Direct payments- please share ideas

[mishoumishou]

Hi, DS is 5 and HFA- being assessed this week by social services for direct parents - please share ideas or tips- what happens at assessment and what do SS ask/look
for?

how did you get them to assess?
Dd (6) has severe autism, not HF at all and I cannot even get an assessment.

I don't know sorry, but an also interested in how you got them to assess. Our ss don't want to know.
Hope it all goes well.

he may be HFA but no awareness of danger at all
I just rang the children's dept at council and they informed me they need to do an assessment.

he may be HFA but no awareness of danger at all
I just rang the children's dept at council and they informed me they need to do an assessment.

We have had dp since DS was about 4. We have a carer come at weekends and take DS out. We got it on the basis we have 2 other children and couldn't spend anytime with them doing ordinary family things as DS often can't tolerate these eg cinema, bike ride. We are always DS with 1 parent and the other boys with other parent, they never got both parents at same time so were never really doing whole family things. We only got 2 hours per week and 3 in holidays (now 3/4 hours). We are about to be reassessed. We have also used the money for after school club as DS doesn't go for childcare reasons but for social opportunities. His 1:1 stays after school and takes him. Also used money for 1:1 swim lessons as DS can't learn in a group.
Originally we got min payment of about £8 per hour but we couldn't find anyone reliable for that so now we get agency rate of £15 per hour (if we asked council to arrange care this is what it would cost them). We still have to put extra training into agency staff to get them up to speed on managing DS behaviour and we pay for them to shadow ABA a few times before take DS out. We have had phases when we haven't been able get anyone suitable and that's when we used money for swimming etc.
We also get sitting service once a month for 3 hours. Dh and I are supposed to go out but tbh often too exhausted.
As DS gets 48 weeks ABA education we don't need holiday childcare but if he didn't have ABA we would be funded for him to have 1:1 helper in local play scheme.
The thing I would like most but am sure will never get big enough budget would be to have a carer on holiday, holidays are hell, dh and I always totally exhausted and his brothers can never do activities they want. His brothers really want their parents time and we spend all the time saying we can't eg watch them surf, climb etc as we have to watch DS.
I find as my other boys get older finding time for parents evenings, school plays, homework and revision is hard. We can never go to school play as a family, one parent goes one performance and one the other.
Things to talk about are impact on your health and emotional well being, time as couple, time to be parent to any other children, time to work, extra costs of activities for disabled child. They will ask about other family support and won't give DP if Granny could help out. I find you need to have a solution already eg we would use a carer from agency or know someone who knows DS who would look after him, or we would use this holiday club etc. Look at leaflets on contact a family. There is a new Care Act / bill may be worth looking at that. Until now there has only been legal obligation to provide services to a disabled child, they can give services to carer but don't have to, even if they assess there is a need, but I think the new Act might have put a duty to provide for carers.