can SS or CAHMS in effect force a parent to resign...

[needavice888]

...in order to provide 24/7 suicide watch over the child which has been let down over and over by the services for months in end despite asking/crying for help over and over again.. The only solution is now to force the parent to provide 24/7 suicide watch without providing additional therapy or help ans without any regard for the parent's need to work and provide and the impact it has on siblings. Parent has no support network. What happens if parent is ignoring the safety plan and goes to work (not for a jolly but to simply earn a living and to provide for the children).

Sending hugs.

I can't see if you have already applied for dla but I would get that going. I dont know enough about universal credit but it can't help to start looking at how to apply should you be forced out of work. Plus speaking about any home working duties you coukd have. It might be part time but still some income

Obviously I hope that you get medical care and this isn't necessary.

I do not know if it would work now as processes have changed but when DH was threatening to harm himself I dialled 999 and the Police/ambulance arrived. He was as a result sectioned. This was dramatic and drastic, but it gave hime time to recover over the coming weeks and also meant that there were clear actions and support in place. It was hard/harsh but necessary. Consider if this is the right thing to do.

I think the acronyms on this thread are the issue here, rather than Social Services bashing, plus people not understanding that CAHMS means Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, which is run by the NHS.
This is jnot a dig at the OP at all, ust a personal bugbear of mine, as acronyms which mean different things in education, health care and social services are the bane of my life at work.

I was in your position OP and my way of dealing with it after exhausting every avenue is you can't prevent somebody from taking their own life if they are so determined to do so.
And at some point they may try or they may never try.

I don't think that's the issue. I think some people take every opportunity to bash social services and call us useless, ineffective, culpable etc without understanding how the system works and that child mental health is not the responsibility of social services. Believe me we've argued until we are blue in the face with CAMHS about suicidal children, huge delays for ASC assessments and the need for support but social services have zero control over what CAMHS do or don't do. I will always take the opportunity on threads like this to correct people and stick up for my profession.

can you not contact the urgent care team and have them committed?

OP I think it sounds like you are actually in the ‘in between’ part now - where either your being asked by crisis services to ‘suicide watch’ will help and things will slowly start to settle and your child and you will then be able to access therapy/ tier 3 CAMHS support OR you will find that you do not feel able to manage any longer and you go to A&E (as I assume you have done already given the circumstances you describe). At this point following a MH assessment with the on call crisis team a decision will be made about whether your child can come home or a residential care (SS) or MH inpatient (NHS) stay would be considered. They might determine that if your child comes home social care would be requested to provide carer support. This isn’t on one service, it is part of multiagency decision making processes. A psychiatrist needs to ultimately tick off an (MH) inpatient admission but really the decision making is done by a team of people which draw on input from social care, health and education.

If your child is not invited for a short stay on a MH facility that is because it is the last resort and services will always try to avoid it. Firstly, there are very few places to go but secondly they are there to keep people safe, not to make them better (although they do try to do that, but realistically they are not particularly therapeutic places). The view in health, and literature, and I think a view that would be shared more widely is that a child is better off at home with the right support. However, MH services do not have people that just go to sit in houses and spend time there. A community approach (family) is best, but this breaks down where there is no family available to help. That is where social care step in to provide the right support needed to try and keep someone at home and this enables the MH teams to do their work.

More residential placements have been used in my experience with neurodiverse/ learning disability where the environment at home is just not conducive to what the young person needs, even with carer support. That would involve legal proceedings. I have seen people take their child to A&E and refuse to go home again. In these cases social care have stepped in to try to find a residential placement.

been to a&e a couple of weeks ago. Been told there is nothing they can do and promised to pass us on to Camhs but nothing happened on the back of it.

@needavice888

How old is the child concerned, OP?

Has he or she been able to talk to you about why he/she is feeling this way?

14. We know they don't feel well but not sharing why. At a complete loss.

I think in this case that you need to keep going back though. This is the route to progressing things. Things change quickly in MH- at that time they made a decision that no further action was needed, but they might decide otherwise now. Repeated A&E visits equal enhanced support where I am. If you feel that things are unmanageable now they need to be re-assessed (and maybe you might need to do this more than once).

