Responding to Neurodivergence in the Youth Justic

5 themselves do not recognise, and that practitioners working with them cannot meaningfully apply. A critical-realist refinement of the social model is therefore more useful for the purposes of this paper. Critical realism examines the interaction between individual functional impairment and the marginalisation, exclusion and isolation produced by societal responses (Shakespeare, 2013). It preserves the political force of the social model - locating disability in social structures rather than the individual - while acknowledging that impairment is part of the lived experience to which systems must respond. Disability remains a social state. But the impairments affecting children who are interacting with these systems are real, varied, and often distressing. This framing has direct operational implications. It pushes the response in two directions simultaneously: outwards, to reform the systems that produce disabling effects (educational structures, justice procedures, sensory environments); and inwards, to acknowledge that some children require active, individualised support to manage their impairments alongside system reform. This duality underpins the universal-plus-specific operational model proposed in section 7.7. 5. Why disproportionality persists: An intersectional lens The over-representation of children with neurodisability in custody is not produced by a single mechanism, and it cannot be understood by examining neurodevelopmental conditions in isolation. The drivers operate across multiple sectors, accumulate over the life-course, and interact with pre-existing inequalities impacting children marginalised by their race, gender, poverty and care-experience. One mechanism for pathways into the justice system is through school exclusion. Research has now clearly demonstrated that significant harm is conferred on children who experience exclusion, beyond their individual circumstances (Cornish & Brennan, 2025). Emerging evidence also indicates that school exclusion plays a role in pathways into the justice system for neurodivergent children specifically, with those excluded from school multiple times having first contact with the justice system at a younger age (Kent et al., 2023). Where SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) systems are under-resourced, children’s behaviour may be misinterpreted as defiant or ‘naughty’, rather than being understood as an unmet need arising from the interaction of their neurodivergence with neuro-normative expectations. Where Ofsted incentives reward exclusionary practice, and where zero- tolerance behaviour policies treat the symptoms of neurodevelopmental difference as conduct issues, the system is constructed in a way that channels neurodivergent children towards justice contact in a form of structural discrimination, the consequences of which fall systematically on this group of children rather than randomly across the school population. Disproportionality in access to diagnosis compounds this pattern. There are barriers to accessing diagnosis for children who live in poverty, or are in the care-system, and achieving support often requires substantial advocacy from parents and families (which, not all children