Hello
if a parent has autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and Dyscalculia but is also high intelligent, under the equality act, children’s services are to assess parents like this under a specific framework and that parenting assessments must be inline with the disabilities that the parent has or else they won’t be able to provide a true holistic representation of this parent, I have understood should be the case?
I had began to become unwell with neurological and physical symptoms that made it difficult for me to get my child to school. A care assessment decided I needed X hours of support. No support was put in place and the reason was that there was a gap in service provisions. Present day, my neurological and physical symptoms spontaneously disappeared and the diagnosis now is that domestic abuse caused my body to manifest neurological and physical disabilities that fell under a functional disorder. I’m completely recovered as it stands.
in my case, all reasonable adjustments I had requested weren’t made. I requested that inline with the guidelines, to have reports given to me ahead of time so I can process fully before meetings. I had requested that interim meetings should be planned ahead of time and the agenda given in advance alongside any emotive questions or discussions that were going to be had so I could process in good time and be calm and able to think clearly and participate in an equal level.
Each time this didn’t happen. Each time the meetings were chaotic, I became dysregulated, cried, got upset; angry & frustrated and didn’t understand the scope of why things couldn’t happen or wouldn’t happen and so on. I used an analogy of the sw inviting me to a 3D cinema show and not giving me a pair of glasses. Still, nothing changed.
The social workers didn’t know how to work with me, consistently misconstrued normal attributes of my neuro divergence as a negative and provided no specialist assessments to gauge what my capacity to parent is, how I approach parenting and how I manage the executive functioning element of my life. Instead, they relied upon non professionals who hate me, my ex partners etc. they dismissed at one point, the validity of my diagnosis despite having an NHS diagnosis in full.
This meant that when I had a specialist psych assessment (outsourced and only specialist assessment I had) the questions out to the psych were if I had borderline personality disorder or if I was factitious induced illness (munchausens) and nothing to do with capacity to parent.
Because the social workers didn’t have the skills to assess me where I’m at, so making sure the time spent was longer for my communication style, understanding how trauma responses can erupt from questions etc, at one point my friend said that closed questions aren’t suited to me, and the response was ‘they have to be?’
as a result, the social worker deemed me incapable and the only remedy was ‘substituted parenting’ which is where someone parents on your behalf. I was told it was unfortunate the hand of cards nature dealt me at my birth.
I do have an adult sw who spoke once, for 10 mins to the children’s sw. She said I didn’t need support long term, it was more a confidence thing having experienced domestic abuse.
I had 6 hours of support and it was being reduced when I asked for it to be. It could also be increased too if I asked. The psych assessment also said I didn’t need support long term, along the same lines. The sw said that because the psych assessment didnt address capacity to parent that the report should be given no weight
The sw cherry picked and misrepresented random paragraphs from my NHS assessment and of course didn’t write down the penultimate paragraph that ‘birdofpain is a phenomenal woman who will make an excellent role model for their child’.
I found out that there is a specific assessment called a PAMS which is used to identify if there is, risks in the parents capacity and then solutions or support. I didn’t have this assessment.
i asked the sw why I did not have this assessment to be told that I wasn’t learning disabled. Dyspraxia and dyscalculia count as learning disabilities.
My parent assessment was a couple of short visits, a general chat vibe, and me answering a couple of the questions via WhatsApp. No observations of me with my child. The report was completed before I had answered the full scope of questions. When I complained that this wasn’t fair; how has this been finished already? I was told they’d taken it from prior reports.
issue is that the prior reports had been agreed by management after I raised a complaint re the inaccuracies within the report; to be completely fact checked and amended. This didn’t happen therefore the sw knew that the info taken from the existing previous reports weren’t correct but relied upon them anyway.
The fathers had the ‘proper’ assessment. The children’s guardian didn’t meet me to hear ‘my side’ nor did he assess me in person or observe me with my child. Yet he stated that I wasn’t capable of a basic parenting task. In short, the actual truth of my spectrum of skills, who I am, what if any support immediate and short term was needed, the expert reports and the clinicians involved in my care appointments which are every 6 months or a year, weren’t involved
. I don’t understand how substituted parenting can then be the outcome with my child now not in my care. I think that the local authority have broken the disability and equality act. If this is true, can I take action? I get the impression that the disability act isn’t worth the paper it is written in but any outside opinions would be very much appreciated. Given my experience with professionals, and how awful it’s been and how nothing that you expect would happen did; I struggle to believe that the law will be followed or that it even is in reality.
*** the LA won’t accept any complaints on any of the failures within the entire time. This is only one element of my experience. I have been to MP and LA won’t speak to them either.