DD is 8 and has autism. She struggles a lot with sleep, but because of where we used to live, the community paediatrician wasn’t allowed to prescribe any new children melatonin (funding issues) so gave us a website where we could buy it from legally, so that’s what we’ve been doing the last few years. I have this all documented - that it was recommended to us, etc, so it’s all above board.
We then moved to a different area, for different reasons, and was put under CAMHS a couple of years ago. They have been absolutely useless - DD is now having different sleeping issues (waking up multiple times in the night) and it’s honestly destroying the entire household, as well as getting DD in a state every night and her regularly missing school because of being up every night (she attends an SEN school and they are very understanding about this). Her previous community paediatrician said there was several medications that we could try for this but CAMHS just keep fobbing us off and saying to give sleep hygiene another go for another few months - this has happened several times now and we haven’t had a full night sleep since the beginning of the year. They were so quick to put DD on an anti-psychotic for her behaviour but are literally so reluctant to give her anything to help her sleep when it’s having such a devastating impact on everyday life.
We have tried every sleep hygiene tactic in the book and I’ve quite frankly had it, so I’ve found a private autism clinic that is run by several private paediatricians who specialise in it, and they can provide the medication that DD needs. However, AIBU to put in a complaint about how CAMHS have dealt with this over the last 2 years?
We have also never received any community paediatrician input in our new area, despite being told that it had been transferred over from our old hospital, and I just genuinely feel like DD has been let down so much - I’ve honestly been tempted to move back to our old area just to receive the right help and support for her again!
AIBU?