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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To be devastated - totally failed DS!

103 replies

WrongMoveAgain · 01/08/2023 02:33

Too long and complex to explain but I was fighting for a last chance saloon type of education intervention for him. Took a risk I’d win.

I lost.

Now left with no education provision. Nothing for him to do in September. No where else to send him. More importantly he won’t get the social, emotional and mental health input he desperately needs alongside education so he can actually engage.

Now 21, ASD and mild learning disability (too mild for high levels of support, too severe apparently for lower level support), social and emotional and mental health issues, can’t live independently and unlikely ever to now without the support I was fighting for.

Can’t work or train without long term support which isn’t available. He’d just walk out due to his social anxiety and lack of engagement. He doesn’t give a shit about gardening, animal care or working in a cafe which is most of what’s on offer anyway!

Looks like his future is sitting in his pants playing his PS5 in a darkened room living off disability benefits as his social worker said most young men like him do.

This was my worst case scenario when he was a young teen and I can’t believe that after all the fighting I’ve done to prevent it that we are here!

He is such a lovely lad, funny, kind, loving, so handsome (he could be a model honestly), and very talented in one thing in particular that I was fighting for him to be able to study to make something of it. It’s so upsetting that his future might be rotting away in his room when he has so much to offer and can do actually do.

He wants to get out there, get some skills to work and live independently, get a girlfriend, have friends, live his life and I know he’s capable but he needs a big intervention for a few years to do that which he’s now lost the chance of.

Absolutely crushed!!

OP posts:
Somewhereovertherainbowweighapie · 01/08/2023 02:46

You tried. You haven’t let ds down, the system has. He might not have something set up for September, but it doesn’t mean you won’t find something eventually.

Treelines · 01/08/2023 02:44

I’m so sorry. This is terrible, such is the state of things. Especially when you’ve put your all in. I have no advice, but I know what it’s like to come up against those brick walls. I have two autistic daughters, both of whom have had severe mental health problems - one of whom is still suffering and who cannot go to school at the moment. Gaming is her refuge, and art is her talent. I’m just trying to keep her with us at the moment. There is a company called MindJam which offers mentoring through gaming - not sure whether they might be with trying out?

FortofPud · 01/08/2023 02:38

That sounds absolutely gutting, I'm so sorry.