If you go back and they assess and decide that the MH of your child does not require further more intensive support, that is fine. But at that point you can say that in fact the issue then is that you yourself no longer feel able to manage this and contain it in the home. And be very clear about this. That will be where you will have further social care assessment and the additional support would need to be put in place through them.

@needavice888

Do you have a boy or a girl and in very roughly which part of the country?

What is his/her current educational situation?

Am asking in case someone can suggest something particularly appropriate for you.

That is a good suggestion but the reality is there is practically zero financial support (or any other type of support) available for carers, which is in effect what the OP is. It doesn't matter what the cause of the care stems from. There's DLA and, if you're lucky, being referred to a food bank (where, if you're even luckier, you'll be able to visit more than once). That's it. Depending on where you live, DLA plus UC won't even be enough to pay the monthly mortgage, let alone any bills or other costs.

I think your only option is to keep going to work, OP. It's a horrific situation for you and your entire family and there are no good options, but I think I would choose work. As you say, you have other children to support and you can't afford for the entire family to be homeless and bankrupt. I'm sorry you're going through all this. I hope you DC gets the help they need soon.

Edited to say this was in response to a poster suggesting OP look for financial support.

Good shout about DLA. You will get a successful claim for that but it does take months to process (will be back paid though)

Should be eligible for full award with the level of support needed.

This is helpful but indicates how the system is not joined up. No money for clinical MH resources but it's OK to spend it on benefits instead.

My profound recollection of CAMHS is of his the service was designed to provide the minimum levels of care possible against a background of parent blaming. An intervention was offered for dd, group therapy in the middle of the school day, taking her away from learning which she loved and one of her triggers was what she perceived as sub-optimal performance (She got 3 A* A'Levels, dropping 4 UMS points once diagnosed and medicated). When I explained this would make things worse, a letter was sent to my GP saying the family had refused an intervention so they closed the case. She was at the time actively cutting, overdosing and withholding food.

I shall never forget our first interaction with CAMHS. A 9.30 appointment was made, we arrived at 9.15 and the premises were locked. We saw the staff drizzle in between 9.20 and 9.30 for a service that publishes opening hours of 9 to 5 which are restrictive enough to start with. The staff then perpetually whine that they are under resourced and it's the government's fault. Much of it relates to mismanagement.

The nurse allocated to my daughter advised she couldn't possibly have ADHD because 17 was too old for a diagnosis (2015). The incompetence is breathtaking, let alone the inability to calculate the personal and economic costs of not providing care that can help young people recover. My overwhelming impression was that CAMHS regarded all parents as potentially poor and applied the lowest common denominator in relation to expectations.

My local Trust was reviewed in 2009, 2014 and 2018 and it cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. Each time the conclusion was not fit for purpose. Any parent trying to access services knew that. It isn't a question of more staff, it's about more flexible delivery and competency.

This must be replicated across the country. It is an utter disgrace and Ministers must awaken to the stark realities and u derstand it isn't just about money.

I’m sorry you and your child are going through this.
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if social do expect this… where I live if you have a child with disabilities requiring constant care, you are pretty much expected to not work and claim carers’ allowance and give up your life… even if you get no sleep they expect you to soldier on.
Resources available for disabled children or children with mental illness are just awful and the strain they put upon the parents means you end up unwell yourself.

I’d like to think so as my 24 year old dd is one of them!! Do you think they do this job for shits and giggles? She definitely doesn’t and k worry every day about her and what she deals with

@RosesAndHellebores that's my recollection of CAMHS too. Not fit for purpose. Literally in our case as our local camhs was deemed awful on all accounts when inspected.
It's not about funding either, the popular excuse.
It's poor staff, poor management and a toxic work culture.

I get that they are overstretched but, from the users' point of view, the service they offer is useless.

I really don't think CAMHS is fit for purpose - i don't even understand the point of them tbh. I mentioned my ds who walked out in front of a lorry earlier in the thread.

That was 15 years back now.

More recently (last year) my dd took an overdose. She was seen by a camhs nurse in a&e. She was then offered one appt to see the same nurse at the clinic.

She was given a worksheet with a 'wheel of feelings' to help her identify how she was feeling.

The next appt offered was 2 weeks later. Cancelled with 1 hr notice by nurse.

Next appt dd had deteriorated and did not talk to camhs nurse except in monosyllables.

