The Goose and Carrot Pub Thread

Sleep is hard here too. I feel a huge pressure to do more “activities” with ds1, despite the fact I am very sure he is happy as is and what he needs is to focus on life skills at home. We got sloppy while he was at college and I do far too much for him that he would (once the “I don’t want to be independent “ vibe has been got over) be much happier doing himself. He’s very tired from the new valproate. I know they are going to review his support (direct payments 9hrs atm) any moment. I have no idea what would be a good outcome.

@Violasilkie I think you are jumping at shadows. Your ds has very significant disability and I really think you just need to answer each question with examples (don’t worry about repeating yourself). We had the same issue with no GP contact and no professional input when ds was HE. Just be honest, and direct. It’s a horrid process but I’d scribble through the whole thing and then read it back in a few days.

Actually the GP thing is always an issue for us as a family. Beyond jabs and emergencies we just don’t really use them. Most of my children have only been once or twice and are now adults. I suppose because we had such big medical stuff with dd3 and then so much disability stuff with ds I always feel we can deal with the rest. I go if they ask me to. So much of these things are luck.

The sun is shining and builders are gone for a week now and one of ds’s teachers has cancelled….bliss.

Woke up to 40 messages, now I see several people couldn't sleep. Hope you all have calm days.
DS at Explorers again, DH saying "he doesn't really need me there does he?". I left him all last week's meeting so I hope so!

That's so lovely @JumpersFluffy

@PurringTiger the forms are horrible. I'm glad you got an earlier night.

Hope you got some sleep those whose minds where whirling last night. I’m still limping on with this Covid like virus both DH & I have it. It’s not bad enough to be in bed but both making us feel very fatigued with all the usual symptoms. I’ve been on paracetamol for 9days now really hoping it lifts soon.

Posting a bit of joy that made me smile yesterday. DD2 decided to learn the ukulele but not any tune oh no a K/Pop one. Found a you tuber and a hour later had several chords and two different strumming techniques plus some quiet singing. When her hive mind hyper focuses it’s wonderours to see plus anything to avoid revising!

@Violasilkie our lives remain far more unbelievable than I ever post. I believe you. I’ve started a side book of notes again, every negative and distressing thing I write about DD I write a thing I love about her in the side book. Form renewals just bring reality to focus when we are trying to live looking through a soft lens.

I am having an early night due to posting mundane detail on assignments and getting responses that solved it. Pub at its best.

@roaringdragon go a little inward if you can. Make the decision to shut shop on anything but essentials for you and immediate family. You need to heal to power back up.

I hope sleep finds you @roaringdragon . I'm similarly stuck. Too much to think about without solutions.

On-costs is typical terminology in education and health. It's the true cost of a hire. For an HLTA it adds roughly 20-25% over the gross salary.

LAs will always try to skim. They're used to parents being so grateful they are getting anything that they daren't raise the fact that they aren't getting enough.

I hope you get it sorted @roaringdragon. It's never-ending.

ETA a hyphen because without the hyphen we may as well all hang up our hats now.

No, we wouldn’t bother giving those a name, because they’d all be put in expense headings like “wages and NI’ers” or “pensions” or “staff training”, in the detailed profit and loss account.

DH just went to put washing on and found DS in the laundry room on a big cushion, his Nintendo plugged in gaming.

Just sent an e-mail to GPs to give update and also to ask about council tax SMI form - not sure they will accept it as they can be funny about communication methods but we will see. Says no clinical enquiries that way but no other way of sending attachments and its not strictly clinical.

Thanks @Lougle and @roaringdragon You are both right and I need to be careful to just include relevant to pip criteria stuff and not just waffle on as I have a tendency to as you may have noticed 😂At least I know what I am doing now.

I'd not heard on on-costs either @LathkillDale heard terms like employers additional costs and the ones you list.

DH returned the hire car and walked the 4.6 miles back. He also cut the 2 bits of old worktop we had into 4 shelves and I did the garden, the floors and the silkies coop.

@roaringdragon Ok.

What are “on costs”, you mentioned in an earlier post. There was an argument at our last tribunal about “on costs”, between our barrister and the LA, relating to our choice of a 52 week placement and their suggestion of 38 weeks plus respite. Neither of us knew what they were talking about.

Anyway, the tribunal decided the LA’s idea was totally inappropriate and costs were irrelevant, because only a 52 week placement could meet her needs.

We are both accountants and it’s not a term we use. We talk about

fixed costs and variable costs
direct costs and indirect costs
cost of sales
sunk costs
opportunity costs
contingent liabilities (potential costs)

There may be other terms I can’t remember, in industries, we don’t deal with.

I have met people on DD1’s house, who I assume have mild learning disabilities, because they wouldn’t be there otherwise, but really I couldn’t tell in conversation. However, I have never had anything more than superficial conversations with them. Usually, we just arrive to pick DD1 up or drop her off; and then we leave, because it’s a long drive home.

As for the rights of people to live their lives freely in the community, I can’t help but think that’s code for - it’s cheaper to do nothing! The people DD2 has met have not been happy, living on their own. They have great sadness, usually due to unresolved trauma.

DD1 loves animals and I don’t know what she would do in a zoo left to her own devices, but then she is never going to be on her own.

You need to tie the incidents into the pip descriptors.

Thanks so much. I agree that we need to do something like a carers statement though I started it and it sounds horrific, not the day to day but the one off things like taking the boiler apart, flooding the bathroom but all of it together is so unusual I think they probably would believe it.

I agree that the family of William Chapman won't want his circumstances debated. It's very sad. In general, complete risk management is impossible and the deprivation of liberty required to completely rule out all risk for vulnerable people would outweigh the benefit. Reasonably foreseeable risk can be managed, but there will always be a risk that can't be planned for.

@Violasilkie I genuinely think that if you just describe how you communicate with DS, it will be fine. For example "DS can't engage with us directly, or communicate verbally. To be able to fix his electronic devices, I had to tell him that if he needed something to be fixed, he could leave it on the worktop. He gets very distressed if we try to communicate directly with him and can throw things and slam doors to express his distress. He can't tell us that he likes something so we have to observe behaviour patterns to work out if he approves. For example, we buy certain foods and if they are eaten, we know he likes them. We recently told him that we wanted to replace his shed. He didn't verbally communicate but he moved everything back into the shed that we had removed and sat in it, so we knew he didn't want us to dismantle it. Conversely, when we wanted to make changes to his bathroom, he left the door open and allowed us in the room, so we knew he approved."

I think the assessors can tell a genuine application from the language that is used, and there are specific assessors that are used to decide paper based claims where it's obvious that the person has complex needs. I'm not saying that they don't sometimes get it wrong, but I really don't think you're going to have issues because he isn't engaging with the outside world, when you're saying that he won't engage even with you. You can say that they discharged him because he became distressed if they came.