CSC and families with complex needs

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Har1Her1
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:59 am

CSC and families with complex needs

Post by Har1Her1 » Sun Aug 14, 2016 9:36 am

Hello,

I have posted frequently about my own situation and received some very helpful advice. I have also used other forums for advice about my children's specific needs and found that many families in which a least one of the children and/or parents is on the autism spectrum or has a mental health difficulty have a very negative experience once Children's Social care become involved. The difficulties seem to cluster around the following points:

- CSC do not seem to work transparently or cooperatively with other agencies;

- CSC cannot seem to accept that sometimes children's behaviour can have a pathological root. It is not always about ineffective boundary setting or lack of positive parenting;

-CSC have little understanding of or training in autism or other disorders

- Parents who cope with challenging behaviour and extreme situations on a daily basis are often stressed and in need of support, but the child-centred focus of CSC means consideration cannot be given to this.


I would like to know if there really is a general problem with the way Children's Social Care support families where children have autism and/or other complex needs, or perhaps I am just coming across messages from families where things have gone wrong. Therefore, would anyone who has children with complex needs, be willing to share their experience of intervention by CSC (good or bad) or point me in the direction of research which may help with this enquiry.

Thanks

charmed1
Posts: 143
Joined: Sun May 26, 2013 2:11 pm

Re: CSC and families with complex needs

Post by charmed1 » Sun Aug 14, 2016 11:07 am

Hello Har1Her1

Thank you for putting into words what I can't seem to these days. The fact that Children's Services are only there for the children (as I've been told by a social worker years ago). Also that there's no such thing as special needs it's poor parenting! Your post really struck a chord.

Our daughter who is 8 years old has global development delay, including speech and language and learning disability. Her behaviour when stressed has resulted in us being forced to sign a S.20. The behaviour has resulted from several years in foster care where she received no emotional support. Our son is 7 son and is back in foster with his sister although they were both returned to our care under a supervision order for just 3 months earlier this year before things broke down. Nothing has changed.

We are back in court again for an assessment of the children's needs (finally) although they won't agree our daughter is on the autistic spectrum (don't want to label her) at least we may finally get some real support for our family after 7 years of social worker involvement. We wait and hope.

Our local authority is rated inadequate by Ofsted so I believe it's a resource issue as even their disability team say our daughter doesn't meet their criteria for help.

Bee*
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 2:31 pm

Re: CSC and families with complex needs

Post by Bee* » Sun Aug 14, 2016 8:31 pm

I am an adult with Asperger Syndrome. I am caring for three kids (the oldest kid is no longer able to live with us due to his severe behaviour issues, and instead lives with my sister). One of the kids has a learning disability, and all three are seeing a speech therapist.

Our last social worker was completely inexperienced when it comes to dealing with parents with disabilities, and part of the reason we went into PLO was that the children had speech delays and one of them was underachieving in school despite a ton of support. This is even though that is just the way they are, and that they are making progress, just slow progress. I really struggled with dealing with her, to the point where being in the same room as her gave me panic attacks and she thought it meant I couldn't look after kids.

I actually requested a new social worker, luckily the one we have now has been really good. She understands that the children's issues are not my fault and I am doing everything I can to help them. She is also really good at working with me, and now I have no issues with doing all these meetings. I am still having a problem with CAMHS of all people, you would think they would understand autism, but she wont work with us because she thinks that the middle kid's issues with fussy eating/fears of a lot of things are my fault, and she wouldn't work for the oldest for the same reason even though I had been trying to get him help for his violent behaviours for years. Last core group meeting the social worker told her she actually had to work with her though-she comes to the meetings and is assigned to work with us, but she does practically nothing.

Har1Her1
Posts: 78
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2014 9:59 am

Re: CSC and families with complex needs

Post by Har1Her1 » Mon Aug 15, 2016 6:39 am

Hello Charmed 1 and Beth,

Your posts highlight the devastating effect that inadequate support or inappropriate intervention can bring on families with complex needs. They also show how difficult it can be to work with agencies who attribute a child's developmental delay or atypical progress singularly on the behaviour of parents and carers.

