has a wide effect. I am sure that I am far from being the only member who has had people at surgeries seeking to have the needs of their offspring met. There is more than a passing suspicion that, in the system, support is constrained by finance rather than determined by the needs of the person with the condition.
In particular, people with the condition require stability and are upset and set back even by small changes. Three-year funding cycles often exist in the voluntary sector, which means that, at the end of the three years, the way in which support is delivered from the voluntary sector may change, which creates the real risk that someone with the condition may be set right back to the beginning, or perhaps even further back. I hope that the Executive will give thought to that issue.
On the resource issue, does Stewart Stevenson accept that about £200 million extra has gone into special needs education, on top of the approximately £4 billion that has gone into education resource generally in the past two years?
That is true—credit where credit is due—but the money is not necessarily reaching all the people that it should. People with the condition often have intensive and expensive needs. Some of the decisions that have been made in my constituency and in other members' suggest that there are issues at the front line in getting the money to people with particularly intensive needs.
Another issue that Karen Gillon touched on and which will echo with all members is that of achieving the right balance between exclusion and inclusion. An issue arises for those among whom someone with a condition is included. When a primary school class has added to it someone with the condition, we must ensure that all the pupils have the right support. It is beneficial to children to see the condition and the needs of someone who is less fortunate than they are and to learn how to deal with that. However, equally, we should not push people with the condition into situations in which they will simply go backwards because the change is too great.
There are no magic answers, but I am interested to hear what the minister has to say in response to the debate.
Before I entered Parliament, I had rarely come across ASD—I knew little about the needs of those born with it and even less about what is available to them. However, in the past two years or so, I have learned a great deal from the parents of affected children and others who care for them, such as the highly trained teachers at St Andrew's special school in Inverurie in Aberdeenshire and the dedicated staff at Camphill, which is near my home on the outskirts of Aberdeen.
People on the autistic spectrum vary enormously. They include not only those who have very minor communication difficulties and the often highly intelligent individuals with Asperger's syndrome—who may be seen as somewhat eccentric and obsessional but are otherwise quite normal—but those who are very severely affected, with extremely complex needs. Such people require highly specialist handling, peaceful surroundings and well-established routines if they are to have any hope of thriving and of reaching their potential, however limited that may be.
However, those are also the sort of people whose lives are threatened by the possibility of Aberdeen's western peripheral road passing close to their homes at Camphill. I am delighted that a delegation from Camphill will come to Holyrood once more tomorrow to put their case to MSPs and to gain further publicity for their campaign to have the proposed road rerouted. The western peripheral road is desperately needed, but it should not use a route that would so disrupt the lives of the very vulnerable folks who know no other home than the peaceful retreat of Camphill village. I realise that I am digressing a little from the motion, but tranquil surroundings are part of the package that is required to fulfil the needs of the people I have described.
Speech and language therapy, and the diverse other therapies that are provided by a range of associated health professionals, are also required by such children. However, in the north-east at least, such therapists are in short supply and their lack puts added strain on parents and carers who are coping with tremendous problems every day of their lives as they struggle to do what is best for their children.
On top of that, many are faced with uncertainty of school provision, given the current climate in which mainstream education for all is often overzealously promoted. Having spoken to many concerned parents and teachers, I have no doubt in my mind that mainstream education is not the answer for all autistic children. Some cope well and can move successfully from special educational needs to mainstream provision and others benefit from attending an SEN unit that is attached to a mainstream school—as I have seen in north Aberdeenshire—but there are, undoubtedly, significant and growing numbers of autistic children who need special schooling if they are to have any hope of achieving their educational potential. I hope that authorities such as Aberdeenshire Council that have sought to close such schools and replace them with SEN bases that are attached to mainstream schools will think again before it is too late.
The wide diversity of ability in children with autistic spectrum disorders makes diversity of provision a necessity. I fully endorse the motion's call for the Scottish Executive to ensure that the needs of such children are appropriately met, so that they can benefit to the full extent of their potential from the education and learning that they deserve.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing tonight's debate on a motion on such an important issue. I apologise that I will need to leave a bit early, as I have a previous engagement to meet young carers from West Lothian, who also have great needs.
I want first to highlight the problem of bullying. Some children with ASD truant from school because of bullying. They may even lash out against the perpetrators of the bullying. However, children with ASD can also display such challenging behaviours in class if they do not understand what is happening during lessons or if their particular needs are not recognised by staff.
