Mental Health Archives - Prevent Watch

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Prevent Watch joins protest to call on Ofsted to delink autism from extremism

Prevent Watch joined a protest at Parliament Square yesterday calling on government to compel Ofsted to remove the linking of autism with extremism risk in its guidance on the Prevent duty. About 100 people gathered at the square with placards such as ‘Extremism Lies, Ofsted Revise’, and then proceeded to Number 10 Downing Street to deliver a letter. The protest and the letter was a success and we look forward to an Ofsted revision soon. UPDATE – 10 June 2026: After much campaigning, the Under Secretary for the Department of Education has stated that the new Ofsted Prevent guidance will not include references to children with autism. We await the change: ‘extremism’ will no longer be linked to autism. Related… Making autistic children an ‘extremism threat’ is the latest in a long list of harms of Prevent

23 May 202623 June 2026 By Senior Editor

Middle East Eye: NHS mental health trust withdraws from counter-terrorism programme

An NHS mental health trust in England has withdrawn from a controversial counter-terrorism programme that enabled police to access medical information of patients– including young children – deemed to be vulnerable to extremism, Middle East Eye has revealed. Documents seen by MEE show that Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT), which serves 1.3 million people across the West Midlands, withdrew from the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service (CTCCS) from 1 April 2025. The CTCCS is a joint initiative between Counter Terrorism Policing and the NHS in England and Wales in which mental health practitioners advise on and assess individuals flagged by police as potential security risks, often without any crime having been committed. Campaigners and researchers say the service created a new pathway for counter terrorism police to access medical information for risk management purposes. The Birmingham-based NHS trust is one of three NHS trusts that have […]

25 February 202625 February 2026 By Senior Editor

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‘None of what he was doing and saying had anything to do with becoming a terrorist’ – mum of autistic teen who passed through Channel programme speaks

At the point of involvement in the Channel programme, since my son had been referred to Prevent, this fundamentally altered how professionals viewed him, and it had real consequences for how they interpreted and responded to risk, vulnerability, and identity – the whole process was punitive and did not do justice to my autistic son. I wanted to share my son’s story to show how Prevent and Channel processes can fail to meet the needs of neurodivergent children, and how they can misinterpret autistic traits such as hyperfocus, imitation, and social vulnerability as ideological commitment, especially when it comes to adolescence and digitally mediated environments. We engaged with Prevent and Channel in good faith and I hope his story informs more proportionate, neurodiversity-informed practice. I do not dispute the importance of safeguarding or responding to genuine risks of extremism. My son Luke* has had difficulties from nursery age. He was first diagnosed […]

13 January 202620 January 2026 By Senior Editor

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Inside Channel: A former Channel panel member speaks out on de-radicalisation programme

I am a senior social worker. For several months, I sat on Channel panels, the end point of the UK government’s controversial de-radicalisation programme Prevent, within my local authority. I was uncomfortable from the outset, not only because of everything I had already heard about Prevent and Channel, but because of what I witnessed first-hand once I was inside the de-radicalisation process. What a Channel panel looks like A Channel panel is a large, formal meeting, usually involving around 10 to 15 people. This includes senior local authority staff, members of the Prevent team, Prevent engagement officers, and counter-terrorism police officers. Cases are discussed one by one. An intervention provider (IP) or engagement officer presents the individual, outlines what contact they have had with them, and explains what they see as the person’s “vulnerabilities”. The panel then decides whether the individual should remain on Channel and what kind of “support […]

5 January 20265 January 2026 By Senior Editor

Picture of fried chicken for a story criticizing the Prevent strategy in the UK and Channel deradicalisation for children with unmet mental health needs

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Why the Channel programme linked to the Prevent strategy is the junk food of public safety

In 2005, when Jamie Oliver exposed what really went into chicken nuggets on his School Dinners series, parents were horrified. What they thought was a proper hot meal turned out to be processed scraps, stripped of nutrition and bulked out with additives. The same reaction should meet the Channel programme. Promoted as safeguarding against radicalisation, it is in reality a highly processed product: stripped of genuine social care and support, repackaged with the additives of counter-terrorism, and sold back to us as if it were the nourishment required for a healthy society. According to the Home Office statistics, 5,014 individuals have been referred to Channel for ‘de-radicalisation’ since 2015. A Channel intervention is linked to the Prevent strategy in the UK. Out of a total number (58,127) of Prevent referrals as a result of the strategy, just 8.6% are deemed to be at risk of ‘radicalisation’ and deemed suitable for […]

