What happens when everyone needs ‘support’ and no one is left to give it?

[HereBeFuckery]

Fair warning: I may well be BU.

The last five threads I have opened have contained variations on the phrase ‘I need support to/with/for’ or ‘there isn’t enough support for parents/families etc’

I genuinely feel that there is an epidemic of ‘needing support’. If everyone needs support, who is going to be left to actually give that support? It can’t be endless! If every child needs personalised support in school, and every adult needs support in the workplace, we are, surely, just marking time until everything implodes. Can no one just cope any more?

@MustWeDoThis I think the OP is simply making the point that “someone” has to provide support and as you rightly say about the NHS, many services are already over-stretched.

I'm so so sorry @LadyMacbethWasFierce to hear about your daughter. That's awful and I'm not surprised you're in shock. I completely agree we are all fluid and mostly people are on the giving side but we do have times in life we need support back.
I cared for my mum with Alzheimer's and I still worked, cared for my child and husband, burnt out and then in deep shock and pain when she died. There's not even barely a phone call I could get for doctors, or any kind of local grief support. It's mostly online I get support, my husband and my friends. Everything feels isolated and I just feel broken and crawling through to keep our life afloat.
I just wanted to say I see you, and I understand completely.

Surely Robert is in the wrong job if it involves "doing presentations" and he can't cope with them???? If he likes the admin then that's the job for him. I hate driving, I don't do a job that involves driving and certainly wouldn't expect my employer to "support" me with this!

Robert took the job before his wife died, triggering his anxiety.
The presentation element is a newly introduced part of his role but permissable under "Any other duties conversent with the post"
It is a niche role and Robert is an expert in other aspects. The presentations are less than 10% of his role.
I'm sure there's others, but that's off the top of my head.

Absolute rubbish, and if you've ever been a parent attempting to navigate SEN support in education you'd realise how ill informed your comments are.

You also don't need a diagnosis for DLA, because it's needs-based and you provide evidence of need, not diagnosis. Nobody is sitting on a 5 year waiting list, filling in multiple forms and communicating almost daily with various agencies for an assessment they don't need for the sake of a few hundred quid a month.

Op, not everyone is 'taking' and giving nothing back. For example, a huge number of parents with ND children end up dedicating their lives to supporting others, precisely because they know how hard it is. Dd's teacher last year is a prime example.... 2 nd dc herself, joined the teaching profession because she saw the gaps. Her family worker in Reception was the same. And I myself am now volunteering with a local social enterprise that specialises in providing both practical support and advice to nd people, parents and schools via training and mentoring. Nd people and their families often end up dedicating their lives to supporting others. So, how does that fit into your binary view?

I haven’t read the full thread and don’t want to take this off in a different direction, but I’m a SENDCO at a primary school and this sounds lovely, would be best practice and is something I (and I presume other schools) have been trying to implement for some time.

The reality is that we have a huge increase in children with either very high needs, and/or behaviour that challenges/dysregulation.

To keep these children (and their peers) safe, we have to provide full time 1:1 support. In my 12 form entry school, we have 9 or 10 of those children. So that’s 10 full time TAs. Which means that there is very little other support to go round.

This is also what I see in my daughter's school.

I think the push to keep all children in the same schools is utter madness. There need to be more schools specifically for those with severe additional needs. Either that or a lot more funding so schools can double the number of TAs so they can meet all needs from severe to mild and also the children without additional needs can learn without disruption.

The current situation benefits no-one.

In my 12 form entry school

I have never encountered a 12-form entry primary school-that is absolutely enormous! How many in total on your roll?! Our biggest local primary is a 5-form entry and that is huge!

@5128gap The scenario you describe makes complete sense to me in that Robert is basically well-suited to his role but needs support with one minor aspect (less than 10% of the role) after a bereavement.

What the OP is describing is Robert applying for a job that he’s really not well-suited to. From the start, he struggles with aspects of the role that were defined in the original job description (speaking on the phone, giving presentations, etc). This results in Emma having to take on those tasks.

We all have strengths and weakness and it’s logical to apply for roles that play to our strengths. As I said upthread, I know that I wouldn’t perform well in sales or high-stress environments, whereas some people thrive on the adrenaline or like my DH, have laid-back personalities and cope well under pressure.

Yes. If you know you are too anxious to drive, as per previous example, it would obviously be remiss to apply for a job that said 'driver essential' and then expect an adjustment to be made for you.
However, some people have long term conditions that would require a level of support or adjustment whatever job they tried to do. These people may have other very valuable contributions to make, and a work environment that utilises people's skills while adjusting for their support needs via a team with different abilities can be very productive, and keep people in jobs.
I mean, people complain constantly about the welfare bill and people not working and 'draining the system', and we can't have it all ways, can we?

Thank you to all for your kind words on my huge loss.

@5128gap You're right, it’s far better to be able to work with adjustments than be forced out of the labor market.

I think the issue is how employers handle adjustments. It’s one thing if the employer assigns some of Emma’s responsibilities to others so she has time to prepare all of the department’s presentations; it’s another if she’s just told to do them all in addition to her current responsibilities.

Emma may feel that her role has changed so significantly that she decides to leave!

There's discomfort you can push past and pain that gets worse and worse.
We all do fee discomfort in a variety of different ways. And what is discomfort to one person may not impact someone else at all.
I always feel anxious and a little unsure with each new group I work with. This is normal and once I've done it I feel a sense of achievement. I know my uncomfortable feeling will ease.
My child also does an activity where she feels uncomfortable but they still do the activity..they enjoy aspects and feel achievement so work through discomfort is possible.

