Who's waiting for a school? Rates, socio-demographics, disability and referral profile of children with autism spectrum disorder awaiting school placement in the Western Cape Province of South Africa.
In 2016 Western Cape had 744 autistic children waiting for school seats, most for over a year, proving the system is failing at the front door.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team counted every child with autism who was waiting for a school seat in Western Cape, South Africa. They used government records from June 2016.
They looked at age, sex, race, and how long each child had waited. No tests or teaching were done; it was a head-count study.
What they found
744 children with autism were stuck on the list. Over half had waited more than one year with no school place.
The queue shows a service system that can’t keep up with demand.
How this fits with other research
Schott et al. (2021) found the same problem in the United States, but with adults. Two-thirds of autistic adults on Medicaid waiver lists still lacked help for daily living, work, or mental health. Together the two studies show wait-list pain spans both childhood and adulthood.
Hong et al. (2020) tracked money instead of kids. In South Korea the national cost of autism services more than tripled in seven years even though the population barely changed. Pillay et al. (2022) now show one reason for that cost jump: kids can’t even enter the system.
Pinborough-Zimmerman et al. (2012) add a warning from Utah. Health records found twice as many autistic children as the schools did. If Western Cape has the same gap, the real wait list could be even longer than 744.
Why it matters
You now have hard numbers to show funders why new autism classes are needed. Use the 744 figure and the >1-year wait when you write grants or lobby school boards. Speeding up placement means kids start ABA, language, and social skills programs earlier, which saves money and stress later.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In South Africa, there are limited educational opportunities for children with autism spectrum disorder and many children with autism spectrum disorder have to wait for school placement. This study examined the education waiting list for children with autism spectrum disorder in the Western Cape Province of South Africa and reported on the demographic, disability, referral and service provision characteristics of these children. In June 2016, there were 744 children with definite autism spectrum disorder or possible autism spectrum disorder between the ages of 1 and 17 years waiting for school placement. There were children of compulsory school-going age who were reported to be at home and not receiving any intervention while they waited. More than half the children on the waiting list had been waiting for more than a year. We then combined the findings of this study with the findings of a previous study on children with autism spectrum disorder already attending schools in the province over the same period of time. We found a total of 1684 children known to have autism spectrum disorder - this was less than 0.1% of all young people in the province at the time. Between 2012 and 2016, there was a 276% increase in the number of children with autism spectrum disorder waiting for schools in the Western Cape. The results show that education systems in the Western Cape need to be strengthened to accommodate all children with autism spectrum disorder in appropriate education settings from as early as possible. We recommend engaging with different stakeholders to develop policies, best practice guidelines and actions for autism spectrum disorder education in South Africa.
Autism : the international journal of research and practice, 2022 · doi:10.1177/13623613211067324