direct payments sw coming on monday

[onlyjoking9329]

we have been thinking about asking for direct payments for a while, we have three children with autism and things have been getting difficult coping with all of their different needs, i phoned social services on friday afternoon , they phoned me back after talking to the manager and the social worker is coming on monday, i am amazed at the speed of things as i was thinking i would be waiting weeks at the very least, anyway anybody got any advice tips or questions i should ask ?

Onlyjoking - I would just say be brutally honest how hard things are.

Good luck!

Good luck. We had someone come round who was adamant that we would qualify, only to hand the forms in to hsi bosses, for them to say they failed to see why we needed respite care as ds2 was not disabled enough. He is in a wheelchair ffs, can't sit without proper support, can't stand independently, can't walk. I'm epileptic, we have no other real support around us, yet we don't qualify!

Can you tell i felt pissed off?

Lou I am completely and angry on your behalf. How the hell can you not qualify????
It is completely ludicrous. If I was you I would go and see my local mp. It's just not right at all!
It just never seems to make sense to me and depends on who is doing the assessment!

Me too. We felt too disheartened to appeal, there was too much other stuff going on at the time , so we were feeling particularly drained. Ds2 starts school in january now, so we will have a bit of respite that way soon.

we have been told we cant get them either, i am so

school nurse said "you shouldnt have been told you caN GET THEM, ITS THE GOVERNMENTS FAULT SAYING YOU CAN HAVE ALL THESE THINGS, THERE JUST ISNT THE RESOURCES"

I SAID, i AM GOING DOWN cab TO SEE WHAT THEY THINK.......

opps

The trick, imo, is not to ask about DPs at all but ask for respite/hours of support. Once they agree to X hours (if they do the gits) THEN you ask for DPs and they HAVE to deliver your support that way if you request it. Not that it will definitely work but, if they are anti-DPs you might catch them out!

if i can adopt a granny that will be fine, but they have to organise it

Apparently we don't need respite of any sort

That's bollocks and very upsetting but your lot obviously know that if they give you any hours you can ask for DPs. Did they offer anything else? Do you know if there IS anything else avaialble locally? If a Soc Svs dept can provide reasonable respite then its a lot easier for you than DPs (I have a friend in Brent who gets good respite without DPs) but its pretty rare.

They took all our details and situation gubbins and took it to panel. Panel said we didn't qualify. Goodbye.

The reason we wanted dp's rather than ss help was because ds2 is really funy about who he will and wont stay with. He is getting better, but we didn't want weeks and months of settling him with someone he didn't know. His 1 to 1 helpers at the nursery he goes to ,2 mornings a week, had agreed to be his respite carer, so we thought it would be a great solution.

etrr aoparently they refer to playscheme and if playscheme dont have place then they wash their hands and blame it on another dpeartment, isnt life great

God, it really stinks Lou. Mine offered to refer us to playscheme, I can do that myself thanks and pay the £8 per week!

well social worker came she saw and then legged it, she says that the girls meet the criteria but DS doesn't they will only give to children with learning disabilities, my girls go to a SN school, my son has a DX of autism he has a statement and he gets top rate DLA but he goes to mainstream school so no hours for him, i don't know how many hours my two girls will get, will have to wait and see, all three kids had various meltdowns whilst the SW was here so that should help.

Just to add onlyjoking i had a initial assesment for respite care my ds who is middle DLA, DX ASD and he has a statement plus mainstream. It seems im being considered for family or centre based short term respite care and she recommended he should go for at least one night. Which i said i will think about in the future. I did have to wait 5 months for a visit though. If you don't agree with sw their is a complaint proceedure, i know that all adds to your workload but it would be nice for you to be child free . This would have been my next step if it didn't work out. HTH

well we are happy with the offer of support for two out of three and as a starting point thats o.k, i don't want to complain as the SW is very good and is an old colleauge of mine so i am sure she will do her best,the girls school have put in the staff newsletter about us looking for workers for direct payments and apparently there are a few who are interested, so it is looking very good. a five month wait seems too long, we only phoned on the friday and had the vist on the monday so i can't really complain, good luck.

If your happy then thats good, it all helps relieve some of the stress. The sw i saw had first hand experience of autism so i was v.lucky and he was at his worst too. It only took so long because my hv (who refered him) didn't follow it up and they closed it without telling us. Only after i rang to complain did it come to light and then it was re-opened. As you can guess i wasn't in the mood to be messed about. The response then was within days.