With school building every aspect is so uncomfortable it causes them pain. The pain starts long before school and long after. Every aspect is uncomfortable with no respite and no enjoyment or achievement. The sounds, the lights, the building, the uniform, the work, the teachers, the unpredictable nature of school.

Life is about balance and there has to be some good mixed with the bad uncomfortable difficult stuff.

@Leftrightmiddle school sounds like an awful experience in that case. I'm not about sending a child that is having a horrific time in that environment back in there over and over. Schools are often not conducive to a relaxed, healthy. nervous system.
I agree with your distinction between one off events and forcing a child into an environment that I causing grave distress, day in and day out.

The schools and wellbeing bill that is in the pipeline will make this even harder for children who need to be out of that environment.

The schools and wellbeing bill that is in the pipeline will make this even harder for children who need to be out of that environment

Agree. It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. In every safeguarding failure there's been from kids out of school there have been multiple occasions where - if social services had done their job properly - the child could have been safeguarded .

The fact is a normal secondary school environment is just too stressful for some children and there is often very bad behaviour, such as bullying, that makes it actively harmful to be sending that child in every day. Often there is a limit to what a school can do to address this, especially if it's out of school too and given their funding constraints. Some parents take their children out of school to safeguard them which is completely unrecognised. The assumption that the school environment itself is the best place for all children, especially in the current climate of underfunding, is bonkers.

If the employer were any good, they would take some tasks off Emma so she has time to do the presentations.

But realistically, what would happen is that the presentations done by Robert go badly (for a number of reasons) - or don’t go at all - making the senior person or the organisation look bad. The senior person then calls Emma into his or her office and says “We need to support Robert more. He isn’t coping with the presentations” while looking at her expectantly.

If Emma is fairly assertive or has just about had enough of saving the day, she will ask what tasks will be taken off her to make that possible. But if she is young, new or wants to make a good impression on an important person, she’ll agree. And work late and through lunch. Then the senior person will be really surprised when Emma leaves.

Sadly you’re probably right @CruCru.

Yes, all very well, but read my post up thread. I had an employer who wouldn't even get me a bigger screen despite saying repeatedly 'we can support you with that'. It would have cost them £100 and taken a minute to plug in. I wouldn't have taken anyone's extra time or effort, that's it, and they couldn't even be bothered to do that.

I think in my example the employer only stepped in to say that this person needs support when he made the employer look bad. And then the employer got another colleague to do the actual support - while the employer looks good for offering support, it is the more junior person who is actually providing it.

In your case, the employer said they can give support - because it looks good to say it - but never did anything. Because you were using the bad screen and (uncomfortably) using the code. Although you were unhappy, the work was still getting done. And then your employer was surprised when you left.

The employer only actually provides support when the work stops happening or is done so badly that it’s causing a problem.

I think there’s also the problem of expecting ‘support services’ to take 100% failsafe responsibility for every person they come into contact with.

I saw this morning an article where a mum of a boy who got caught up in drugs and gangs who was murdered age 15, is trying to ‘hold social services to account’ for failing to stop the murder. Really; what could they have done? His own mother couldn’t stop him running riot and mixing with drug dealers. I can’t think of anything social services could’ve done while he was in her care that would’ve made a difference.

And just now somebody has shared a petition online calling for supported accommodation to have responsibility for their residents after a relative sadly passed away while living in it. Again, her own family were unable to stop whatever took place (details are scant).

It’s all just too much.

One of the reasons why Brexit is such a disaster. Before Brexit a lot of immigrants were from cultures similar to the UK, and many of them were young people who came here on their own and only stayed for a few years. What we have now is a far more difficult immigration situation which is building problems for the future. And yet people voted for Brexit because of immigration...

The petition is to ask that supported living is inspected by the quality care council, in the way nursing homes are.

Someone was paying for that person to be in supported living. There were staff whose job it was to provide support and noone checked on the person for 18 hours.

Personally, as a tax payer, I would like assurance that things i pay for meet basic standards so I can ensure value for money. I dont want to pay for support staff who dont even check in on thier charges. Its like ofsted. I pay for schools so I want someone to go check whether they are doing what they should.

Its never going to be 100% failsafe but if tax payers money is used to fund something, we should get an opportunity to hold them accountable for delivering the service we paid for.

Kids (and adults) for the most part gain confidence through empowerment, finding out they can manage, or that even when things don't go as expected, it is ok.

Being able to manage for themselves, whether it is making a simple meal, entertaining themselves at home for a few hours alone, figuring out how to get home on public transport when they have got themselves in the wrong place, or arranging extra help from a teacher when they are struggling with something at school.

We seem to have removes more and more of these capabilities from kids, opportunities to practice these things, the need to rely on themselves. We don't let them get into a situation where they might get n the wrong bus, and if they do, we fix it when they call us on their cell phone. We arrange extra help at school. They aren't allowed to stay home alone.

It shouldn't be a shock that they become passive and afraid.

I always think similar when people say on here to ‘be kind’; who will be kind to the kind people? Certainly not the piss taking chancers that they’re being encouraged to ‘be kind’ to!

Also it depends on ones definition of kind. There are a lot of things that people see as kind that I worry are setting someone up for a much harder fall later down the road.

Kindness seems more important than the truth