The figures for school exclusions in 2003-04 show that exclusions of pupils who are entitled to free school meals, pupils with a record of needs—which includes children with ASD—and pupils who are looked after by the local authority are higher than exclusions in the school population as a whole. Furthermore, a recent Office for National Statistics report found that more than one quarter of children with ASD have been excluded from school at some point. Most of them have been excluded on more than one occasion.
By excluding children with ASD, schools seem to be placing responsibility for truancy and behavioural problems on pupils and their parents. Those of us who have met parents of autistic children know how stressful their lives are. It is clear that education authorities must have a responsibility to ensure that schools have in place a coherent behaviour policy, good classroom management and support for pupils from appropriately trained staff as well as anti-bullying strategies and other supportive systems.
The most common reason given for excluding a child with ASD is that the school is unable to cope with the child. It seems singularly unfair to exclude such children just because the school does not have the appropriate support. I do not necessarily blame the schools, which are short of money, but the necessary support for ASD children must be provided.
There is a need for teachers and other staff in schools to be given autism awareness training. In the NAS report "Autism in Scotland's schools: crisis or challenge?" teachers were asked to rank the relative importance of seven measures to meet the needs of children with ASD. They ranked preventing bullying and teasing second last, despite research that shows that bullying and teasing are major barriers to children with ASD enjoying and making progress in education. I will close on that point.
The debate is important. I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing it. Any member who is involved in the cross-party group on the subject or who has visited organisations or groups that have a family interest in the subject will be well aware of the great anguish that the issue causes to families that feel that their children are not being properly dealt with.
The issue is slightly similar to the problem in New Orleans. Although there is a lot of help around the place, unless it reaches the family whose house is flooded or whatever, it is of no use to them. We have to direct our help to ensure that it arrives where it is meant to arrive. Robert Brown is a much better and more intelligent man than George Bush. I am sure that he will achieve the correct result as soon as possible: help for families with an autistic family member in the right way and at the right time.
There should be widespread training for people who work in health and education so that they can recognise ASD, arrange for a diagnosis and deal with the issue as quickly as possible. We need a system that ensures that an identified health or education official is in charge of the arrangements that are made for each person. The official would lead a multi-purpose, multi-agency unit, but the buck must stop with somebody.
We must be flexible: a range of options is needed to address the seriousness of the young person's problem and to offer what is best suited to them. The range should include being educated in a mainstream school with proper support; in a special unit in a mainstream school; in a special school; at home or in some other looked-after situation; or in a combination of those options. We need horses for courses. Above all, we need to ensure that the young people are identified as early as possible and that they are provided with the education and health support that they need to live a full life. Their families also need help with respite care, social support and so on.
A lot of good things are going on, but a lot of people are still missing out. I hope that the Executive will ensure that that stops happening and that we help everyone who needs help.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing the debate, which is not the first we have had on ASD. I also congratulate the campaigning groups which, quite rightly, continue to lobby us hard and the individual parents. Like Stewart Stevenson, I have experience of individual cases from my constituency case load.
If I may, Deputy Presiding Officer, I will digress slightly from the motion. I want to make the connection between the fact that 3,090 pupils in Scotland have been identified as having ASD with the fact that they will leave school and become grown-ups. ASD is for life. If things are not good for the young person in the school setting, they are not much better when they leave school.
One young woman, who was 21 and pretty—I have mentioned her before in the chamber—was not recognised as having a disability because her disability could not be seen. She tried to lead an independent life: she had work in a supermarket and an understanding employer. However, she also required supported housing, supported sleepovers and, as other members have said in relation to other cases, no change to her routine. Any change to her care package caused chaos. I do not know how her parents' marriage survived the strain. They were wonderful parents who had to take it in turns to deal with their daughter, whose life was often disarranged by changes in the care package. That is a terribly important issue.
The one thing that I want to add to today's debate is that it is important to remember that ASD stays with people for life. There might be many people in prison, sleeping in the streets or with disorganised lives who have undiagnosed ASD. I know that this is not in the minister's brief, but I think that it would be interesting to have some analysis of the number of people who are in prison or are sleeping rough who have this disorder. That information would help us to find out where we are letting them down as well as where we are letting people down within the school framework.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing this debate on this important subject. I agree with virtually every speech that has been made so far. Those of us who are members of the cross-party group on autistic spectrum disorders, of which I am the secretary, will be familiar with many of the issues that have been raised this evening, as they have previously been raised in the meetings of that group. And, of course, all of us will have encountered them in our surgeries.
