GCSEs 2018 (12) Are we nearly there yet?!

[mmzz]

Hi @hmcAsWas :)

He reached the stage of needing 24 hour 2:1 care so moved into a small provider 5 miles from home (small - 5 person - residential home but had his own flat). Saw him most days. Was doing very well. Home was taken over by a large corporate firm (hedge funds) & he was served with under 2 weeks notice. Extended it a bit & various options tried to be sorted but they ended up making him homeless (severe autism, severe learning disabilities, epilepsy - nice). He came home for a bit (had to cancel younger boys first ever holiday & they had to move out, along with my dog to my parents). Emergency provision put in place with 2 providers. One fine, others had inappropriate training and no idea. That was the Monday. They pulled out on Tuesday morning. So he went to school and had no-one to care for him in the afternoon. The fine providers didn’t have the staff for 24 hour cover. So Tuesday at 6pm he was sectioned, bundled into a taxi with 6 strangers and sent on an 8 hour journey to a hospital with no idea what was happening. He’d never been away from me for more than 2 - very occasionally 3, days before.

We were told it would be for 3 months to allow the commjnity team time to get sorted. 8 months later He is still there (although in part as we have refused to have him moved closer - not in his interests) - due to supposedly get back here in November. I’m not holding my breath.

The psychiatrist has been fab, and got him completely off diazepam (looks a lot better for him), treated the nausea I have been banging on about for 3 years and is now fiddling with risperidone.

So not all bad, but an awful lot of trauma and no way to treat the most vulnerable in our society. He is officially a statistic now.

And obviously lost school etc. Although he will probably assume he will be going back when he eventually gets home.

The hospital are keen to get rid of him btw. They are said from the beginning he should not be there.

But him and thousands of others...... Hospital numbers going up again I think.

Afternoon all.....dare I say it but DD needed to wake me up this morning at 11am...I must have been so relaxed after DD finishing History exams.

DD currently doing a Biology past paper 2 ...they are only 1hr so not so bad...

Mmzz - I would have been annoyed in your situation and sounds like the HOY may have some advice for Mr Persistent because it must have been embarrassing for him to make that call having found out the true facts. DD's school only has 100 girls in most years and I love the fact that its so personal and everyone knows each other including the HT knowing the girls...if anything they really go overboard about any sort of achievement in or out of school but also address prioritizing well being and mental health and how failure is not always a bad thing.

I've loved seeing the somewhat reluctant reviser (dd) grow in confidence...everything seems to have changed since she set a goal of doing medicine..

@Oddsocks We have had a roller coaster with "pocket money" I started DD very early with an allowance each month but she squandering it so after 12 months I stopped and reverted back to buying things for her. She has a job so earns £50 a Saturday when she works so has built up her own funds to buy what she wants but I still buy her treats (clothes), I travel a fair bit with my job so visit the outlet centres or we go out together and have a shopping trip. DF looks after phone contract (thankfully).

Having a DC in hospital for anything at all really sounds quite stressful, but 4 or 7 hours away and not just a couple of nights stay? That must be really difficult.
It does put things in perspective though.
A bit like Sostenueto, AlexanderHamilton's DH and Stickerrocks' DM.

Devilish sorry to hear that your DS1 has been through such a tough time, and that you've had to fight to get his needs met.

DS has about 25 more hours if revision to go and it should all be done. He can't seem to get the Nitrogen Cycle for Biology on Monday fixed in his head. So, he keeps coming back to it. Today must be the fourth time. It's funny how they get mental blocks on certain things, isn't it?

The worrying thing is that his needs were met. He was seen as a success story. And we all worked really hard to get the package together. This time 2 years ago he was off at theme parks with support workers etc.

All gone very quickly with a corporate takeover by people who should stick to the City. I’m just sitting down to write yet another letter to the CQC.

Ds2 hasn’t mentioned the nitrogen cycle, but has agreed to go through the syllabus with me tomorrow. He’s out doing drama stuff at the moment. Tells me he revised before going and will revise in his breaks (it’s all day).

Devilish - you sound very familat? Did you used to post under a different username. Was your son a Benji when he was younger?