My husband also has Asperger syndrome and his response to our latest encounter with Children's Social Care has been to totally disengage from them. As a result, I have had to face the Conference and Core Group meeting alone and I have had to sift through copious amounts of reports and correspondence on my own. As I left the Conference two weeks ago, I was very upset. We had 15 professionals sitting around a table each presenting extracts from longer reports and each recommending a Child Protection Plan without stipulating exactly what the children were being protected from. The category of 'emotional abuse' was used but nothing that had happened fitted the criteria used for emotional abuse. This was difficult for me to understand. It would have been impossible for my husband to accept. There were people there who I had never met before and I could not understand their relevance at the meeting e.g. a school nurse when neither boy attended school. There were errors which were presented as facts e.g. who initiated statutory assessment; where and when something happened. I could ignore them and deal with them at a later date, however, I know my husband would have wanted factual errors resolved there and then.

So what really came home to me was the fact that despite knowing my husband's needs, no reasonable adjustments were made in the proceedings or the presentation of information at this Conference (which they assumed he would attend) or in any other meeting or correspondence to him, and I am sure this has led to his lack of engagement. This, then leads to another question. How effective are Children's Social care and related agencies at making reasonable adjustments for parents or carers who may also have additional needs?

Bee*
Posts: 37
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 2:31 pm

Re: CSC and families with complex needs

Post by Bee* » Tue Aug 16, 2016 12:55 am

In my experience, as a whole, they aren't good at making reasonable adjustments for parents who have additional needs. It seems to depend on the professionals themselves to be the sort of people who would think of such a thing. We have had three different social workers, and a whole bunch of other professionals attending various meetings, and they've varied from being the absolute worst most clueless people ever who have made things a million times worse, to being brilliantly supportive and helpful.

Have you thought about what kind of adjustments need to be made to help your husband participate in the meetings, and have you contacted your social worker and/or their manager to discuss this?

Its best to do this now than wait, nobody actually listened to me until the very clueless previous social worker traumatized me to the point where I couldn't actually handle a core group meeting, and then started PLO. One of the things they wanted to do as part of that was a psychological assessment and actually that was really helpful, as it confirmed that I am sane enough to look after kids, and that I need certain adjustments in meetings and stuff to help me achieve what they want from me.

I am very complicated-I wasn't diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum until I was 19, and was raised in a very permissive way, and then my mother died and I ended up having to grow up overnight and raise my siblings when I was 20. One minute I went from having never used the washing machine before and basically being a child, to running a house and caring for 4 kids. Nobody taught me about cooking and cleaning, and I didn't know about proper boundaries and stuff because we didn't get much in the way of discipline or anything. I also have issues with anxiety. I don't think the really useless social worker could even deal with that, I don't even think she wanted to, I guess for her, pushing for foster care is easier.

I have a whole lot of help now, and the results of the psychological assessment have been shared with all of the professionals and they have clear guidelines on how to work with me. Most of them do try. It really made a big difference just not having a social worker who was terrible at working with me. With the useless one, I couldn't get through a meeting without having a panic attack, but I was far less anxious after just a few meetings with a different social worker who was more experienced.

I get minutes of the meetings sent to me, because I don't always understand what people say and need time to process things.

I need instructions in certain ways, as I interpret things a bit different from them, and take things literally when they didn't intend it to be. I also need showing how to do some things that are more complicated. I had to have someone show me how to do various jobs around the house.

Most of my communications with the social worker are by email, because I am really good at writing, but my speech isn't very good, I struggle to explain myself in words and I have a stammer (which I only developed after my bad experience with the useless previous social worker).

I get breaks in meetings if it gets too much, and I can also bring something to hold and mess about with to keep me concentrating and sitting fairly still.

I need someone to support me before conferences because they are the absolute worst thing ever and they make me anxious. I also need to have someone to keep an eye on me in meetings and be supportive and help me express my opinions.

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