The motion is entirely right to highlight the complex needs of children who are on the autistic spectrum and the difficulties their parents face. That is the key part of the issue: many parents feel frustrated that, under the current system, they cannot enable their child to gain access to the quality of education and service that they feel their child requires and deserves.
There is a patchwork of provision for youngsters with ASD and it can be difficult for parents to access the quality of provision they think their children require. We all know of excellent examples of schools offering services for youngsters with ASD, but they can be the exception rather than the rule. I am sure that we have all been contacted by frustrated parents asking, "Why can't we get the service we require? Why can't we get the local authority to understand that the services they are trying to direct us towards are simply not what we believe our youngster requires? We can see good services being offered elsewhere, but we simply can't get into them."
Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting the new school at Butterstone by Dunkeld, which was set up as an independent specialist school in the early 1990s by Veronica Linklater—Baroness Linklater of Butterstone. Many of the school's youngsters suffer from Asperger's syndrome, attention deficit disorders or similar conditions. It was encouraging to see the progress that the youngsters were making in that setting because of the quality of the care they were receiving and the hands-on approach of the teachers. It was making a difference to the youngsters' lives. Youngsters who had not made progress in local authority schools or mainstream schools were turning around their performance. Many of the youngsters who were leaving that school were going on to further education—the school has a link with Elmwood College in Fife—and many others were going into employment. That would not have been possible without the level of care and support that they had received.
Of course, the problem is that that sort of service is expensive. The annual fees at a school such as that are £19,000 or much higher. We always have debates about finances in this chamber and I know the pressure the Executive is under but, as has been said before, if the appropriate intervention is not put in place at an early stage, public services will spend £2 million on an autistic person over their lifetime. I put it to the Executive that it might be worth spending money at an early stage as it would save money in the long run.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing this debate. As her motion rightly points out, ASD covers a broad spectrum of people who require varied levels of support and specialist teaching. In other words, one size does not fit all. My case load in the South of Scotland is weighty in this area and includes issues such as a lack of preparation for a child entering primary 1, no staff training, a classroom assistant who had absolutely no training at all, a teacher who had no training and a child who was excluded more than he was in school. Given that the child was in primary 1, it was a very bad start.
There have been inappropriate placements of children because of special school closures and there has been a lack of choice for parents and children. There has also been a lack of appropriate assessment. We know that early assessment and identification is key. The sooner we get the right programmes in place, the more success we will have with young people.
There has been inadequate staffing. Young people have not received the classroom assistant support they require and have been left isolated and bullied in the playground, as Robin Harper said.
I have had to intervene on behalf of a group of young people in South Ayrshire in relation to summer school provision; their parents were going to be left with no respite during the summer. Fortunately, with a lot of help from all the MSPs for the South of Scotland, that was overturned.
I could go on and give more examples. It is no wonder that 33 per cent of schools surveyed by the NAS felt that inclusion was not working. It is telling that 10 per cent of schools felt that inclusion worked only when adequate support and resources were available. Inclusion at any price is not what we want. We need to ensure that the right placements and the right choices are available for parents and young people.
My greatest concern is the shortage of speech and language therapists: 32 per cent of schools with pupils with ASD have no speech and language therapy provision at all. Speech and language therapy is crucial for a young person with ASD. Therapists, along with clinical psychologists, are the experts in assessing and giving advice on children and young people on the spectrum, and in identifying appropriate learning and teaching programmes and strategies.
Those concerns are compounded by the requirements of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. For a young person to be entitled to a co-ordinated support plan, there is a need for input from another agency—or other agencies—outwith education. Where does that leave those who are unable to access speech and language therapy?
I welcomed the ministerial announcement in 2004 of inspections by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education for ASD provision, but I ask the Executive to consider a national database for ASD and to instigate an international study of educational provision, of learning and teaching methods and of best practice, including a study into autistic-specific as opposed to autistic-friendly education.
Forty per cent of schools with pupils with ASD have no autism-specific training. That is a serious indictment of the education we are providing.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing this important debate and, specifically, on one particular remark that she made—that the challenge for children with autism is in making sense of the world. Those words sum up perfectly the challenge facing young people with this condition. In some ways, they also sum up the dilemma and the agonies that face many parents.
In all my involvement with the parents of children with autism, I have been struck by the fact that everything they do in trying to secure the support their children require is a battle. It is never easy, simple or straightforward; it is always a battle. For all parents of children with autism, regardless of where the child is on the spectrum, the stress is enormous. If we in public service cannot give priority to easing complexities and to breaking down barriers to the formulation of appropriate care and support packages for young people, we are letting people down in the course of our work in Parliament.
