Badly need help for my son, This is how he is being left, pictures included.

[needhelpbadly]

My son suffers with mental illness, autism, paranoid schizophrenia, ocd, anxiety and he is behind his actual age by around five years, he is 21. He lives in a flat, and has a "support team" coming 6 days per week to make sure he is keeping his flat tidy, paying his bills, cooking, etc, he is paying £300 per month for this service. I have included some pictures of his flat since the support team have been coming in.

We have also discovered they have not been helping him pay his bills and he owes approx £1000 to his energy suppliers, £100's to his internet supplier, etc

We did try to get him into supported living but they put him in a flat instead, we knew he would not cope living independantly and this is the result.

Before he had support coming in family members helped clean his flat, pay his bills, order his medication etc are we were under the impression that since he is paying £300 per month for this service that we could then step back a bit and let them do their job.

He is not eating, any food he does have in is mouldy, his bills are not being payed at all, he is peeing into bottles and defacating on his floors and we have no idea how to help him anymore.

Are we within our rights for refusing to pay for this support?

Is the support linked to his accommodation? Will stopping paying for it put him at risk of eviction? Who provides the service? Is it a private company or public sector? Is there a contract in place?

it is run by the council as far as I know, it is not a part of his tenancy, I don't know that much because everytime I try to speak to anyone they tell me they won't talk to me due to him being an adult.

I'm sorry I'm not an expert in adult social care, but by the looks of it your DS needs to be in supported living. There's a real issue with young adults with services not knowing where they should sit. Do you have a social worker? I think you need to speak with them on Monday, send them the evidence and refuse to pay for the so called support. Clearly not doing their role. Who are they anyway? Are the support workers provided through the council that you have to pay for?

Sorry missed that following post. Can yiy get power of attorney /guardianship or similar if he isn't fit to make adult decisions. I think its bit of a lengthy process but if he doesn't have capacity he can't look after himself. I know there is a term for it..... Has to be signed off by the courts or something.

That's actually awful how they are letting him live.
You need to send these pictures to the company I an email so you have a written trail.

In*

Are we within our rights for refusing to pay for this support?

I'm going to make a few assumptions here so absolutely correct me if I'm wrong.

I am assuming that the money your son is paying is his 'assessed contribution' to the local authority that arranges his care. If that is the case then the local authority has a contract with the care provider to provide a service and your son has a contract with the local authority to arrange and manage that service? That being the case the local authority needs to be the ones that deal with the agency and you can't stop paying the assessed charge to the local authority.

The first thing you need to do is get your son to authorise you to speak on his behalf. The easiest way to do that is ring the LA when you are with him. Request a re-assessment under the Care Act as you believe the previous assessment had not properly identified his needs.

The second thing you can do us call it in to the LA as an adult safeguarding issue. Your reasons are twofold. 1. He is self neglecting and due to his social care needs is unable to meet his basic needs in relation to living safely, maintaining his personal hygiene, maintaining his home environment, maintaining relationships and his mental wellbeing. 2. He may be experiencing wilful neglect by the care agency (although they may be in a difficult position as there may be many things they aren't allowed to do without his permission).

In relation to his living conditions and his finances you need to ask if anyone has completed a mental capacity assessment and if they have whether or not they have properly considered his functional capacity in relation to the decisions he has to Muskegon a day to day basically is he managing to talk the talk in front of professionals, but can he walk the walk after they have left?

If you haven't already you also need to complain to the care agency. The managers might not be aware his bad things have got.

Get in touch with your local councillor to show them what their services are doing.
Hope you can get things sorted for your ds.

Agree with Hatgirl's post but If the care is commissioned by the council which it sounds like it is, you can also complain directly to the council through the statutory adult social care complaints process and they will need to investigate.

If the council forced him to sign utility contracts (or took them out on his behalf), and he doesn’t have capacity, he shouldn’t be liable

Hatgirl, yes he was assessed and gets maximum contrubutions.

So far, I have showed the pictures to his mental health team, his psychiatrist, cpn, housing officer, I called one of his support workers last week to ask what they actually do with him each day and he told me they pay his bills and tidy up everyday. obviously not.

On top of all this he is suicidal, angry, aggressive, not in reality, thinks everyone is trying to kill him, self harming etc, we just can't cope anymore. He says if he goes into assisted living he will kill himself, he thinks he is coping at his flat.

Has he had a mental health assessment recently?

If the council forced him to sign utility contracts (or took them out on his behalf), and he doesn’t have capacity, he shouldn’t be liable

That's highly unlikely to be the case, I would hope if they were having to intervene to that extent at the beginning that alarms would have been ringing before now about him living independently. Plus people don't often 'sign' utility contracts these days due to it all being done online.

Most utility companies are very sympathetic in these situations if someone rings them to explain. I would put that worry to the bottom of the pile.

forgot to say, my son will tell us to help him, so we go to his appointments with him, then the next he thinks his family is against him and tells his mental health team he wants a restraining order against us, so talking on his behalf is difficult.

needhelp do you know if you are his Nearest Relative under the Mental Health Act?

I am his next of kin

What's happened to the cats ears?

Yap there's nothing wrong with it's ears. It's just the angle.

yap, cat is fine i promise

As a mother to two sons, I'm getting a bit teary looking at his living conditions. I hope you get it all sorted out. Lovely cat btw.

The thing is, the support workers can't force him to clean and tidy up, their job is to support him not do it for him.
I agree he needs to be re assessed as it sounds like he isn't coping if he thinks everyone is against him etc, does he have a social worker? I hope you can get something sorted for him soon

I just saw he has a psychiatrist, surely if you have concerns about his mental health they have to do something?

heartofglass I have phoned his psychiatrist's secetary four times, she always says she will get him to call me back and he never does, I have also been down to see him in person and he never seems to be available to speak to me. Forgot to say that also he is not on medication as he will not take it, he tells us he is, then says he lies to us and he is not taking it, he thinks the medication will kill him, he also thinks his mental health team is trying to kill him.

I would write to his local councillors and leader of the council, and local MP if you need to. You can type “find your local councillor” into google if you don’t know who they are.

This must be awful for you OP and I really feel for you and for your son.

But as Heartofglass said, his support workers can't force an adult into doing the things they could support him to do. Particularly if he is, as you say yourself, angry, aggressive, thinks they're all out to get him, and thinks he's coping living independently.

They need to keep themselves safe (from physical harm from his aggression as well as from allegations of acting without his consent) and as difficult as the situation is, it's entirely possible that the supoort team is doing all they can.

It's also possible that they're useless and neglectful, of course. But the state of your son's flat and his inability or unwillingness to pay his bills etc. is by no means proof of that.