Sen childcare

[Sprinkles211]

Hi everyone, do any of you with children at specialist schools have access to sen childcare in the holidays or wrap around care at the school? There is nothing in my area at all. My 8 year old attends specialist school is classed as complex care, has a list of official diagnosis as long as your arm, is fully incontinent and also has a feeding tube, despite all of this she's a little delight zero behavioural issues and mentally around age 3. I'm so desperate to be able to go back to work, I've only ever been on minimum wage so cannot afford a private nanny or anything they would need to be paid 3 times more than I could possibly earn. How do I do it? She will never live independently I want to provide a life more than just bloody existing and debt caused by having to rely on £80 carers allowance.

Have you had social care assessments? A carer’s assessment for you and an assessment via the children with disabilities team. You could also look at your LA’s short breaks offer. Although in some areas the short breaks offer doesn’t cater for those with more complex needs. Depending on DD’s needs you could also look at continuing care funding. A PA may be cheaper than an SN nanny, too.

We don’t have childcare, I work part time in the evenings in a supermarket. I went back after 5/6 years as it gives me a break(kinda).
Although not the best job my mental health has improved massively and I pick up extra hours around Christmas time to cover presents/ Christmas dinner.
A school hours job would also work.

We found that the sen summer schools wouldn’t be suitable for DS and in my area they book out really quickly.

Not had a social care assessment, I wouldn't ever use respite care. I worked in the disability sector it was my career before I had to give up 3 years ago. I also have a 16 year old asd/adhd girl needs alot of imput but is managing mainstream and a 17 month old who unfortunately is following the same pattern with development etc as my middle child. Currently at 17 specialists between them all so appointments as you can imagine are incredibly frequent. I don't know how a pa would work as they would obviously need to be looking after 17 month old also. I have a hubby we managed to change his career so he had a 12 grand pay bump unfortunately we've lost the majority of this due to uc and now he's paid 4 weekly will have to find a month's uc money also as we won't be entitled that month. His shifts are anything starting from 4am to finishing at 1am (train conductor). The recent attitudes seen on mn especially in aibu to disabilities/carers and benefits have sent my mental health into an absolute dive. I average 5 hours broken sleep a night and hit over 15,000 steps a day without leaving the front door of my tiny 3 bed. I do feel I could manage 2 12 hrs shift a week if we had a safe childcare option.

A PA wouldn’t look after younger DC as well unless your DC don’t need 1:1 and that was the specific role. It would attract a higher hourly rate.

Social care assessments could provide direct payments for PA(s) which you could use at times you happen to need childcare for work. Shorter shifts are likely to be easier than 12hr ones. On their website, Contact has model letters you can use to request social care assessments.

It isn’t childcare in order for you to work, but to give you some support, have you contacted Home Start.

The childcare element of UC will cover 85% of your childcare costs up to £1,739.37 per month.

It's childcare to enable me to work that I want though, I don't need support to manage their conditions or anything, don't get me wrong I am exhausted but it's not rest or time out from them I want, I'd just like to have some semblance of *normal life and work 2 days a week. I suppose we've hit the point quite early that we fully accept that at least one will never be independent and she will always mentally be a child, this side of life is going to be our normal I'd just like to be able to be a part of society too. I could arrange all their appointments around a two day working week much easier than a four short day week. When they are adults we will go down the individual pa route so each can have more independence in adulthood. It's the ages of 5 to 19 childcare, just seems like it would be easier to shit rainbows and glitter lol(Excuse my language).

You could use the PA hours at times when you happen to need childcare. It won’t facilitate full-time work, but it could part-time work and shorter shifts will be easier to cover than 12hr shifts.

I mentioned Home Start as a side point because you mentioned having an under 5 along with a lot on your plate.

We would be entitled to help with the costs as on uc, however there doesn't actually seem to be anywhere that even offers sen childcare. Will also be complicated by the fact she's on transport to school, it will only collect and drop off at our home. She has full 1to1 support in her special school we managed to get full support with her ehcp and it was done at age 4, were incredibly lucky to have every nhs service we could possibly need though I know this is due wholeheartedly because her disabilities are profound. It just seems to be this last hurdle that's so far been impossible.

A PA is probably easier to source than other SN childcare, but if you didn’t want a PA you could work fewer hours a week so that the cost of an SN nanny would be mostly covered by UC.

Thank you haha even more on than I've managed to babble on about.
I'm not sure what homestart is? We were told my middle daughter was one in a billion, had the full genome testing done before deciding to have another child and my middles needs were very well managed then suddenly when I was 7 months pregnant she was admitted to hospital for 6 weeks due to a common cold virus (adenovirus) she nearly died and became medically complex, clinically vulnerable and tubefed all out of the blue. Two weeks after giving birth I then had to leave my newborn and travel to another hospital for a weeks stay for her to have a permanent feeding tube put in. It's been a blur but my adhd seems to help with my unending resilience and need to provide a good life for the girls. My partner has asd so I take on alot of his emotional support needs and the full mental load of the medical side for the girls.

Any ideas where I could find a special needs nanny? I'm lincolnshire so north east and rural so that's probably going against me too 🙈 thank you for replying to me though it feels validating just to be heard

The two agencies I know for SN nannies are SNAP Care and Sennies. Neither are cheap. I suspect there are cheaper places. You could try advertising on social media and asking around the local SEN community.

I’m sorry you have had such a challenging time. Medically complex DC always throw curve balls at you. I have DC with complex medical needs too, 2 have a gastrostomy.

Thank you I will start looking! No a curveball it was and then the pharmacy I now have filling my kitchen cupboards instead of pots and pans is better stocked than my GP haha! Thank you for chatting with me xx