2 October 202514 January 2026 By Senior Editor

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RSI and Prevent Watch back Springwatch star Chris Packham’s campaign against Prevent profiling

Rights and Security International (RSI) and Prevent Watch back Springwatch star Chris Packham’s campaign to overhaul Ofsted’s approach to autistic people and their referral to the government’s counter-extremism scheme, Prevent. On 10 June, RSI published a series of national Ofsted trainings on Prevent, one of which made uninformed and stereotype-driven assertions about autistic people, claiming that they are more likely to become extremists or terrorists because of their ‘special interests’. Prevent Watch case: Christian autistic boy referred to Prevent counter-terrorism for resisting LGBTQ+ programme The Guardian’s coverage of this story has since sparked significant backlash against Ofsted’s trainings, including by TV presenter Packham, who is also an ambassador for the National Autistic Society, who said: “That’s not safeguarding, that’s an exercise in profiling.” Prevent Watch and RSI welcome this scrutiny. But it must go further. Prevent Watch have seen a spike in the number of individuals, particularly autistic children, being […]

27 June 202530 June 2025 By Senior Editor

Huffpost: Chris Packham slams Ofsted over guidance linking Autism and extremism

TV presenter Chris Packham has called out Ofsted for linking autism and extremism in a “discriminatory” and “extraordinarily inaccurate statement” made in their Prevent-related training document, reports the Huffington Post. His comments come after The Guardian reported that a training manual, used to teach Ofsted school inspectors, suggested children with autism are “at increased risk of being susceptible to extremism”. It also reportedly claimed that children who are autistic are “more likely to develop special interests” and “can be drawn into extremism” as a result. The training guide, called Inspection Safeguarding Session – Prevent Extract 2024, reportedly reads: “Children and young people with autism are at increased risk of being susceptible to extremism. This is because they are more likely to develop special interests. “Due to this and any social communication needs, children with autism are more likely to experience social isolation and so use the internet as a way […]

25 June 20251 September 2025 By Senior Editor

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RSI: New documents show incoherent government approach to autism and other Prevent monitoring

New government documents obtained by Rights & Security International (RSI) in relation to Prevent monitoring show what they believe is an incoherent and underinformed approach among officials toward the referral of autistic people to the Prevent and Channel counter-terrorism programmes. RSI states that these documents also point to incoherent and, in their view, careless approaches to assessing Prevent’s other equality impacts, particularly where race and religion are concerned. These deeply flawed practices showing a seeming indifference to potential ableism, racism, Islamophobia and other discrimination have persisted for years. RSI obtained a report on Channel and autism that the Home Office commissioned from a market research firm then known as Ipsos MORI (now Ipsos) and that was completed in 2021. It also obtained three EIAs from 2023 that pertain to Prevent, Channel, and the Home Offices response to an external review of Prevent completed by Sir William Shawcross in February 2023. […]

1 June 20255 March 2026 By Senior Editor

The Guardian: Prevent treatment of autistic people ‘could be breaching UK equality laws’

The treatment of autistic people who are referred to the government’s deradicalisation scheme could be in breach of equality laws, a human rights charity has claimed. The home secretary has been warned that Prevent and Channel, the multi-agency follow-on programme, which seek to identify people at risk of extremism, are overreporting neurodivergent people. In a pre-action letter to the Home Office, Rights & Security International (RSI) said it was “deeply concerned about a potential ongoing failure to collect and analyse data on the protected characteristics of those referred to Prevent and that this constitutes an ongoing failure to comply with their public sector equality duty”. There are concerns that autistic people are being referred to the authorities because of a lack of healthcare provision. Read more on The Guardian. Related… Making autistic children an ‘extremism threat’ is that latest in the long list of Prevent harms (Expert View, 2025)

30 May 202522 August 2025 By Senior Editor

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Making autistic children an extremism ‘threat’ is the latest in the long list of harms of Prevent

The latest in the harms of Prevent training is that it links children with autism to extremism, using high numbers of referrals to ‘evidence’ this mistaken assumption. While many of these cases are not pursued further, the harms to neurodiverse children are multiplying. World Autism Awareness Day took place just last month, and we know Prevent has unjustly impacted children with autism. We have supported many parents whose children were referred to Prevent because of a behaviour linked to their autism. In other cases, schools have said that the child’s autism has been the main reason for the referral, or that they have been referred because their autism allegedly made them “more vulnerable to radicalisation or extremism”. In one case, a mother was shocked because her son who had autism had been referred for having a reaction to a situation which made him very uncomfortable. There was nothing violent in […]

29 May 202522 May 2026 By Senior Editor

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