I wrote email to camhs nurse telling her about my son and his diagnosis of prodromal schizophrenia. Was very worried dd was going same as she appeared detatched and catatonic at home.

No reply.

I later find camhs nurse has gone off long term sick.

I speak to camhs and they tell me they are going to discharge dd as she has not attempted suicide again and they cannot keep anyone in the service on the basis that they 'might' attempt suicide in the future.

I point out dd is not at all well and mention my worries re schizophrenia and autism. I also wonder if it could be severe depression.

They offer anti depressants there and then (over the phone!) I refuse, saying dd has not got a diagnosis yet and can she have a psychiatrist to see what the diagnosis actually is first.

They offer to refer her for fast track autism assessment.

2 weeks later, dd gets letter through post to say she is discharged. I phone them but now they can't speak to me as it is confidential and we can go back to camhs via gp.

I know 100% that dd did not ask to be discharged. I know teens can be sneaky but dd wanted the autism assessment and she just would not have done that.

This, i think, is a pretty typical experience.

@Anisty absolutely. The disingenuousness was astounding. It's all about confidentiality when they are over 16. A confidentiality that for them blocks the need to provide services.

I hope your young people are somehow coping. I retire next year. Although dd is now 26 and doing fine, I may take up the cudgels when I retire.

DD graduated and now teaches, has a steady boyfriend and is well. But only because we had the money to fund her care privately via an adolescent specialist psychiatrist. It breaks my heart that so many young people remain in a spiral of worsening MH because no care is provided.

I think, like anything, CAHMs can differ widely across the country.

Once in the system, my child (two suicide attempts) had excellent support- I can't fault it tbh. His first 'person' was absolutely amazing. Gained my son's trust and was brilliant for him. Everyone should have this type of person! I had super low expectations going in as I was absolutely exhausted.

I also had to be with them on crisis watch. It's exhausting. I feel for you. getting into the CAHMs system was hellish. It took my GP surgery 100 days to get the referral out their door (never assume anything has happened. Check every step...)

Try- school, GP, MP, A&E. Try CAHMs directly. Confirm they have received the referral. Ask which list/ team they will be in /on. Find out as much as you can how it works- so you can navigate. Get the number of the crisis team. Ask other parents in your area for contacts inside SS, CAHMs etc and call them. Follow up. Ask when you should call back. And then call back at that time and speak again.

Enlist other friends / parents to help if needed (my nephew sat with my child for eg).

It's a very long road. Look after your own mental health too.

Why are you referring to 'social' when it's CAMHS and mental health services who have a responsibility to provide care to this child?

The title of the thread refers to SS. I simply mistyped and forget the word services. Why are you so rude?

Did I read you have other children?

If so, this is a potential safeguarding and social care issue. Your other children are being exposed on a daily basis to serious mental health needs and behaviours arising from this. If you as their parent were presenting in this way, they would likely be involved under the category of ‘emotional harm’. I appreciate this would also be because you are their sole caregiver, but the ‘harm’ is essentially the same.

If you leave work, you will encounter serious financial difficulty which would impact on you all.

If/when you are managing your child’s mental health needs - eg attending hospital with them - you will not be able to tend to your other children. You can’t split yourself in two.

How about speaking to your other children’s school PSA about what they are being exposed to, through no fault of your own? They may refer to social care, and the whole family approach may mean other support is made available to you all?

Yes @RosesAndHellebores - fortunately Ds never developed schizophrenia. We had an awful time with him as a teen. He met an online partner down South and left home at 18. Tbh, it was quite a relief!! Now, 15 yrs on settled with new partner, baby, FT employment. Think he is likely autistic but not diagnosed. He is doing well.

We paid for some private sessions from the DLA he was awarded at the time. He made a full physical recovery from his injuries, thanks to skillful surgeons who saved his legs. He can walk, only a slight limp remains. So lucky. He doesn't recall what he was thinking then.

DD less serious. Hers was a cry for help due to school stress (social aspect) Autistic burnout i now think. Currently going through private autism asst. I don't think she is schizophrenic. Autistic shut down i think. She left school, so much happier at college now.

@lateatwork - truly amazed to hear your positive report of CAMHS! Great to hear they do serve some function.