To think if we can't get help, who can?

What I meant is, would housing really put a registered blind 16 year old in a 'standard' hostel with no additional care?

Hostels surely aren't suitable for a registered blind young person with other disabilities though @PineappleTime ?

What the young woman needs is a residential setting, eg assisted living, with 2:1 care as she's violent (I know of several young people in this sort of set-up). That is of course very hard to achieve, but I would have thought that the DD's disabilities would put her towards the top of the list.

The local authority have already accepted that she needs to be housed but you can't magic up a suitable placement by saying 'well she's homeless now, your problem'
Social care will never intentionally place in a hostel because it's very risky. But now that she's 16 and presumably at the end of year 11 housing could place her in a hostel. @WhompingWillows i don't know if you're aware of that. The options for a homeless 16 year old out of year 11 are somewhat better than for an aggressive 15 year old in her GCSE year as she couldn't be placed in a hostel and no foster placement will take her. Residential care might have been an option if you could have got them to agree but it's probably too late.
if you are ok with her being placed in a hostel (and no judgement if you are! That wasn't a loaded statement) you can refuse to have her back the next time she's arrested for assaulting you or her sister. Emergency housing is available, though it's short term and shit. But once you've got her placed somewhere, anywhere, she's more likely to get into a slightly more decent provision.

@Chucklit I just wanted to acknowledge your post - I'm sorry you're going through what you are, it's a lonely-feeling place to be in

That sounds terrible.

You need to prioritise your younger daughter.

Can you write to the council and tell them that the 16 year old can no longer live with you and will be homeless at the end of the week?

Possibly/probably. As there is no real, meaningful support from Children’s Social Care. My adopted daughter of 16 made a false allegation of assault against me and I can’t guarantee that she won’t do the same again. In the meantime, my adopted daughter of eight and I are physically and verbally abused on a regular basis. Following my arrest, my teen went to live with my elderly mum for six weeks (after she was manipulated by social workers) and then, as a result of managing the extreme behaviours, was diagnosed with stress-induced psychosis. My mum has the crisis team visiting every other day and she is starting to go missing. We have had to put together a missing persons profile for her.

My LA agreed a S20 (voluntary accommodation) back in March but they have conceded that they will be unlikely to find a suitable foster placement that would be able to meet her needs. So she is still living with me and still assaulting me. I have tried my absolute best for 15.5 years but I think I deserve to have some quality of life and happiness now. More importantly, my younger daughter deserves to have a childhood without violence and without being told told to ‘fuck off, you little cunt’ on a daily basis.

Okay, so what's the end game - failed adoption?

@ThisOldThang

I’m already an adopter (twice over) as is the OP.

@WhompingWillows its the siblings who are often forgotten in all of this.

@JenniferBooth yes it can be, which is why I suggested to the OP she do what she can to remove her DD from being next to her DS at triggering times (including feeding them separately as suggested by a PP). So as to protect the DD who the OP has a duty of care to, because the DS has been pulling his sister’s hair when triggered.

WhompingWillows then suggested the OP call the police every time her DS is violent. The OP has already called them at least once, and it seems the hospital did too; both times she was hurt. But she can’t reasonably call the police every time the DS pulls his sister’s hair, so she needs other strategies.

The problem with the 'I de-escalate in my job' responses is that the guidance is aimed at teachers, etc.

If a child is violent in school, they can de-escalate by giving in. The safety of the staff is the primary goal, followed by the safety of the other children. It doesn't matter if this results in worse and worse behaviour, because the end game will be permanent exclusion of the child to restore a safe environment.

What is the end game for a family? Adoption?

@WhompingWillows its the siblings who are often forgotten in all of this.

@ThisOldThang i posted this on the Legal matters board last week and got vilified by some posters despite the "it takes a village" rhetoric that is often spouted on here.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/legal_matters/5095352-how-can-local-coffee-shop-navigate-this-without-falling-foul-of-equality-act?page=1

@drspouse have you accessed help from charities like thse?

https://hopeforfamilies.org.uk/parenting
This one has a specific session for helping families manage ADHD related anger issues by the looks of it.

