At the end of the road maybe

[ThisIsNotARealAvo]

We adopted DS, now 14, and DD, now 12, nearly 7 years ago. DD has always been quite straightforward to parent, is doing well at school, has friends and is managing some life story work sessions really well at the moment.

DS is a completely different story. He is completely refusing to be parented and this has been getting worse and worse for years. We are now at a crisis point, we have been at a few but this is the worst. He goes missing a few times a week with a friend who is in care. They do reckless and dangerous things, the latest being taking my car in the middle of the night, driving it around and damaging it, and who knows what other damage they have done. He refuses to follow any rules or manage any boundaries. He is aggressive towards all of us and takes and damages whatever he wants. We are all scared of him and what he will do next. We cannot have any kind of normal life at the moment and DH and I are not getting much sleep.

Social services are not able to offer any support. After 2 years of fighting we got DS 10 sessions with a clinical psychologist. This cost £3000, the maximum that the adoption support fund will pay out in a year, so we now can't access anything more.

Police usually don't do anything when he goes missing, they ask is he at risk of exploitation? Is he likely to be involved in criminal activity? Does he self harm? Is he likely to be carrying a weapon? Is he suicidal? We say yes to all of this, and nothing happens.

We have begged the SW to provide respite care so that at least DH who's a SAHD can get a bit of sleep without worrying DS will be burning something, including his own skin, picking locks, going missing or threatening to kill his sister.

DH was in a meeting yesterday with SW and Safe Space team who agreed the situation can't continue and they would take action today. At 5pm DH got an email saying that they would have to look at it on Monday and then no one would answer their phone. We called the duty SW and asked how they could keep us all safe until Monday. She can't do anything and just said if we are in direct danger to call 999- something we have done many times and nothing ever happens.

Please can anyone help. I feel like our only option is either to physically kick him out of the house and force someone to take action. Probably all that would happen is ds would smash the door down and we'd have lots of damage to pay for.

I Iived this as a child when my brother went off the rails so I do understand. If your safety is threatened you can call the police and then insist your ds cannot stay at home with you. At that point they will arrange a social services emergency placement. Alternatively there will be a duty social worker on call somewhere who you can speak to but, unless the crisis is happening when you call, they will push you to wait for Monday.

But yes, the sad truth is you will have to fight and fight for anyone to take action and protect your ds (from himself).

Thank you for replying. We have done this recently, called the police out when DS was stabbing furniture with a knife and saying we would be next. All that happened was the SW said we have to decide then and there if we want DS to be removed permanently. Police said they would arrest but he'd be back in 24 hours. Lots of referrals get made and nothing changes. Thanks for making me feel like i am not alone though x

I wont say it's common, but you are certainly not alone.
If arrested the police cannot return him to you unless you agree. If you dont he would go into temporary foster care while a more permanent solution is worked out.

It would be better of course if you went straight into the longterm solution, whatever that might be, but for that you will have to wait at least til next week and you may not be able to do this.

If you are literally at the end of your tether then you could try not parenting him this weekend - no opposition except as necessary to prevent damage to yourselves, your property and the wider public. That might help you limp on for a day or two more.

I really am very sorry this is happening to you all.

Thank you, that is kind of what we have been doing. Except we can't stop him from doing dangerous things if he wants to. We don't expect him to be polite, helpful, get dressed, wash, attend school, eat with us or do anything else if he can't manage it. We have all knives, sharp things, keys etc locked away. But he will eventually get that lock open as he has done with other locks. My car is going to cost £100s to fix and we have lost thousands over the years to him in theft and damages. We are so burnt out. The line of least resistance is our only course of action now.

The sessions with the clinical psychologist, OP, what was the feedback from that?

Not much. He has a conduct disorder. He doesn't really engage with anyone so they didn't get far and then it was finished! No more sessions planned due to cost, but when we offer to pay ourselves then there's other reasons why they can't do it.

He was meant to have an assessment with the same practitioner a few days ago to go towards the EHCP but refused to leave the house or attend on zoom. He's always been like this but when he was smaller you could pick him up and put him in the car.

Have pm’d you.

