To refuse early help referral

I meant to add, get on the waiting lists its better to be in the queue and turn it down if you dont feel its right for your child rather than join the queue when things have become much worse and having to wait - that came from a health professional.

From a mum with a child suffering severly I would say take whatever help is availble, like someone else said it can open doors to other services. Waiting lists are huge and i hate to say, CAMHS do not always provide adequate support either. I missed if the school are providing support also? If not see what they can do, a lot of schools will have interventions they can work on with them.

Keep note of all the difficulties and how it is affecting your child and the family, how it affects day to day life and the barriers it creates. If your child harms themself because of it take them to the hospital, not everyone will agree because of how busy they are but the earlier things are dealt with the better, the CAMHS crisis team should get involved then. My daughter is in a very bad place right now we have had to fight so much the last few years, 2 overdoses, a&e for deliberate head injuries yet still nothing adequate had been offered until she was admitted to hospital in a different borough last week with an amazing doctor who is pulling out all the stops to make sure people are doing what they are supposed to.

RowanMayfair · Today 08:30

MamaAlwaysknowsbest · Today 08:04

Fidgety31 · Yesterday 23:19

I was in a similar situation and I declined early help support as in reality there was nothing they could add to what I was already doing.
They suggested I give up my full time job (as a single parent ) to be at home with my children ! So I knew from then on we would not be compatible .
Early help is voluntary so you are not obligated to accept .

They suggested that? And who is going to finance all this?
It's not out of the realms of possibility that it would be discussed or proposed as an option. I worked with a family with 2 parents one WFH and one worked a distance away and was out of the home 12 hours a day. The WFH parent couldn't cope with the needs of the kids (SEN) and they kept being referred to us because the family were struggling but they wanted social care to pay for childcare, school taxis etc. It's just not the role of social care to take the place of a parent who is present and capable, which paying for childcare and school transport is. We had to keep pushing back. I did suggest the WOH parent could look for a role closer to home which they thought was outrageous because they had bills to pay. But what would most families do in that situation? What would you expect of them?

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Hi Rowan,

I would suggest that one of the parents has to work and the mother obviously has to be at the child after school and yes, I would suggest the father to be able to come home every night and be the pillar of strength for her and the needy child. And I would suggest that some things are given for free to the family ....

I come from a culture where there is virtually no help for anything , so before we do all things, we count the money and the options, as Jesus said: count the cost before you start following me. Pretty much the same wisdom for anything one does in life. Things do cost money. And where is then the golden middle for families who cannot pay their way as they should and have kids with disabilities - I hope professionals have the answer to that.

If it's the anxiety that's the biggest thing just now and you're not getting anywhere with school etc I would consider trying a private counsellor who specialises in children with neurodivergences. I know there is a cost for that but if your child is genuinely struggling to the extent you describe I would do that rather than waiting around for the revolving door to stop. I say this as a parent of 3 ASN children too and also as someone who accessed private therapy for similar reasons.

@Ohnoooooooo - that is a great post. That is the sort of thing I did with DS. Lots of stuff that seems weird but works.

I quickly learned not to give a toss what other people thought about my methods. I was too soft a parent, too hard a parent, too weird a parent, too square, too helicopter, too neglectful etc etc. Which all translates as: your parenting of ND children is different from my parenting of NT children. Well, duh.

Things change so fast and my ASD son is now adult, so I don't know how it works now but would accepting Early Help exclude you from pushing for a CAMHS referral? Might Early Help admit her needs are beyond their spec and then write a referral in support of her transfer to CAMHS?

Please don't think I am under-estimating how hard it already is for you as a single mum with two SEN children, but ime, the only way forward was to assume CAMHS was utterly useless and would never materialise, and to become a child MH armchair expert myself. Read up on best ways to soothe her, best self-soothing mechanisms you can teach her and then put them into practice. I did this and it was exhausting with one SEN child and a partner, so it will be a massive battle and energy drain on you doing it solo, but what are the alternatives when the system is so stacked against her getting the help you both need and deserve?

I did a LOT of CBT with my autistic son from a very early age. We are told CBT doesn't work on autistic people but I couldn't find a better method of intervening with his rigid negative thoughts. He was insistent it didn't work at all. But I saw the changes. It just took years instead of months for the processes to settle in. He now in adulthood uses CBT techniques all the time to overcome anxiety and intrusive thoughts.

If you want, DM me and I will hunt out all the stuff I did with DS.

