hope someone can give some advice

[betterhalf]

This is actually on behalf of someone else. They have an autistic son of 14. The son is quite violent at times to his Mother and on the last occasion bit her lip and gave her a black eye.She is only quite tiny and slim and he now towers over her. Her husband works full time and after this latest incident they approached Social Services and asked for help for the husband to go part time so he could be at home more to help out and protect his wife.

Social Services response was that the Mother must be doing something wrong as the son doesn't show these tendencies at school or in his respite placement so have said they can't help.

Any ideas as to what they can do?

Oh FGS I wish SS could manage to be less than useless occasionally.

We have had similar. We had a bunch of problems at home (ds1) to do with ds1 acting dangerously. SS came to a meeting in school and asked the school what could be done to prevent him behaving in this way. School said nothing, they needed to pay to make his environment safe (a year and half later they still haven't!).

Previously SS have referred me to clinical psychology. They told me I was doing all the right things and that the issues we were dealing with were just autism and gave me open access to help.

In your friend's shoes I would ask for a referral to clinical psychology (not educational, clinical). Get advice from them but also ask them to write a letter to SS explaiing in words of one syllable what autism actually is.

Another (slightly cheeky) request. I'm going to be running a session on autism for some future social workers next term. If your friend was able to write (anonymously) a paragraph about this situation it might be a nice one to share with them. I want them to understand how SS often get it wrong. No worries if she doesn't want to.

She doesn't actually know I've done this yet. . I just felt that angry on her behalf I thought I'd ask for some help.If I manage to get her some help to sort it, then will tell and and ask her for you.

They said what??!

Another thought: Local autism charity might have some 'clout'. An advocate, for example, who can help to explain to SS that of course those on the autistic spectrum behave differently in different settings, and very often we will be more aggressive at home because we've tried SO hard to behave all day and we're totally utterly exhausted by the time we're home. I'm on the spectrum. I know how ratty/exhausted I can get, though I've never been violent as high functioning female autism is often different from teenage male autism. Complete lack of understanding of absolute basics of autism by them, it seems.

Thanks for being a good friend to the family.