What do I do about my brother?

[ifoundasock]

I am 45; he is 47.

He has autism. He can’t work. Every time he starts a job there’s a honeymoon period for a couple of months, cracks appear and he ends up being dismissed or resigning before he’s dismissed. Added to which he’s then referred to his regulatory body as well (he is qualified as a nurse although has limited experience in actually nursing.)

He’s spent a lot of time at university retraining and doing various qualifications and sort of sees himself as deeply intelligent and way above any ‘menial’ jobs (I don’t think he’d manage them anyway.) He also isn’t IT literate in the slightest.

He is also addicted to various OTC meds, codeine mainly.

Increasingly the pressure has sort of built up financially and emotionally. I have two very young children and I just can’t afford to support him. I need a proper conversation with him about benefits but I don’t know how to address the fact the reality of his life and the way he wants his life to look are so vastly vastly different.

He's become too reliant on you. What if you couldnt afford to support him financially?
As autistic and unwell as he may be, he is clearly an intelligent person able to complete a degree and (your words) likely wont meet the threshold for supported living. This means he has the ability to make some choices, like apply for further benefits at least. If that's not to his liking and he'd rather take money from you, then more fool you for enabling it.

So you pay part of your son's mortgage and some of his other bills? Op won't be able to do that.

@MoodyMargaret11 i think he’d give anything to not be reliant on me; to be ‘normal.’ But he isn’t and no amount of saying he shouldn’t be disabled will make him not disabled. I find him frustrating as well but I do believe it isn’t a choice.

@Motnight at the moment I’m covering his council tax as he accumulated a debt.

Have you tried talking to him about PIP etc as it being what he’s entitled to? Rather than looking at it as a benefit he needs to get to avoid poverty talk to him about how it’s there to give him an advantage. It’s there because he’s managed all his degrees etc despite having a disadvantage others don’t have and therefore he deserves the money to assist him in pursuing his goals etc?

So long as he gets enough from PIP and benefits to pay his bills then it matters less when he gets fired. But don’t let him reject them because he’s ‘better than’ them… make him see it’s what he deserves and should be getting. A positive thing not charity.

Is this the brother who turns up at the door wanting to be fed, and basically has few boundaries about ‘yours’ and ‘his’? Have you posted before?

I think you need to let him fall a bit more. Let his flat get disgusting. Let him get into debt.

You must have a hard line around money. Give him Sunday dinner every week, but don’t pay his debts.

Help him with the things that will improve his situation- budgeting help, applying for benefits like PiP- do not help him with things which mask his inability to manage.

My mum had to allow her brother’s living situation to get really bad. She kept clearing up for him, and the paramedics/ambulance kept taking him back home. It was only when she stopped that they could see it wasn’t safe to return him there.

You must not enable him to deny his difficulties. He needs to recognise where he needs help.

Yes, he has a disability. But some of what he’s doing is choice. He’s choosing to assume you will always bail him out.

Problem is @PigeonsandSquirrels , he will say oh yeah yeah yeah … I’ll go to the doctors, I’ll do this, I’ll do that … then never does it!

@PrizedPickledPopcorn i genuinely have no idea what you mean by ‘the brother,’ what brother? I only have one. And he doesn’t show up at the door very often.

When his flat got disgusting he nearly died and I don’t mean that in a dramatic sense, he actually, literally nearly died and spent a few weeks in ICU. So I’m obviously kind of reluctant to go down that route!

I actually give him very little help, because I can’t. I work myself part time and I have two little children and no support, so what I can do is very limited, at the moment it’s basically occasionally giving him a meal, buying cat food (as it’s not the poor cats’ fault) and paying his council tax. I don’t know where people have the idea that I’m devoting my life to him or anything. But I do need him to drop the idea that once he’s given up the codeine and done this and done that all will be OK. It’s harsh but he needs to realise that isn’t true.

No, not really. He genuinely has not got any sort of grip on life at all. You don’t know him and you really don’t understand.

@ifoundasock

what I’m doing is completely steering back and letting the chips fall where they may. my son was in prison on remand for breaking an shpo by looking at Illegal images. But he’s still my son and I’m supporting him as best I can. But is not a drain on me, or even really a responsibility. I’m showing him to be culpable and refusing to take that mantle on. His failures are his own and he knows if he breeches the order again he will be in prison. If he doesn’t comply with his probation, he will naturally feel the consequences. If he doesn’t keep the place clean and tidy, he will have to move out and will absolutely be left to fend for himself with public housing as a result. His own choices will either save him or he will be left at the mercy of the state as although I am his mother, he’s an adult. I very rarely have to contribute to his daily life as i don’t have it in me.