Sadly I think the only thing that you can do in the situation is if you’re in a dangerous situation over the weekend call the police and refuse to have him back. Duty will arrange emergency foster care for him. I know this must be so so hard and I haven’t been in a situation myself but I do have friends who have had to do this and in the longer term have gone on to have better relationships with their children when not living together. It shouldn’t be this hard to get help.

I think that by the time it gets to this stage, there are layers upon layers of things to resolve, and the child gets more and more out of reach. Help and assessments earlier would have made a difference.

However, I have known children like this who have as they matured sought help or different things.

You may already have done this but it might help to sit down with two sheets of paper and on one list out brainstorm things you think would help your dc, and on the second the things which would help you and your other dc. Have you researched what sort of therapeutic residential places there are?

Does your dc engage with anyone at all, ever, other than the other child from care?

I know of a family with very similar sounding dynamics to you, even to genders, ages etc, but now a couple of years down the line.

Social workers accepted the parents were unable to cope, but searched for a placement of any sort for months and months with no success sadly - what eventually resolved things was achieving the EHCP which recommended specialist residential therapeutic provision with education on site.

From this, I'd recommend you inform social care in writing via email that you are requesting they begin a placement search for him if that is what you feel is needed - this may take some time so the sooner started the better. I'd also encourage you to keep pushing the EHCP process even if he won't engage.

Is DS open on a child in need plan or has your only engagement been with Post-Adoption? It works differently in different local authorities but I wonder if pushing for him to be opened to frontline safeguarding teams on Child In Need or Child Protection may also help you get heard, as he is clearly at ongoing risk himself.

Thanks everyone for your replies. We are certainly pushing for a residential school but have been told that it's unlikely, presumably because it's so expensive. He will be admitted to an SEMH school and we are looking round those at the moment. However, no one ever seems to be able to say what happens when DS refuses to attend, they think that once he's on the right school he will be fine. He is not likely to ever set foot across the threshold.

He was calmer yesterday and we talked a bit about the car incident. He still maintains that it was OK because no one was hurt, the damage doesn't matter because we're rich (we are quite well off but never talk about money in front of him) and if he gets a driving ban it won't matter because he will drive anyway.

He is now planning to get hold of fireworks for Halloween night, and will be out all night scaring people and probably lighting fires. There will be nothing we can do to stop him. If we take his phone he goes out anyway. If we lock the doors he kicks them down or picks the locks. If we take his money he smashes out things. We have no control over him and no one is listening - except all of you, thank you so much.

I am sorry no one is listening to you. Do you know what is behind it all, OP, have you seen it building over the years, was there a time when he stopped listening, or has he never listened to you?

Do you know how he really feels about things and what he wants for himself long term?

He's never been the easiest child and always pushed every boundary that was set. Gradually he has become more sneaky - it started with taking our devices when he had broken his, taking small amounts of money, running up bills on the Xbox, now it's card theft, attempting to defraud people on Facebook selling sites, asking his gf for nudes and sharing them, carrying a knife, joyriding. He doesn't want anything for the future, I used to think he just thought he would kill himself but now i think he sees himself as a criminal who will just steal and scam what he needs.

No amount of talking or showing him that this is a terrible idea sinks in. I know he learned not to trust adults from a very early age so he doesn't really trust us, and also doesn't trust teachers, social workers, police officers, therapists or anyone else.

OP you will probably know that there are teens who behave like this who change completely as they mature. And those who don't. If he got specialist help it may well be that they could help him feel worth, in himself, in others and set him off in a different direction.

From what you say I am surprised they aren't thinking of residential for him, to safeguard his younger sister.

Presumably his gf finished with him, did that have any effect him?

He was diagnosed with conduct disorder, did they also talk about antisocial personality disorder?

You don't have to answer any questions, obviously. Only do so if you want to.

I have no advice but can entirely sympathize. My situation was slightly different in that the children were younger. I found that there is no support available and that the social workers will come out with "that's normal" for everything. We ended up with a huge court case but eventually SS were forced to do the right thing. He went back to a long term foster placement and is far happier. Adoption was just not right for him as there was too much pressure, in his eyes, for it to succeed. We found SS to be absolutely useless throughout this time. I would suggest you speak to a solicitor who can advise you on the legalities but in the meantime keep yourselves safe. 💐