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?

Play therapy was helpful for my daughter's emotional regulation, and I think if her brother was younger I would have also sent him to help him understand her. He does struggle with her meltdowns 😞 but at 14 he has declined any therapy of his own and I respect that. I do make sure he has space and opportunities to get away.

I have no experience of social services but I do accesa webinars and drop ins from the local parent carers group. I haven't had a carers assessment yet but it's on my to do list.

my experience of being on the receiving end of awful treatment by SS just because I asked for help is not valid and just an 'awful view'. I think you need to develop some critical thinking of the services you work with.

They arent likely to be able to provide any support for this scenario, so I wouldn't go down that route.

I have two children with EHCPs, one of whom is in a specialist provision and extremely complex needs. Her school are struggling to cope with her and it is just me at home. We have no support. She is unable to access short break provision but we dont meet the threshold for direct payments for support for respite from CHAD.

We do now have a child in need assessment happening, originally was a carers assessment but school escalated safeguarding concerns Thursday after a massive issue after school where we were in the school car park until 5.30 with an extremely violent meltdown, me and 5 members of school staff.

The reality is there isnt funding or support available for everyone who really should have it. In our area they will stick you on a parenting course and consider it job done.

And this social worker doing the assessment already clearly has zero understanding of SEN and complex additional needs.

It is not true that children’s services can’t provide support in circumstances like OP’s situation. They can. It is likely that OP would have to fight for it, but it is possible to secure support in such situations.

You can self refer to early help they will signpost you to support

To anybody still reading this thread, I can assure you that the last thing social services will do is remove a child from a parent or family.

There seems to be a pervasive idea that social workers drive round collecting children at the drop of a hat.

The very opposite is true.

I worked as a community nurse within a social work team.

All that will be offered in a case like this is help and information.

I don't think this is the tenor of this thread (removal). It's much more likely that this self referral with trigger an investigation from a safeguarding point of view rather than from a child/family in need of support due to SEN review. When you are at the receiving end, these are t p different things. In most cases, SS will not identify a safeguarding issue and drop the family like a hot potato. But to get tho this point, OP would have to subject herself to a very intrusive investigation where she will be treated like a potential safeguarding risk (until proven otherwise) and the result will be a 'cased closed, no action needed'. It will be a completely pointless and hugely stressful exercise without any positive outcome. Why bother??? just why?

The only thing you'd need to worry about is wasting your time and getting no support. They're not out there trying to remove children from good homes, they don't have time. They're too busy with children who are actually at risk.
Early help would be the best place to go for support.

I agree with this, I have Sen children and my children’s school asked if I would like a referral to early help as my child has ebsa and I was struggling to get him to school in the mornings as well as having other children to look after and being a single parent, I agreed after initially declining but they assured me it was to help, they had no safeguarding concerns and it was purely for support, well when they contacted me it said it was MASH and a safeguarding referral! I was completely shocked especially as the school had made it clear to me they had no concerns over my parenting. So I completely regretted agreeing to it and didn’t need my life made harder.

Yes but I don't think people understand that Social Work is only for the most severely disabled children and even then it's a long road before you get to real support. I wonder if people who think that way assume that most parents of severely disabled children simply don't want help and that explains why they are alone and struggling ? Very frustrating. If the OP is lucky she will get some advice on where is more appropriate to look for support.

I am not saying there’s not been failures but it’s simply not true that children can be removed for asking for help for challenging behaviour. No one ever mentions the good that social work do only the bad experiences

But it’s simply not true that children get removed as easily as people are suggesting.

Have a chat with her paediatrician regarding this- they can give her more medication to help with this time- my daughter was like this but her dose increased and it’s stopped- not all the time we have the odd one but nothing like it used to be

I don't think people understand that Social Work is only for the most severely disabled children

This is what social care what like parents to believe, but it is not true. Yes, it is likely OP would have to fight for it, but that and other people also having to fight for provision shouldn’t put her off.

What sort of support do you wish, what would you like social services to do, if you can articulate that, then people can point you in the right direction,

but there is not much support available. It will focus more on helping you develop the tools to support her,

Hundreds of referrals and phone calls come in monthy from parents, social work do not have the means to investigate and wouldn’t take that stance for a parent seeking support with behavioural issues. A lot of social workers I know have their own issues with their children with adhd/asd and have pushed for support. It’s simply not true that if a parent phones for support a investigation takes place. There maybe time whereby the initial contact and information gathering highlights a safeguarding concern but that’s not the approach to every referral. There’s obviously people who have had bad experiences like the nhs but there is a lot of good work that happens

Search for Early Help on your council’s website.

Unless her child is severely disabled though what will the fighting achieve ? Realistically using parent support groups that may already exist in her area is a better option- than campaigning to get an already over stretched SW department to widen their remit in a climate where services are diminishing and failing. My ds1 is severely disabled and almost all the services he used when he was a child have closed.

Fighting for support can result in support because, as I said, despite it being what LAs would like parents to believe, support is not limited to only those with severely disabled DC.

you will 100% regret it

Support may be available from other agencies - parent self help groups etc - although to be fair, social work do not provide services directly to anyone now, it is all done through personal budgets and then hunting down those ever elusive services in the 'third sector' . Even 20 years ago when ds1 was a child, there were no direct services run by SW themselves, it was referral to agencies and then paying by a SW budget. It's true SW can signpost to more appropriate services in many cases so that kind of help could happen

It doesn’t have to be either or. OP can seek support from other services as well as children’s services.

Children’s services can provide support directly. They can also, as you say, provide a personal budget that OP wouldn’t get from places like parent self help groups you mention. And even if there is a PB, some PBs have provision directly commissioned by the LA rather than by giving parents DPs or having payments managed by a third party.

I ca t see them offering any help whatsoever op, sorry. X

There is no direct support for disabled children in my area, only Self Directed Support and Third Sector agencies. I know many families with severely disabled children who have been told they don't meet the criteria for an SDS budget. I've had a good experience of Social Work over the years, the majority are trying their best to help families in very very difficult times but are constrained by budgets and political priorities imposed on them. I always encourage families to keep on at SW even if they have been turned down many times but you do need evidence of significant and complex disability - and ideally to get other people, school, CAHMS GP to also stress how urgent the situation is