to the people saying i contribute, i don’t. We just adore him to live in the property with his brother and his pip pays part of the very small mortgage and hood brother pays the difference totalling £256 a month all in. Very occasionally, i may add £40 to the gas prepayment meter in the very coldest parts of the year. I’m not back rolling either of their lifestyles. And I very much step back from everyday life and let the chips fall where they may. But I’m still on hand to navigate medical apps etc IF it’s needed. More often than not I just write a letter/note explaining and he just gets on with it and does it himself. You can’t and shouldn’t be mothering an adult that isn’t yours, drop the rope. Let him face the natural consequences of his actions. He’s clearly NOT stupid if he’s got a nursing degree.

what I will say though is that autism often rubs hands in hand with ADHD and causes addictions and poor employment patterns. If I was you, I’d be discussing him getting a right to choose referral for him to assess for adhd and pushing him to medication. Adhd360 is great and if he’s in benefits they currently pay for medication too via the nhs. The current wait is 4-7 months. That’s really helped my son and he is AuDhd. The change has been drastic. He’s now showering daily, engaging and taking part in unpaid work for 6-10 hours a week. But I’m not going to nurse maid my son for the rest of his life when he is actually able to do things for himself.

it is a tricky situation, I have family members v similar to your brother. I think maybe seeing if there is a helpline on the National autistic society or a support group for people in your situation, my brother v v similar to yours. I think it is all about seeking ways to minimise the impact on you where you can and it will probably be unconventional solutions which help you.

for example can you make v small payments into a pension for him? We are very lucky in that my brother decided to rent his flat out (he inherited it from his dad) and he has a room in a house share instead (this means we don’t have to worry about him destroying his flat) and he can live where he wants/ go travelling abroad. He also has a lot of trouble keeping jobs and is not on pip.

What is the actual reason he keeps leaving/being dismissed?if he is unable to work he needs governmental assistance.

We were also very lucky to recently find a family friend to manage my brothers finances (we were very worried he’d end up homeless at times) would he consent to you managing all his finances as a condition of you paying his council tax?

@GreenGodiva so you say you’re taking a step back but I’m not seeing a vast difference between what you’re doing and what I’m doing, I know sometimes posters on here can be obtuse purposefully and I am not like this but I genuinely don’t understand the big difference between our situations. My brother hasn’t been in prison and that must have been awful for your family and I am sorry for that.

I don’t think I’ve once said he is stupid. He isn’t. He can read and understand complex books and he enjoys reading and watching documentaries. In many ways he is very intelligent although unfortunately he does rather think he’s exceptional which he isn’t (neither am I!) But he can’t communicate effectively. He speaks loudly and in a monotone, he introduces inappropriate topics, has a very weird sense of humour and will collapse giggling at awful things while everyone else is stone faced and then doesn’t crack a smile at a genuinely funny joke, he looks a mess (this is a huge barrier to employment) his eating is horrendous, it’s like watching an Attenborough show about hyenas or something, ripping into food, shovelling it in with his hands, wiping his mouth on his top. He wears vast, ripped hoodies that are always filthy (see above) and doesn’t shower regularly so is often smelly. I know some joker will pipe up with to ‘just tell him’ obviously I have, countless times. I don’t know why he doesn’t just try to look a bit more conventional but I’ve concluded he can’t, for whatever reason.

I do believe that the rest of his life, however much longer that is, will be spent reliant on benefits, it’s possible he might get a job but it won’t be for long and it won’t be for a good few years.

So what I need from him is to explore all the financial options. Because UC isn’t enough to live on. Of course, he won’t be rich but if he was able to get PIP or some other disability related benefit it would help. I think once he’s got enough coming in that will be a massive relief.

Maybe he would agree to you helping him with pip if you could find a way to persuade him - could you say it would just be in the short term whilst you get back on your feet again for example / or present it to him in a way that’s fits his logic and you’ll fill in all the paperwork for him?….

Well, I can give some of the reasons but to give a general sort of picture which helps understand him these are some of the issues.

1. timekeeping. He hugely struggles with this and his addiction to codeine means his sleep is all over the place. I actually think he physically can’t get to sleep without huge amounts of meds, so often he’ll go days without sleeping then crash and has no idea what day / time / year it is (yes really on occasion; he failed the capacity test but later came round a bit and passed so was released.)
2. As above he behaves very strangely … sometimes this is linked to medication (he once stripped off in a bathroom and was found ‘rowing’ on the floor) but other times it’s kind of just him. He can come across as aggressive and he isn’t but he will start blasting off and swearing which obviously isn’t the done thing.
3. he’s inconsiderate, he ate someone else’s lunch on shift once and then started making some ‘hilarious’ comment about ‘oh you should go into gynaecology’ (calling them a cunt basically) which doesn’t go down well.
4. He can’t follow instructions so will be told to do one thing and just won’t do it. He knows best, always.
5. His appearance and presentation is a massive problem.