If I were to make one plea to the minister, it would be to let us work out a system that minimises the difficulties and the obstacles for parents in securing appropriate support for their children. I heard the minister on the radio the other day and he defended the Government's position in relation to the care packages that are available to young people under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. He made a number of fair and reasonable points about the Government's provision. However, many parents phoned the programme to make an equally compelling case about the difficulties that they had endured in trying to find the right support for their children.
Although I voted for the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, it is not much of a secret on this side of the chamber that I did so with a very heavy heart. In my view, the crux of that bill was a reliance on the credibility of the assurances that were given to the Parliament by the Minister for Education and Young People about the provision of support. If support is not in place when young people need it, as they need it and in whatever circumstances, the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 is a very complicated disruption to the arrangements that are in place to support young people. We can ill afford that.
People who have been diagnosed and assessed as having autism will have a wide and diverse range of needs. No one solution will suit every young person. Some young people will benefit enormously from specialist education provision; others will find the challenges posed by the social interaction with their peers enormously assisted by the right amount of support in a mainstream setting. The key thing is to remember that every child is an individual, and we must support them in their individual needs.
Karen Gillon is to be strongly congratulated on raising the subject for debate. I vividly remember visiting the school for autistic children in Alloa. A young boy there asked me what my favourite film was. When I said "Chariots of Fire", he took me through every single detail of the film. I realised that he was extremely bright, but that he also happened to have substantial additional support needs, which very much needed to be addressed.
My first request to the minister is that we need the necessary resources and the expertise to go with them. A National Autistic Society report indicated that inclusion is not working in one in three schools and that two thirds of schools that have autistic spectrum disorder pupils do not have support assistants who have been trained in dealing with autism. My first request to the minister is therefore that there should be a variety of educational provision, and not just in the mainstream. The necessary expertise must also be made available in special schools.
My second point is about the Executive's announcement that Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education will carry out inspections of autistic spectrum disorder provision in children's services. That should be strongly welcomed, and we look forward to the publication of the report on that next summer.
My third point relates to further education. The National Autistic Society highlighted the problems that face young people in the transition from school to further or higher education. Futureskills Scotland has asserted that many young people who have additional needs cannot access further education in Scotland and cannot get the funding to access the appropriate further education elsewhere. As an important first step towards ending that exclusion, I suggest that the minister consider the possibility of national funding, with consistent application across Scotland, especially for specialist schools.
I wish Robert Brown well in his new role as Deputy Minister for Education and Young People. I remember very well his excellent chairmanship of the Education Committee. I hope that he will take on board the points that have been made from all quarters of the chamber tonight, and that sufficient resources and expertise will be made available so that pupils who have additional support needs and autistic spectrum disorder may access appropriate further education, no matter where those pupils may live and no matter what their medical circumstances.
I congratulate Karen Gillon on securing this evening's debate. I have my back to her, which is not very satisfactory, but never mind. I thank her for raising for discussion the issue of autistic spectrum disorder. This has been a very good debate, and many challenging points have been made.
I have some experience of involvement with the issue. Like Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, I have had the opportunity to visit Struan House School in Alloa. I recently met representatives of the Scottish Society for Autism, and I welcome some of its members to the gallery. I am also about to visit the Glasgow autism resource centre.
Many difficult issues arise out of this subject, and I will try to deal with them in some degree of order. As members are aware, the background to the debate is the recently passed Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, which will come into force on 14 November. Despite John Swinney's caution about it, the bill was designed to produce a better system for co-ordinating the support that exists across all agencies—including health agencies, social work agencies, education agencies and local authorities as a whole—so that they may more effectively concentrate on areas in which there is difficulty.
The experience of all professionals in the area is that things tend to break down at the join points. I refer to the join points between agencies, as well as the points at which people move into education, between schools, from primary to secondary schools and—as Lord James Douglas-Hamilton mentioned—from secondary schools to further education or the world of work.
The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 introduces the new concept of additional support needs. As members are aware, local authorities have a general duty to deal with such needs, which are very individual. The act does not single out any groups for particular mention, because the needs of every child vary. Even the needs of different individuals who have autistic spectrum disorder vary across the board. The act is clear in its intention to benefit all young people who have additional support needs, including those who have autistic spectrum disorder. It establishes an inclusive framework within which schools can work to meet the learning needs of all children and young people.
The motion that we are debating is well worded. I signed it before I became a minister, so I am in the unusual position of responding to it in that context. As the motion states, people with autistic spectrum disorder have a range of abilities and needs. Every child and young person is unique and has his or her own needs, aims, ambitions and aspirations. The 2004 act is very much directed towards the provision that is required by children as individuals.