And I have heard excellent things about this charity who also offer support to families like yours:

https://www.careforthefamily.org.uk/

OP, If you are open to it, find a suitable church nearby.
Many of them have programs / classes for children with SEN. There will be more support available than through anywhere else. And people to cry with, pray with.

You might be surprised at the impact.

Edit: just seen you go to church. Could you maybe find one with such programs?

I have a similar situation.
12 year old DD has been attacking since the age of 7. She's left countless bruises, scratches from her nails, even a black eye when she punched me in the face so hard that my glasses shot across the room.
The GP and I highly suspect that she's autistic but the only way to get a referral in my area is via school and she's now regularly refusing to attend so they can't do the observations needed.
I’m a lone parent. So have no support at all here. It's a gut wrenching feeling to carry every day. Walking on eggshells.
I hope you get the help you need OP

@drspouse

Just to add, if you have not already, please, if you are in England, ask your adoption agency to refer you to the National Centre for Adoption and Fostering at the South London Maudsley Hospital. This national CAMHS centre offers EVIDENCE-BASED assessments of our children (so not your PASW guessing everything = attachment because adoption and CSC guessing everything = poor parenting because safeguarding and child protection). The cost of the initial assessment will be funded by the ASF. You will then know what you are dealing with and you can negotiate appropriate therapies accordingly. So not your adoption agency offering you ten sessions of play/drama/art/useless therapies because that’s all they can offer because they have signed preferred supplier contracts with big providers.

Also, in opposition to some posters here, I would call the police every time your AS is violent. You have a duty to safeguard your AD who is witnessing these attacks on you. I have personally found the police to be the most sympathetic and empathetic of the professional services - even when they were arresting me on a false allegation of assault. The police do not want to criminalise our children but they do want to offer early prevention work that stops them entering the criminal justice system. From a self-preservation point of view, it is helpful to have a log of police visits to your home for as and when the first allegation is made against you.

@drspouse I’ll ask again, have you tried anti-anxiety medication for your DS’s anxiety?

PEGS, which you’ve just told WhompingWillows you’ll check out, was suggested to you back in April by someone else on this thread. You said then you’d spoken to the nice man at PEGS who’d given you lots of pointers about finding a restraint course - did nothing come of that?

I’m a bit bewildered tbh that you seem more focused on talking about how much he helps around the house and now what you’re doing about his hygiene routine than on what you’re doing to sort out the escalating violence against you and your DS getting arrested for it.

You have a younger child in the house who he’s hurting and who you have a duty to protect. If, to use one of your examples, he pulls her hair when he finds out that the shop is shut, then move her away from him before telling him the shop is shut, or anything else he may not like.

As a PP suggested, feed the children separately as he’s aggressive/physical with his sister at the dining table.

These are pragmatic, common sense strategies that you don’t need organisations or evidence based research to tell you. But you need to prioritise keeping your DD safe, as well as of course yourself.

@drspouse

Just to add, I agree with you re: the NewboldHope (cult). I was on the group/site briefly. I got kicked off because a poor woman posted asking what she should do because her child had fractured her eye socket and nearly blinded her. My response of call the police absolutely did not go down well. Regardless of their multiple issues, our children have to function in society, be it on the fringes. As adults, they will be given no leeway for fracturing the eye socket and nearly blinding another human being. I also hate the cult of NVR. Are adult victims of domestic abuse asked not to dysregulate their abusers? No, they are not and we would all be appalled at the victim blaming. The truth is that some children, probably majorly due to their poor starts in life or their disabilities or differences, ARE violent. As a fellow victim, it would really help if society stopped gaslighting me. It does happen, it’s not my fault and it’s a consequence of what’s gone before.