So yes … not sure how to get round that!

I can’t afford this. I’m struggling with the council tax as it is to be honest.

I don’t really understand why this is your conclusion if he is capable of successfully completing the challenging training it takes to be a nurse. Why not encourage him to pursue something else that is more WFH orientated - he is clearly functional enough to do many roles.

This is so awful . You really must report him to social services.

Do you think he might be bipolar? A lot of what you say links with what one of my family had?

Do you think that passing a degree somehow automatically makes someone able to function? Half the people at my university were barking mad! It doesn’t really matter if you understand it or not tbh. I know that sounds arsey but if you don’t understand just move on!

I don’t think he’s bipolar at all. Social services can’t do much, nor anything really. The help we need is financial. Everything else is beyond help really.

Plenty of doctors and nurses suffer from addiction. More so than the general population I think. I guess temptation, availability, knowledge about drugs plays a part in that.

He needs to be on benefits if he can't work. That's what they are there for. I really hope he'll let you at least show him on a benefits calculator what he may be entitled to? You could offer to help fill the forms.

Is he able to use a smartphone, the internet at all? If not do you think he would agree to do an online basics training course?

If he has a desire to stop his addiction then he should definitely not go cold turkey. Trying to take less than you did the day before should be the aim. Even if it's quite gradual it will be less painful. But speaking to the local addiction service would be helpful obviously if he is intent on trying to quit.

I wish you and him well. It can't be easy feeling responsible almost for his welfare but also powerless.

Ok, my comment about ‘the brother’ was referencing another MNer in an almost identical position. Her brother also fails to live successfully independently, and is massively impacting her life due to his needs not being met anywhere else.

I really do recognise a lot of the behaviours- I see them, though less extremely, in my family members.

You need to remember that he has capacity and he is making choices.

He doesn’t care about presentation. I get it. Neither does DH. Left to his own devices he would look like a rough sleeper. But DH chooses to check whether he has packed right for a trip, chooses to wear newer trousers when we go out rather than ancient holy ones he prefers at home. He chooses, not because he cares or even can tell the difference, but because I told him it was massively disrespectful to me to walk around looking like he lived in a skip.

Your DB is probably thinks the norms other people live by are pointless because he is so clever, and knows those kinds of things are really superficial.
He is however also choosing to disrespect everyone else’s norms in favour of his own.

Where have you looked for support for him? He has autism, he can apply for PiP and you should tell him he must because he’s getting into debt. You could ring charities that support people with barriers to employment. Ask their advice even if he won’t engage with them.

He has two barriers to work from what I can see, his autism and his resistance to getting support anywhere.

If he's already getting UC he must have accepted the idea of being on benefits. Could you present PIP to him as a complement to UC that would be good to have and help him with the application?

OP it sounds like he may have been sectioned before? I can't quite tell... You mention a capacity assessment and rowing naked in the bathroom. Under the MHA people are allowed to make unwise or eccentric decisions. So maybe drop the rope a little? I know you're concerned and I'm sorry you're going through this. The reality is you don't have as much power as you think or hope you do.
The other thing is that some people need to keep the idea that they will one day famous, rich, successful. It literally keeps them from decompensating. So your idea that you need him to understand he is going to be on benefits, useless and lonely is potentially unrealistic.

He is already getting basic Universal credit. If his condition limits him in working then he needs to hand in fit notes and wait to be assessed. The UC amount to live on will more than double if awarded the Limited capability for work and work related activity ( LCWRA ) element.

I know @BillieWiper . That’s one reason I don’t see his addiction as the handicap he believes it to be. He’d probably be able to function and cope without the autism, it’s that which prevents him functioning rather than the addiction. But the addiction obviously is an added complication.

He’s done loads to try to overcome it, including a very expensive six week stay in rehab: it just doesn’t work, probably because he’s trying to medicate his autism.

@PrizedPickledPopcorn the thing is capacity is not a simple, straightforward thing. He has capacity insofar as he knows it’s 2025 and that his front door is brown. Anything else he doesn’t really. I find him beyond frustrating and truthfully I struggle to even like him a lot of the time. But I do believe he isn’t choosing this. Who the hell would!?

@Bellsbeachwaves yeah I know thanks … of course he can make unwise decisions. What rope? I see him a couple of times a week, give him cat food and sometimes he eats here. And pay his council tax. I’m not seeing this ‘rope.’

It’s tempting to believe he’s just a dick who is behaving this way because he’s an arse but it’s more complex than that and rooted in autism which he really can’t help.