Increase in number of children with learning difficulties or autism sent to mental health hospitals

Restrained, forcibly injected, and left to languish on a mental health ward. That’s the fate of an autistic teenager, whose family have spoken to this programme. His story is all too familiar.

Today the Children’s Commissioner for England says an “unacceptably high” number of children with learning difficulties and autism are spending months, and sometimes years, as inpatients in mental health hospitals, often miles from their families and homes. The government says it’s committed to reducing the number of such cases.