I am sorry you are struggling. My daughter's anxiety worsened in her teens - hormones play a role.
One frustrating thing is that when a child is neurodiverse all anxiety can be written off as part of that. We discovered (only because we have private insurance) that while my daughter has ADHD she also has PoTS one part of PoTS which can be triggered by puberty (mostly girls) and their autonomic nervous system does not develop at the same time as the result is they get noradrenaline surges making their heart beat fast and the physically feel anxious plus they are on high alert 24/7 making them exhausted.
Re the violet outbursts, one parenting course helped me suggesting sit down in a period of calm and help her work out what physical changes are happening in her body before she loses control of her emotions. Does her heart beat fast? Does her voice get louder, does she feel more anxious? helping her and you to recognize the signs she is escalating and then encourager her to take a break from the situation. Also I think encouraging her to jump on a mini trampoline to get out the physical frustration and encouraging her to sing to get out the verbal frustration - feels weird at first but helps.

Early help is all that nursery would offer me when DS was struggling (despite me knowing he needed a CDC referral 🙄). I figured it couldn’t hurt. It wasn’t particularly helpful if I’m honest but I would rather try something new than keep hitting my head against a brick wall and expecting a different outcome.

If think this might be area dependent?
We had early help.my don has complex learning disabilities and autism in n a special school.etc
And we were assigned a social worker he was a children with disabilities social worker
I know what you mean Op in reality there is only so much they can offer you
And it can be stressful having meetings when you know that the outcome won't change .

i voted AIBU because I think you should engage with EH. I appreciate you want to protect your children from intrusive visits that don’t help but I have heard really good things from
people who have had EH (not all are great, but your one could be so worth at least investigating) and you will also show that you are keen to whatever it takes to get the right support for your children.
I have an ASD/ADHD 11 yr old who
regularly tells me they want to die. Turned down for EHCNA, refused the secondary school we thought would support him best educationally (despite being our closest ffs!) he is really struggling and I am constantly at the school, e-mailing, phoning - it is exhausting, especially bedtimes when he doesn’t want to go because it’s school the next day, and the mornings when he doesn’t want to get up and ready. So to be coping with that x 2 is an incredible feat and I totally get why you haven’t got the energy to cope with another service that may burden you rather than help. But I have heard experiences of EH being really supportive so if you do engage then hopefully you will get someone who understands and can support you to getting the right help for your kids. Good luck 🤞

If only early help or social care could make any difference to the speed or effectiveness of CAMHS referrals :(

It's not out of the realms of possibility that it would be discussed or proposed as an option. I worked with a family with 2 parents one WFH and one worked a distance away and was out of the home 12 hours a day. The WFH parent couldn't cope with the needs of the kids (SEN) and they kept being referred to us because the family were struggling but they wanted social care to pay for childcare, school taxis etc. It's just not the role of social care to take the place of a parent who is present and capable, which paying for childcare and school transport is. We had to keep pushing back. I did suggest the WOH parent could look for a role closer to home which they thought was outrageous because they had bills to pay. But what would most families do in that situation? What would you expect of them?

I have an ASD/ADHD child who has a lot of difficulties right now, particularly with school attendance.

I accepted the Early Help when offered. No, she couldn't stop the problems (you can't just stop ASD/ADHD) and most things she suggested I was already doing and had been doing for a long time. However, she was kind and was someone I could talk to about how I was feeling about everything.

I expect it depends a lot on how good the person you get is but I found my Early Help person very valuable for supporting me at a time when I felt very alone.

Perhaps give it a try for a few sessions. If it's not helping then there's no need to continue.

I’m going through this atm. I asked GP for a CAMHS referral back in August. CAMHS declined and we got bounced to EH and the Learning Nurse Disability team. My EH visitor was a force of nature and my LND nurse was useless so I think it depends who you end up with.

It turns out that I had to really persist with LND because that was the most appropriate way into CAMHS as an EH related referral or a school referral would have put my DS on the general waiting list whereas an LND referral put him with special autism focused psychiatrists. I really pushed back on the redundant advice the nurse kept trying to palm me off with and kept reiterating that behavioural interventions are currently not working due to anxiety and ocd. We need to get him back to a headspace where he is able to engage with behavioural interventions. I also kept a record of lots of specific examples I could refer to.

I’ve just had my first CAMHS meeting and the next step is for the psychiatrist to observe my son and then prescribe (probably) sertraline (sp?). It has been exhausting and I totally understand your lack of headspace to engage. I made that quite clear to both the EH and the LNS; I only have the capacity to engage with things that are likely to help. I have an extremely good understanding of what will and will not work right now and why/why not. But I also made it clear that I would/will engage with other strategies when my son is more able to respond to them. They seemed happy enough with that. Best of luck.

Unfortunately sometimes (often), declining support that is offered is taken as evidence that things aren’t that bad. I completely get what you’re saying, you’re being offered a fork to eat soup but you know you need a spoon. Sometimes services want to see that you’ve tried the fork and it didn’t work. If you don’t try the fork they say that you can’t be that hungry….

