Professor John Robertson OBA
The Herald yesterday headlined their report on autism and ADHD waiting times with an apparently tragic image of tearful wee, Madeleine McCann-like, fair-haired girl of 3 to 4 years, to somehow represent it’s content.
While I’m sure the parents will be at times tearful, are the children likely to be upset about a wait for treatment they might find unpleasant or not understand? Is the Herald’s wee girl not more likely to be about to shout ‘BOO!’?
As well as tasteless, the image is misleading with fewer than 1 in 5 autism diagnoses and only 1 in 10 ADHD diagnoses in females under 5.1, 2
On 2nd October 2025, the Herald had the above image of rough sleeper begging on the streets.
In 2023/2024, only 8.7%, fewer than 1 in 10, of the homeless in Scotland reported rough sleeping in the three months prior to application.3
On 5th October 2025, the Herald had:
Scotland has 46% more psychiatrists per head of population than England4,5 and 50% of the around 20 000 adults referred for psychological therapies, every quarter, are seen within 4 weeks, 80% within 18 weeks.6
When the 90% target for Children and Adolescents began to be met they changed a bit but still kept the old imagery for lower down in the report:
It’s a long trail:
These images simplify complex socio-economic issues, and are a form of ‘poverty porn‘ which can cause ‘compassion fatigue‘ and distract from the data-driven reporting that is more likely to lead to fixes.7, 8
Sources:
- https://www.cdc.gov/autism/pdf/2023-ADDM-Report.pdf
- https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html
- https://www.gov.scot/publications/homelessness-in-scotland-2023-24/
- BBC Scotland News broadcast 7 October 2024
- https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/news-and-features/latest-news/detail/2023/05/25/royal-college-of-psychiatrists-calls-for-urgent-publication-of-nhs-workforce-plan-as-psychiatrist-numbers-stagnate
- https://www.publichealthscotland.scot/publications/psychological-therapies-waiting-times/psychological-therapies-waiting-times-quarter-ending-june-2025/
- https://www.unicef.org/media/media_123456/guidelines
- https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2020.1786578
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I’m not sure what they mean by ‘care’ for autism and ADHD…for children. Mainly children need specialist support in school, that should be adequate and appropriate to their needs and learning style etc…now I have direct experience of such matters and if I could I’d sue the pants of the Labour Edinburgh council for TOTALLY neglecting to provide what was their statutory requirement, to provide support in school for my boys with autism, when they were younger. Nevermind support, they refused to put children forward to appropriate services, for proper assessment, and instead allowed them to suffer terribly in school, bullied by other kids and by the teachers, and I was bullied the head teachers.
So, we now have adult services for autism in Edinburgh being cut back hugely. Weird eh when it’s the English registered parties, Labour/Tory and LibDems running the council.
This is absolutely disgraceful, they have already removed 30% of funding for this essential service for support for adults with autism, expect much more of the Labour/tories/Libdems take control of Holyrood next year, it will be much much ‘worse’.
How dare the BritNats use autism for their own nasty agenda as if they care one bit..so angry.
https://www.change.org/p/save-number-6-one-stop-shop-tell-city-of-edinburgh-council-no-funding-cuts
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What’s so hard for opponents of the present Scottish Government (SG) to grasp?
If public services in Scotland fall short or fail but the same ones in Wales are exemplary, then yes severe criticism of the SG may be valid. This would suggest that resource allocation under UK devolution settlements should be enough for Scotland to do at least as well as Wales. There is no evidence of public services in Wales being consistently better than those in Scotland – on the contrary. This should not be too hard to grasp but is it ignored because it runs counter to their oppositional, pro-Union agenda?
If public services in Scotland fall short or fail but the same ones in England are exemplary, then yes severe criticism of the SG may be valid. This would suggest that the funding deployed to run services in England – provided from the all-powerful Westminster government and by extension, impacting the size of the so-called Block Grant – is sufficient to deliver high quality services in England, and should be sufficient for Scotland too. There is no evidence of public services in England being consistently better than those in Scotland – on the contrary. This too should not be hard to grasp but is it ignored because it runs counter to their oppositional, pro-Union agenda?
Given that we can assume the journalists and editors at The Herald and their ilk are intelligent and knowledgeable professionals, what other than raw political motivation- to influence voters against the present governing party in Scotland – could be the underlying reasons for ignoring all the above?
From the National Autistic Society (August 14, 2025) Autism assessment waiting times (https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/autism-assessment-waiting-times-11 )
The article refers to waits for assessment in England, that is the country whose health system is financed and organised by the only governments in the UK with ALL the resourcing powers of a money-issuing nation state.
Key findings: ‘As of June 2025, 236,225 people were waiting for an autism assessment in England, latest NHS data has revealed. This is a 15% increase in the number of people waiting in just one year, and a 53% increase from this point two years ago.’ (my emphasis)
A substantial increase over the past two years? When did the British Labour Party (aka LINO) get elected to run the UK and to run England’s health system?
The article goes on: ‘Nearly nine in 10 (211,104 or 89%) have been waiting longer than the 13 weeks recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). And the time people are waiting for an assessment is rising with the average waiting time now over 17 months and 200 days higher than 1 year ago.‘ How long has LINO been running England’s NHS?
The Society states: ‘We are calling on the Government to urgently address the growing autism diagnosis crisis and to immediately provide dedicated funding for diagnosis services.’
‘NHSE published the Autism Assessment Framework and Operational Guidance two years ago to reinforce standards for assessment. However, ICBs are not able to follow the framework due to a lack of funding in the workforce and in recruitment. Dedicated funding is needed to establish this standardised process and bring down waiting times.’ (ICB = Integrated Care Board)
“The Government must provide urgent funding for diagnosis services to end this worsening crisis, and make sure autistic people and families get the support they need when they need it.”
Yes, devolved administrations can allocate their Block Grant funding as they see fit. If it was only one or a few public service niches in England that were being under-resourced – as evidenced by poor quality/stakeholder dissatisfaction – by Westminster then yes, governments in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh could vire Block Grant-derived budget and increase devolved tax take to counter, to mitigate – based on their own choice of public service priorities. But when the public services resourcing problem – the austerity – in England is deep AND extensive in scope, this is not feasible. The scale of having to ‘rob Peter to pay Paul’ makes delivering services optimally unsustainable.
By all means, let’s encourage newspapers like The Herald to campaign for the needs of those experiencing autism. But to be effective – to achieve beneficial outcomes and impacts – The Herald really needs to consider context, perspective and comparative analysis to its seemingly partisan opposition to the present Scottish Government.
It needs to acknowledge the obvious: the resourcing of crucial public services across the UK – after over a decade of Tory austerity and the track record so far of LINO – is the ‘problem’, one that goes way beyond the ability of the SNP government in Scotland or indeed the Labour government in Wales to solve.
You like me may suspect The Herald has a narrower, less public spirited motivation here!
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The Tories underfunded the NHS. Children with autism etc get diagnosed fairly quickly. The Scottish Gov is funding additional needs. It is the councils who try to cut services. Education is ring fenced so the allocated funds must be spent on education. There is more support now than before.
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