An allowance is something I’ve been thinking about. Although she will still be living at home for the next year at least she will have travel & food expenses & dancewear & 80-90% of her peers will be living away from home in lodgings. We are over the income bracket to get the maintenance part of the DaDa for her.

@Devilishpyjamas - so sorry to hear about your DS1...it seems to be a common issue - I listen to a lot of radio when traveling and there are so many nightmare stories about young people being placed miles away from home (there was one case where the 15yr old was in Scotland and the family lived in Nottingham). Everything revolves around money and NOT care.

Devilish I think we may be in very broadly the same part of the country and there are shocking stories of lack of provision which crop up with miserable regularity on the local news. It's appalling. Your poor DS and indeed his brothers and the whole family. Very best wishes to each of you.

Yes reading that (& what a terrible time you’ve all gone through) you must be the poster I’m thinking about.

Devilish - that's just shocking. How can this be happening! Its just breath taking that he can be failed by the system in this way when he was previously in an idea situation

Devilish that's awful. You can see that it started with the eviction because that left him needing emergency, quick fix solutions.
But I don't understand why a hedge fund would want that type of investment in the first place (it has none of the characteristics a hedge fund would be looking for) and why was the hedge fund manager making the operational decisions? But, yeah, the skills required to run a hedge fund having nothing to do with assessing, and delivering upon, your DS's needs.

ideal

That's horrific, devilish! Your lovely DS1. So unfair, and that's with well educated, passionate and caring parents fighting his corner. Not a good advert for our 'caring' society. It does bring our GCSE worries into perspective. Not that it's wrong to worry about our own DC's issues, of course, but, well, words fail me.

Sorry to derail the GCSE thread, I’m thinking post-GCSEs already!!

Glad I’m not the only one that hasn’t sorted out the allowance issue yet DD has a paper round and uses the cash from that to go out (which she doesn’t do much). If I give her monthly clothing allowance I actually think she would be better off than current arrangement of me buying clothes for her but trying to teach her budgeting habits!! Only 2 years until uni !!

Side note - passed GCSE study books over to younger DC today for subjects she has taken that they are taking!!

Dd has been offered a term time job teaching the littlies at the youth theatre her school/college runs.

@Oddsocks15 We don't give either DS money. They get money for presents etc and never spend anything like the amount they get each year.
Both detest shopping, especially clothes shopping, and would not do it all if it was in any way optional. They'd just happily wear clothes that were way too small for them, as long as the style and colour were acceptable.
DS1 tends to just save every penny and DS2 only sees the merit of spending money on games.

However, as a rule of thumb, the going rate when I was growing up was child benefit. From about 13 onwards that's what me and all my friends had for clothes, makeup, entertainment, presents, bus fares and school lunches. It was enough, until we got Saturday jobs and could afford a bit more.

Right... am off to see if DS needs me to test him in the Nitrogen cycle. (And make sure he isn't playing fantasy World Cup instead! )

Devilish - I am shocked at how your poor son has been treated, the care side of our health services are so underfunded and too many 'private' providers are there for the profit. It beggars belief that you can be given such a ridiculously short notice period when your sone clearly has very complex needs

DD has an allowance of £60 per month which is supposed to cover entertainment, clothing etc but in reality I still buy most of her clothes unless its something I don't approve of, like a teeny weeny barely there at all vest top

mmzz hedge fund backed corporates are moving into care at a rate of knots buying up private and charitable providers. Especially for learning diasabilities. Someone like my son has a 5k weekly price tag on his head in the community (he costs more than double that in Hospital)- so if you feed him for £2.28 a day (figure obtained from the CQC report - post corporate takeover) - and pay people minimum wage & cut training to online shite, then yep there is cash to be made. The irony is the much smaller providers struggle to make ends meet as LA’s cut budgets. It’s immoral imo. Although I have to say they’re open about their aims and what they do.

And god knows why they are getting involved at all in the day to day stuff. Their experience is all M&A, onshore/offshore funds, futures etc. I doubt they’ve ever even been in the same room as someone like ds1 unless they’re looking around with a view to buying.