Tonight I read a BBC News article on their website about people with autism being detained in ATUs (often several miles away from their families) for over 20 years, often against their own will and also due to the chronic lack of suitable provision within their own local communities.

And strangely it's a longstanding issue that has been going on for over 2 decades now (or probably more) under both blue and red parties so not exclusively a consequence of the austerity measures of recent years, but allegedly due to chronically poor organisation and hidden agendas within the authorities, plus overly draconian and often punitive measures that basically treated the symptoms rather than the underlying causes and usually ended up doing even more damage to people with ASD, especially the heavy 'zero tolerance' policies that have commonly been advocated over the past 20-odd years which also did (and still do) more harm than good in many ways.

Quite shocking how issues concerning the lack of provision for people with ASD were often still greatly overlooked, brushed under the carpet and such people being treated like dirt even during the seemingly less troubled times of the late 90s through the mid-2000s. Seemingly a lot of hidden 'apartheid' directed at us Auties back then, let alone before and after.