A moan about appointments

[WellTidy]

DS has just turned 3 and almost certainly has ASD. He definitely has a severe language delay (no language at all). DS is very frustrated, having meltdowns, is very strong and can be aggressive. Life is a challenge for him and for us all.

We have been pushing and ppushing for about a year for him to have support. We've been given the wrong information, and basically he hasn't had access to therapy and classes and whatnot that have been offered to other families. So we sent a letter setting out our concerns with the level of care and supprt he'd been getting. hey presto, DS suddenly has access to the same thinsg as other similar children. Hooray.

One of those things is a group therapy class for children with social communication issues. Great. This was set up five weeks ago. The classes run for two hours each, over five weeks in June, every Tuesday morning.

We have waited 6 months for him to have an appointment with a paed. The appointment came through this morning. It is for a Tuesday morning in June, smack bang in the middle of one of the classes.

The class and the paed appointment are in the same building.

I phone to ask if the appointment can be moved, or put back to after the class finishes. No it cannot. It would be treated as a cancelled appointment (and there is no waiting list for cancellations), and would have to be re-scheduled and they are now re-scheduling for September. The paed appointment is important to us, so we don't want to wait until September (having waited since December 2014) so I have told the person organising the classes that he will have to miss about three quarters of one class due to the conflicting appointment. She isn't happy, as apparently, when I accepetd the place at the class, it was implicit that he would attend all five of the classes. Well, yes, but that was befoer the apopintment with the paed came through!

Arggghhh. Would it be too much for the people making appointments to check as to what other classes had been booked in for that child, in the same building, so that they don't offer clashing appointments?

[Runningtokeepstill]

I know exactly how you feel. I can go for ages with no-one wanting to see my ds and then suddenly everyone wants to see him at once usually at overlapping times and in different places. I usually accept the hospital paed or specialist appts first and then fit everyone else around.

Hospital appointments being like gold dust for many clinics, I can see why paediatrics don't want to re-schedule and why you don't want to do so either. I can't see why the group therapy person is being awkward. They must surely know the situation with medical appointments and that you have no choice over the matter. OK, it's not ideal but it's not a case of you being half-hearted about the sessions is it?

Generally, my experience has been that services are so stretched there's no point expecting them to liaise with each other. But I accept it is very frustrating.

[Southernhippie]

We had this recently, two appointments same building one with Paed at same time as portage group. I got reception to check the Paed was actually running to time and let us know when they were ready for us. It meant not missing as much of the group as we could have done.

As for the therapist she is being unreasonable and clearly has no idea the demands of being a parent of a child with SN.

I once had a booking receptionist for an MRI scan tell me DS couldn't change his appointment a mon or tues as they were very busy and booked for months. She added if the scan was really important to me I would just take the day I had already been given. I repeatedly asked for the next available mon or tues regardless and when she finally did it was the next week. I was furious! I formally complained about that one!

[senvet]

I hear so many stories like this. I feel for you all.

Good luck with the paed

[WellTidy]

I feel better for having had a moan! Looks like a fair few of us are in the same boat. Good luck everyone.