Would I regret asking social services for support?

[bamboobam]

I have a 9 year old daughter who has adhd and is on the pathway to an autism assessment.
She has medication for her adhd which seems to help at school but when she gets home and it’s worn off she can have up to an hour melt down.
This affects my other child and I would like to seek help but I have heard some pretty scary stories about social services.
Would I regret getting them involved?

I've had enormous help from ss. If you're clear about what you're struggling with, willing to listen etc it can be such a help. Mine were real cheerleaders

Likelihood is high you'll get no actual practical help, but may well find yourself under a spotlight being scrutinised for no benefit in return, which is stressful and a distraction away from helping your kids, rather than helping you make positive change.

Actually there wasn’t a lot more to those threads. As I recall the mother had a child who was very challenging and she was struggling to cope with them. She asked social services for help and they got involved and temporarily removed the NT child to another family member and made things incredibly difficult for the family

this, honestly im sure there are some good ones but most will actually make your life harder and parent blame

This was exactly my experience with my AuDHD child when he was in crisis. Social Services were awful and quite frankly incompetent - they offered no practical help at all and caused an immense amount of stress, worry and heartache, for both the adults and the children in my family. I very much regret allowing them into our lives.

As well as getting some CAMHS support, my suggestion would be to find some help for yourself first and foremost. We learned more from parent groups etc. than we did from any of the pointless leaflets that SS gave us. It's often incredibly lonely dealing with ND kids so feeling like there are others that understand is important.

YES!

What about disability social workers? Where i live its a totally separate team.

@Geneticsbunnyat the LA I work for the disability social workers only work with the most severely disabled children. I have had multiple referrals of children on my own caseload rejected for not being severe enough, including an 11 year old non verbal autistic child who was deemed not disabled enough for supporot because she could hold an iPad....

No. This is what they are there for. There is usually a children with disabilities team or something similar. Whether they can help you or not is a different issue but don’t be afraid to ask them for help.

please do not ask for help from SS. I don't want to scare you but they will start looking into your family through an the safeguarding lense and investigate you and your family. This will involve coming home, checking kids rooms, going into the schools of both children. Every decision around the children will be questioned through the lense of parental competence - it will not be framed as a child of a family in need due to disability. It is extremely stressful and intrusive. And if they cannot find fault, they will close the case and palm you off to CAMHS. I have two disabled children, both autistic, one with severe learning difficulties on top and I am on my own. I was naive enough to ask for help. This is what happened to me. Social services are a vindictive service who are not there to help. They are there to investigate and to, if possible, fob you off in the name of saving money. Stay clear if you can!!!

You can ask but it’s unlikely they will offer much. I’m afraid this is parenting. It can be bloody awful and relentless. Might be better to discuss the timing of meds with your prescriber.

This is outragepus but was similar to my experience. However i fought for a section 17 child in need assessment and we now have a good package of support and a CWD social worker who is fab.

I had to follow council complaints processes take it to stage 2 complaint etc. Councils cannot refuse to support disavled children though they often do. In my case no phsycial needs as such though we do have complex motor and verbal tics, absence seizures but needs are related to autism pda, adhd etc and my child is verbal but still too complex for any schools amd on 2 to 1 on eotas package.

Its not fair families have to battle for help like this.

Op you are entitled to a parent carer assessment, your child is enttled to an assessment of their needs. I would look to see what Short Breaks scheme your LA do and look at young carers support for the sibling.

I hope that girl’s parents knew how to challenge the decision.

I have worked alongside ss for nearly 3 decades. There is nothing they could realistically do to help.

We got support from early help (not SS) when dealing with DDs daily meltdowns, self harming, running away when upset ect.

Through school, they offered us support, resources, for DD and us and other DD.
Its been a long process but we now have our village, CAMHS, OT support, EHCP, Family support worker, at no point was I blamed, made to feel like a bad parent (my biggest fear)
We are still in the middle of our journey, some days are harder then others, but when before we were pretty much left to "cope" we have resources now.
Also thought out all this I've never seen a social worker, but ive excepted every help that's been offered, some better then others.

Your child will not be taken away. What utterly ridiculous answers. Ask your school to refer you to early help. Or make the referral yourself. In all honesty you probably don't meet the criteria, but they may be able to point you towards some help.
Talk to your school. Maybe they can help with the after school meltdowns? Do they do a sensory circuit just before the end of school for example. Or is the chaos of home time too much and could you collect ten minutes earlier whilst it is calmer? Definitely ask for help

@Oakyoaktreethis is absolutely nothing like my experience with social services at all.

I wouldn’t, no

Yup. I wouldn’t trust them with the fleas on a rat

If your daughter is this young then it would be better to get some behavior management therapy for her. Medication is not good for this young child and therapy would also improve her behavior and regulate her thoughts as well. It would be a slow process but definitely worth it and also the mood bursts your daughter faces would also get better.

It’s actually awful some of the views of social workers on here, without which many children would be left in abusive awful homes. I’ve worked with them and the last thing they do is try to put blame on parents if there is none and also it’s extremely difficult to remove children that comes from the courts. Social workers don’t go in and remove kids because of adhd and meltdowns unless there is a significant safeguarding issue. In fact my experience is they’re far too lenient and don’t have the resources to be involved when needed.

op you can phone the duty team and they can signpost you and refer you for a carers assessment. If behaviour is unmanageable there is respite options and also services that come to the house to offer support.

Just because your experiences are what you say they are does not erase other peoples experiences.

Social Work support such as it is, is for the most severely disabled children and their families and the criteria bar to get help is very high. Maybe speak to the doctor who prescribed the medication and find out there is are any family support groups in your area - often other parents are the best source of information on where to go and what to do.

I have always found social workers supportive. We didn't get any actual provision until my son was in his mid teens - ironically he was deemed too high needs for standard respite provision- but we have never had issues with the social workers themselves and we haven't felt blamed.

I think the first thing to do is look at what is going on in the school environment. It sounds more like she masks/bottles everything up at school and then at home it all comes out. Sometimes ADHD medication can also make autistic behaviours more obvious/prevalent because the two aren’t masking each other as much. Does she have an EHCP? Get any therapeutic support?