Neurodivergent Girls are often overlooked and misunderstood.
As the mothers of daughters this is a new and developing area for RepreSENt. One issue we have persistently come up against is that the needs of girls are often overlooked in both mainstream and specialist provision. We feel this is because girls can be better at masking their needs, than boys who may make their needs more visible. This is clear in the very different diagnosis levels between boys and girls for autism and adhd, and the huge gender disparities seen in specialist provision.
We have met with the head of the only school for Autistic girls in the country Limpsfield Grange and this concreted our thoughts on ensuring the needs of ND girls are not overlooked in any provision we develop. We are particularly interested in the idea of an "internalised presentation of Autism" and we find this Padlet from SASS to be a very useful resource. We also follow the work of the Autistic Girls network and Girls have autism too and we are exploring what else can be done to further support ND girls and we will update this page as things develop. |
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