Responding to Neurodivergence in the Youth Justic

4 relational and child-led terms may serve children and practitioners better. A shared vocabulary must therefore be capable of holding both rights-based and identity-based work simultaneously, and of flexing across the settings in which it is used. For the purposes of this paper, we use these terms as follows. Neurodiversity describes the natural, population-level variance in human cognition and thinking styles. It acknowledges that this variation is a feature of the human species and can be a strength. Neurodivergent means having a ‘neurocognitive’ experience - to do with how information is processed by the brain - that ‘diverges’ from (is different to) what is considered typica l 2 . Neurodisability describes a systemic relationship: what happens when institutional, social and structural systems fail to accommodate neurodevelopmental differences, producing disabling effects. It is the term most directly connected to the rights claims that flow from the UNCRC and UNCRPD, and is therefore the term we have adopted where legal and structural arguments are at stak e 3 . 4. Conceptual framework A clear rights-based response also depends on a coherent conceptual model with which to understand the systemic processes underpinning their pathways into the youth justice system. The Social Model of Disability (Oliver, 1983) posits that disability is not created by impairment, but by the barriers in society that prevent disabled people from participating fully. Disability is therefore not a medical condition, it is a social state imposed on people with impairments . Individual or medical models locate the ‘problem’ of disability within the individual – difficulties arising from physical or psychological impairments. Social models locate the ‘problem’ in society – a failure to create accessible and appropriate services fully taking into account the needs of a disabled person. As discussed by Oliver (1996): ‘The consequences of this failure do not simply and randomly fall on individuals but systematically upon disabled people as a group who experience this failure as discrimination institutionalised throughout society.’ The Social Model is foundational to understanding how it is the actions of our systems and services which fail to support neurodivergent children, which creates systemic and disproportional criminalisation. However, it is also important to recognise that the embodied reality of impairment for children can also be distressing and often interacts with the disablement created by systems. Children experience sensory overwhelm, communication frustration, sleep disruption, and other difficulties that exist independently of societal response. A purely social model risks abstracting these experiences in ways that the children 2 Se e https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/identity/autism-and-neurodiversity 3 Our usage of the term ‘neurodisability’ is different from how it is used by medical practitioners – where it specifically refers to a collection of conditions impacting the nervous system.