A number of themes have emerged from the debate. During the passage of the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, the Education Committee and the Executive identified the need for early identification and proper assessment at an early stage, which is very important. I hope that the arrangements that have been put in place will improve the situation. There is a need for parents to be much more involved and for decisions to be made in a friendly fashion at an earlier stage. People have often felt that they are batting their heads against a brick wall when they try to get the resources that they need. Mediation and advocacy are important.
I accept what the minister says about the ambitions and objectives of the 2004 act, but I return to the radio discussion to which I referred in my speech. Does the minister accept that, outside Parliament, there are people who feel badly let down by the service and the system? Does he have an open mind about listening carefully to their concerns and taking action, if he feels that the framework of the 2004 act is not delivering on the understandable ambitions that he has set out to Parliament tonight?
Not only do I have an open mind, but the Executive has built-in review procedures, so that in a year to 18 months we can examine how the additional support for learning code is operating, so that we can change and refine it in the light of experience on the ground and respond to issues that are raised. That work will take place against the background of the improvement agenda that goes back to the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000. We are trying to improve the provision that exists across Scotland, elements of which are patchy. Different authorities do things in different ways and make different provision. Without imposing a single structure on authorities, we are trying to bring local authority practice up to the highest standards across Scotland. That is the objective of the exercise and the background against which the HMIE inspection relating to autistic spectrum disorder, which other members have mentioned, is being carried out.
The inspection, which will conclude in March next year, is taking an integrated assessment approach, using a multi-agency team. It will take note of the point that a number of members have made about the need to look right across the board. In particular, it will consider how far the use of alternative approaches or home programmes is an issue for education authorities and how that is monitored. It will consider training issues, especially in respect of how staff are able to deal with challenging behaviours. I know that the centre for autism in Alloa and the National Autistic Society's centre in Ayrshire provide training and act to some degree as specialist centres for dealing with such issues. The inspection will examine the extent to which children and young people have access to a broad and relevant curriculum, how resources are allocated and what strategies exist for meeting the wide range of needs. It will also look at how communication needs, social and life skills and flexibility of thinking are supported.
The inspection team is supported by a small advisory group, which is chaired by Professor Rita Jordan from the University of Birmingham. As has been mentioned, a final report that will be published in summer 2006 will highlight current good practice, identify gaps in provision and make recommendations on the way forward. That is the hook on which we will hang the practice that will be developed.
The code of practice that will accompany the 2004 act will provide guidance to support local authorities and other agencies that have functions under that act at both strategic and operational levels. In addition, a parents' guide to the act is being prepared by Enquire, the national information and advice service for additional support needs. A draft of the guide will be consulted on at events throughout Scotland later this month.
We recognise that it is important that health and social work professionals and other agencies are also involved in this sort of thing, which is why we are funding NHS Education for Scotland to develop information and training for general practitioners and primary care staff. That material will be widely disseminated. Training was seen as a priority by the national ASD reference group. That is why one of the projects that was delivered was the Scottish Social Services Council's development of ASD skills qualifications for social care staff.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I am sorry, but I am reaching my time limit. The member may follow matters up with me personally afterwards, if she would like.
We are also funding training pilots to assess the use of specific diagnostic tools for both children and adults. Those pilots will take place in Fife, Argyll and Bute, Glasgow and the Lothians and will increase the level of knowledge of ASD among medical professionals.
The background to all of this is the need for quality, for standards, for training, for service and for comprehensive provision across Scotland. I mentioned earlier the £200 million of extra support that is going into special needs education. It is also important to recognise that, in terms of support staff, we now have more than 400 educational psychologists for the first time and we are training more people in that area. There has also been a rise of 5 per cent in the number of speech and language therapists, although I accept that there are still not enough to provide the support that is required. The target of 1,500 extra associated health professionals in post by 2007 should be achievable.
We are moving very quickly on a lot of the issues, and what matters most is change on the ground. The 2004 act is a major contribution to fulfilling our aspirations for Scotland's children. However, I stress that we are not starting from scratch. In many ways, the act is about legislation catching up with good practice and building on what we are doing at the moment. Young people—and in particular the young people about whom we are talking—are our future. The arrangements that are being put in place will, no doubt, have their difficulties, but they will go a long way towards improving the support and arrangements that exist as well as towards addressing the complaints that Karen Gillon has, rightly, raised in the motion today, for which I thank her.
Meeting closed at 17:52.