Social services

[Tinkaton]

We adopted our son ten years ago, he is now ten and a half and ready to go into year 6. We have made a self referral into children’s services in order to ask about a support assessment. He has adhd and autism. It has been a really long road. We have pivoted and parented him how he needs as much as possible, engaged in therapies accessed the asf but we are still just surviving right now. We have also had intervention from early help, but we could really do with some form of occasional respite . He now can’t be looked after over night by grandparents as his behaviours are too risky and difficult to manage. He is a lovely boy, he just has no impulse control. Medication for ADHD seems to be taking ages under both RTC and CYPS. He doesn’t have an EHCP, but the school are finally in agreement that he needs one and are starting the process. He was internally excluded from school before the summer.

I wondered if any other adopters had self referred to child’s services? If yes, what happened.

Self-referring sounds completely reasonable given how much you’re already managing. It sounds like you’ve tried so many avenues already, so hopefully Children’s Services can offer some practical respite and support rather than leaving you to keep firefighting on your own.

You would not qualify for the disabled children's team where I live, sorry. I did ask for an assessment when my daughter was younger - mld, asd, adhd - they turned me down. She did get some services years later as she developed epilepsy. She was taken on a residential weekend break but it was totally unsuitable - the other young people all had multiple and profound disabilities (all with one to one carers, needing hoists, in mobility wheelchairs, non verbal...).

You may have more luck but tbh lots of parents are in a similar situation with very challenging children who cannot be left. The LA may sign post you to clubs.

It depends on behaviours, risk, postcode, your post adoption support social worker. It sounds like medication could make the biggest difference.

Can you get other professionals to help push for medication? My daughter got medication immediately after diagnosis from CAMHS, so I am not familiar with this process.

I would try to avoid sentences like "He is a lovely boy, he just has no impulse control." towards social services. Describe everything that is happening and what that means for you in practice, eg. can he be left alone at all or does he need constant 1:1? Does he put himself or others at risk? Is your marriage at risk? Can you work?

While you are waiting I would keep a log for 2 weeks and write down every day what happened to give social workers an idea of risks, behaviours and frequency.

I would second having other professionals pushing for medication. My area has a mandatory one-year wait between diagnosis and medication, in which parents should undertake the strategies covered in the session parents have to attend. The idea is that those strategies might then be enough without medication. A letter from my son's head teacher to CAMHS explaining clearly why waiting would be detrimental was enough to get a medication appointment within a few weeks of diagnosis.