@drspouse

Fellow adoptive parent here (👋🌊 - emojis chosen to represent not waving but drowning!) Forgive me if you simply want a rant, to which you are perfectly entitled, and I am most definitely not going to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. My AD1 is 16 now and she has the following diagnoses: registered blind / autism / ADHD / neonatal abstinence syndrome / probably FASD (but hard to get diagnosis) and binge eating disorder. You will most likely know that the extent of your AS’s conditions/disgnoses will not just be ADHD. You will know also that there is significant overlap between trauma, neurodivergence and attachment disorders. Are our children correctly diagnosed? No, probably not but we take the diagnoses the physicians who are not necessarily versed in children who live with trauma are willing to give. We take anything that will help our children.

My AD1 is extremely violent, aggressive and verbally abusive. She makes false allegations against me (I have been arrested, detained in custody for 21 hours and interviewed under caution). I have been taken through Child Protection proceedings. I have AD2(8) who is a victim of her non-birth-related sister’s violence and abuse. Honestly, I think you need to stop expecting help from CSC: they do not get adoption and the needs of children who have suffered the most primal wound of all ie being removed from the person who carried them for nine months. There is very little training for SWs on adoption, trauma, the in utero effects of exposure to drugs, alcohol, domestic abuse, chaotic lifestyles and the heritability factors of neurodivergence and mental health disorders. CSC is heavily weighted towards safeguarding and parent blaming and shaming. Child-on-parent violence and abuse is a subject that people really don’t want to talk about, especially SWs.

Please, I urge you to make contact with PEGS and CAPA First Response which are both organisations doing brilliant but very different work in the field of child-on-parent violence and abuse. You will be seen and you will be heard. And none of this is your fault. It is all because of what went before.

@Spendonsend “A lot” of overlap between ASD and ADHD (AuDHD by its definition is a combo) is something some people with ADHD and ASD would disagree with! Personally I’d go with “some” rather than “a lot”. ASD and ADHD are distinct conditions, although in at approx 50% of cases people will have both, which again presents differently.

Some of the best advice we received, from a family therapist, was to see AuDHD almost as a separate condition. It’s a difficult one primarily because there’s some opposing contests between ADHD and ASD: spontaneity v routine, impulsivity v rigidity. Etc.

But it absolutely matters for school which is one of the OP’s central issues.

Aldo, part of why I made the point to the OP about it not just being ADHD (whether the ‘as well as’ is ASD, trauma, anxiety, FASD or all of the above) is to correct her on a couple of the categoric but incorrect statements she made about ADHD. As much for the benefit of anyone else reading. But the OP ignored that, went on to lecture me about ADHD despite me having it and her not, and when I pointed that out, came back on but ignored my point and hasn’t apologised.

To be brutally blunt - like I said earlier, having been in a situation where I had to call the police because my autistic & ADHD child had a MH crisis and was violent - if the OP really did know what she’s talking about and what works best, she wouldn’t be in a situation where her son has deliberately physically attacked the OP, resulting in her to go to hospital twice in several weeks.

Im going to ask...................how is his sister dealing with it? How old is she

I appreciate children with different needs need different parenting. Two children with asd aren't going to respond to all the exact same strategies either. Social stories and timetables are not for my son for instance.

I suppose what I meant was asd, adhd and audhd are spectrum disorders with a lot of overlap and therefore the techniques to help are a spectrum too which you tailor to the child you have and it's always useful to have a little wander across techniques used in other nerodevelopmental disorder to see if any fit.

*their 😳

It may help an extra diagnosis opens up different schools or services or medication I suppose.

It absolutely does @Spendonsend The OP herself has said in her posts that certain schools they may consider won’t take her DS because he doesn’t have ASD.

And yes, there definitely is different techniques to dealing with ADHD v AuDHD v ASD, even though of course there’s some overlap. Just in my own home I have one with AuDHD and one with ADHD and how we parent them is a bit different, because there needs are different.