I work in health and I see this sort of thing often but where I work, if we tried the CAMHS referral again after unsuccessful intervention from early help, it would be more likely to be accepted.

Good luck, sorry it’s so hard.

I agree with @ConstantChangeraofNames09 above, use them as a referral tool for CAMHS and just smile and nod otherwise. My experience is from another country so not really relevant but I've never had so much reaction from services as when our respite service does it for us. Total ghost town when I ring but they're ringing me the next morning when respite contacts them for us.

It’s a different context, but I’ve just agreed to sign up for something that I know won’t help. I always do because sometimes you have to tick the boxes to access what you do really need.

I know what I’ve signed up to won’t help but also know that they might be able to nudge the referral I do really need.

When I was a full time Senco, I moved local authorities. I made an EH referral and a meeting was set up with an EH support worker and family. The EH worker didn’t seem to know what he was doing during the meeting, making some odd suggestions to the parents. After the meeting, I asked him to hang on whilst I saw the parents out. I asked him about the reasons behind his suggestions and we discussed their appropriateness (or lack of) for quite a while. It got ‘heated’.
A week later, his line manager came into school to meet with the Head and he’d put in a complaint about me challenging him. Turns out he’d been in the job a month, had no experience - the job had been internally advertised in the LA and he had previously held some other admin role - and I should have ‘given him some slack’!
luckily the Head gave his manager short shrift, pointed out we were there to support very vulnerable families and as such those families deserved the best EH support.
When allocated an experienced EH support worker, the system can work really successfully. When allocated someone with no experience, it can be dangerous.
Added to all that, services for SEN across the board are being cut to the bare bones. It’s a shocking situation.

Early help is completely different to having a social worker. I was quite taken aback how much social services don’t support but the support of early help was amazing for me. Everyone seemed to listen more because I had a professional who backed me up. She also seen what others didn’t as my son masks in school and everyone started listening because she had witnessed him smashing up the house or was kicking off when she was on the phone. She was able to find us amazing support and help for my child before things escalated further and then I wouldn’t of had a choice I would of been stuck with a social worker who done nothing

I haven't voted. But just to say I've had early help twice and both times they've been amazing and really helpful in ways I hadn't expected.
They've been real cheerleaders. Sometimes I've just needed that shoulder to cry on and pointing out what's going well alongside some rolled up sleeve practicality. They've been useful in dealing with my ex but mostly in bolstering me up.
I'd give it a go - it didn't drain me (and I know what you mean about some interactions with professionals) it really helped.

Fidgety31 · Yesterday 23:19

I was in a similar situation and I declined early help support as in reality there was nothing they could add to what I was already doing.
They suggested I give up my full time job (as a single parent ) to be at home with my children ! So I knew from then on we would not be compatible .
Early help is voluntary so you are not obligated to accept .

They suggested that? And who is going to finance all this?

Hello
My dd is 9 and referred to cahms for assessment. Ask them if they can reassess for adhd.

Shes like yours violent when angry and the emotional dysregulation. She broke someone's device at school recently she said was accident however the other parent demanded I paid 300 quid left me skint and had a nervous breakdown so I feel you.

At moment we are going into school 5 min late and she's the front of q coming out and it's working well. My dd does meditation every night has done since age 5 as I also do it. She started with sleeping dragon on YouTube honestly very calming. I also spoke to sendias. Ensure you apply for an ehcp

My kids school have tried to refer me a few times I’ve always refused it’s never “Gone against me” I know it’s social services and I would never voluntarily have them involved so I said no.

Does your child have an EHCP (absolutely not saying they are a cure all) but it does sound like the ASD / mental health is a barrier to learning. I know the preference would be to have access to the right support locally, but an EHCP could be used to access residential learning with in-house therapy especially as you have evidence that their needs are not being met by the services locally. In a past life, I have helped to get students into places like Ruskin Mil (for one girl whose mental health expressed itself by starting fires and the local authority agreed that there was nothing they could do to manage hers and others' safety locally) although it did mean the family having to relent to her moving 80 miles away to go there, or Tadley Court.

You could get your local SENDIASS on board who could steer you in what to say and how, especially if local authority services are not doing their job.

I would also say, in the circumstances above, it would helpful to have Social Services on board because if they can't help with access to provision locally then again they would be the ones who fund the living costs of any residential provision. Without them, the SEND team at the LA are usually reluctant to approve residential provision due to the cost (especially if a lot of the needs are not directly educational).

If you haven't already, then SENDIASS would probably be the first people to approach for support and advice.

Finally, I'm sorry that you are in this position.

Have you tried looking at third sector support? In my county, local youth mental health charities are far more responsive and supportive than CAMHS. Your local Mind might be a good starting point, even if they don't offer CYP support they will likely have knowledge of who does.