AIBU to want to tell them to shove their questionnaire up their bum??

[staryeyed]

I am fed up of filling these bloody questionnaires anyway but this one really takes the p*. The portage worker left a total of 5 questionnaires for me to fill in. I did the rest and then came to this one.

"I worry what will happen to Ds when I can no longer take care of him. -true/false

It bothers me that Ds will always be this way. -true/false

In the future our families social life will suffer because of increased responsibilities and stress. -true/ false

I have accepted that Ds might have to live out his life in a special setting/ institution or group home. -true/false

Ds is limited in the kind of work he can do for a living. -true/ false"

Asking me to think about the bleak outlook of my sons future at the age of 3!! Now Im a realist and I know Ds isnt going to get miraculously get better and these things may be possible, but bloody hell what insensitive and personal questions are they trying to drive me to depression?

[cyberseraphim]

I wouldn't fill in a questionnaire like that for a three year old. How would the portage like it if you asked her if she is prepared or not for one of her children having a breakdown into severe schizophrenia in their teens - happened to someone I know. Life is uncertain for everyone.

[2shoesdscannowhearinstereo]

portage is crap. I wouldn't fill it in.

[deeeja]

How awful! I wouldn't fill it in. Portage is shite!
(As an aside, these holidays are wearing me out, all 3 of my boys are going doolally!)

[mm22bys]

Don't fill it in.

Noone can fore-tell the future. If we could, we would know the lottery numbers and we could buy the best care and wouldn't have to put up with crap like Portage!

[Seuss]

What are they trying to achieve with that? It's baffling, if you were prepared for all those things then it's just an unnecessary reminder and if you weren't it's a rather rude awakening. Either way it pants.

[bullet123]

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you answer "yes" you're mapping out your child's future at too yougn an age. If you say "no" it could be twisted to you saying you don't think your child needs help.

[coppertop]

at those questions!

How on earth can anyone predict things like that when a child is only 3yrs old??!

In 3+ years of portage (between ds1 and ds2)I don't think they ever gave me even one questionnaire. What on earth is the portage worker thinking??

[staryeyed]

I get endless streams of blardy questionnaires- its constant; form the blardy council, evaluations of each and every service we use, and the measuring the effectiveness of the portage service (well its not actually portage but very similar). Its all a joke. someone called me the other week to badger me about the questionnaire about how I rate the early years support key worker system (who is the portage worker) Well she is pretty useless, so her being the key worker is a joke and completely insignificant. I should have just written "Its blardy Boll**s".

[staryeyed]

I will let her know that I wont be answering those insensitive questions and that they should be more careful about what they give out. What on earth do they do with that information? What hypotheses are they testing- whether pessimistic/optimistic parents effect their children's development? There was also yet another questionnaire with that pack which I previously missed asking again very personal questions on rating scale strongly agree to strongly disagree:

I regret having children
I worry a lot about money
I love my child just the way he is
My life is stressful right now
I feel very close to my child
I sometimes feel overburduned by my responsibilities as a parent

Things that have nothing to do with what they are supposedly measuring- the effectiveness of the service.

[Seuss]

What??? Even if you hated your children and wanted to run off to Corfu (which I'm sure you don't) you wouldn't tell the council in a poxy questionnaire anyway! What's the point of these things? Wouldn't there time be better spent asking what help you need and then using the money saved on printer ink to provide some of those services?

[nikos]

Reminds me of a questionnaire we got when trying to toilet train ds. All about our own issues around toilets and mess and about wanting your child not to grow up. WE JUST WANT DS OUT OF NAPPIES BEFORE HE STARTS SCHOOL. Sorry for shouting

[Seuss]

Who write's these things? 'wanting your child not to grow-up' - does that ever happen? People keeping their child in nappies because they don't want them to grow up? Even if it does I wouldn't of thought it was common enough to be alluded to in a questionnaire.

[TotalChaos]

at least there's an upside to DS getting so little support - that I don't have twatty things like this to fill in! The wording is appalling, how can they give this to parents of pre-schoolers.

[Arabica]

That's an awful questionnaire at the invasion of privacy. Our portage worker wouldn't dream of giving us something like that to complete. She has asked how we're coping--but only so she could tell us about local services we hadn't already heard of.

[Sidge]

We had Portage (and it was brilliant) but we NEVER had questionnaires like that!

The only questionnaire I had was a feedback form each 6 months to see if we were enjoying/benefitting from the service.

[drowninginlaundry]

And someone, someone has designed this questionnaire and someone, somewhere, is going to sit and type all the answers from all the families into a computer system. Someone else is then going to analyse the results and produce a report for someone else....

and you wonder why there's lack of funds or resources to actually farking HELP OUR CHILDREN

this makes me so mad

[nikos]

For the sake of clarity can I add that our questionnaire wasn't from portage. I've actually heard nothing but good reports from portage

[Arabica]

If you have the energy I think you should complain to the boss of whoever's responsible for sending out this ridiculous survey, telling them what you have told us. I think sometimes people are well-intentioned, but forget that they themselves have chosen to work in the SN field, whereas we live it 24/7. And when it's brought home to them their first reaction is generally of the 'we had no idea we were being insensitive' variety.

[mm22bys]

Nikos, do you mean of or from?

I can tell you first hand that Portage is a disaster - DS2 was referred in September, he wasn't seen until January, and the sessions din't start till May.

We didn't have a Portage-trained worker, just "agency staff", and as she got a fulltime job she just upped and left leaving us, I mean DS2, in the lurch.

She came about three times in total.

Going forward, it is holidays now, so we don't have any portage now until September.

They are supposed to come once a week, but as staffing levels are so low, they are only going to come once a fortnight.

Either Portage makes a difference, and so should be funded fully, or it doesn't, in which the funding should be transferred to a service that does, or they should just give the parents the money and let them decide how they best see fit to help their children.

Or maybe that's a whole separate topic....

[moondog]

Jesus Christ.
I have never seen anything like this in 13 years of working with a multi-disciplinary team. Outrageous.