I’m the legal guardian of my nephew due to the death of my brother due to suicide and the mental illness of his mother.
He is 4 years old and been through a lot of trauma (abandonment, bereavement, neglect , possibly more we don’t know), for the last two years he’s been in a fairly stable situation with me. We have contact with a social worker and I follow their re are reviews etc.
He is behind with communication, he doesn’t communicate or play with other children, and is violently aggressive toward me and other children, it’s almost constant, and he has some other symptoms that could be autism, but maybe also they are ptsd too depending on how you look at it.
I am concerned about possible ptsd or autism, his father was on the spectrum and they have some similar behaviours from childhood, my brother wasn’t diagnosed until adulthood and I think this is largely why he did not cope with life very well . When I’ve spoken to the social worker she said before he’s speaking properly there’s no way to test for autism, not much we can do. But he is speaking a bit but maybe he’ll never speak properly if where not given specific support in that regard.
She doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong, but she isn’t a specialist in ptsd or autism either.
...all they’ve offered me is parenting lessons, which will help, but they haven’t offered or suggested anything else to help my child , no counselling or assessments.. are there any other avenues I can go down to make sure he gets any help he needs?