Sorry this is not a very positive thread. I'm under a lot of pressure and feel like not many agencies are particularly arsed about helping me.
My DD10 has ASD. She can be violent and aggressive. I'm a single parent with an older child also. My two children do not get on. Their Dad does not live locally so is unable to come round when things are hard, and to be honest after a couple of times of being told "there's nothing" he could do to help, I don't ask anymore.
Before the summer things got too much and a long story short an early help form was filled in, but due to the holidays coming up nothing much happened. An intervention worker was assigned and came round a grand total of three times, once when my kids were there. My DDs issues come from school anxiety (asd making it hard for her to socially interact, holding it together all day at school and exploding once home etc etc) so over the holidays when the worker was involved, she did not display the behaviour of concern.
A taf took place the other week and it was a pile of shite to be honest. One person was unable to make it due to sickness (fair enough) but I feel it should have been postponed as what went ahead was totally unhelpful. I was only asked what was going well for the family, any thing else? anything else? Anything else? And that was basically it. The intervention worker then said she's discharging us (or words of that effect) and when I got upset and said you haven't been around for us during the challenging times, she said not to worry, if I need them again I can put another referral in. But I know how long these things take and the SENCO had to really fight for them to get involved in the first place.
Now preparation is being made for the next TAF and the person running it has asked me who I want to be involved. I'm scratching my head here, is it normal that I should be thinking of who should be involved, or should the coordinator not be doing that? Who else even is there to be involved? I don't feel like I've been given the right information or help so far to be honest.
Has anyone got any experience of these things and am I expecting too much /can you recommend some agencies I ought to get involved. Has anyone had to fight for a service that wants to drop them because they don't think the need is great enough?
My DD has had the diagnosis a little under a year, before that she had lots of problems at school but they have never seen the violence.