Join us in the Goose and Carrot Pub thread.

[ExistingonCoffee]

A thread for all who have DC with SN. The thread is deleted and 90 days and doesn’t show in active. The fire is on and the bar is well stocked.

@Squirrelsandhedgehogs looks like more gardening weather on the way! Glad everything can be cancelled if you need to.

Ive got the appointment for estate planning this week. If DD has over £16k savings is there anyway she can accrue NI credits? Can she buy them?

@HedgehogsAgree A credits only new style ESA claim would protect DD’s NI record. For the moment at least, anyway. Who knows what will change in the future.

@ExistingonCoffee thank you should I do that only when savings go over £16k or alongside UC?

Another thought UC is reduced by ESA amount. Are maintenance study loans taken off UC and ESA

@HedgehogsAgree a maintenance loan reduces UC. How much by depends on individual circumstances. It isn’t the same for all. In some cases, the deduction wipes out the UC award.

1. You need to know the maximum maintenance loan the claimant is eligible for. This is the total possible even if it is reduced because the student didn’t take it all or because it is reduced due to parental income or the student’s income.
2. For some, there is an additional step of disregarding the special support element.
3. You then need to know how many assessment periods the maintenance loan is supposed to cover. This differs depending on the course and the claimant’s AP dates.
4. Then you divide the maintenance loan amount by the number of APs the maintenance loan covers.
5. £110 is then deducted from the amount in no.4.
6. The remaining amount is then deducted from UC £ for £ each AP the loan covers.

While DD is on UC, there is no need to make a credits only NS-ESA claim. UC gives class 3 credits automatically. A credits only NS-ESA claim would give class 1. There are some difference between class 1 and class 3 credits, but for DD those differences wouldn’t matter. Both protect the state pension as it currently stands.

Unless I’m missing part of DD’s circumstances, she wouldn’t actually be awarded any money from an ESA claim. A New Style ESA claim would be credits only to protect NI record. For those who do receive money from NS-ESA, they can continue to claim while a full-time student as long as they continue to satisfy the conditions for NS-ESA.

For those who receive ESA, it is deducted from UC £ for £.

@ExistingonCoffee marvellous intel thank you. I think the numbers won’t add up to gift DD money as the further I look into it the benefits system is not just ££ but gateways to an awful lot more that needs to be taken into account.

Thanks @HedgehogsAgree

Did manage to do 5 hours of mainly gardening and then cleaning downstairs floors with DH. Weather was fine for gardening. We got about 1/3 of the final path laid, started preparing the soil for laying turf and did some weeding. Silkies were with us and very happy with the number of worms being dug up. DS was in the garden shed. Then had a bath and got a Chinese and DS ate his fine.

Got to just watch and wait re the holiday but its looking like we will need to cancel and go elsewhere so will restart holiday planning. The hotels etc are easy and free to cancel. The issue is the flight, that is £1,000 for us combined if we cancel, if they can its free but they are going right up to the wire at the moment. I have a plan for the Azores though had ruled it out before as its multiple flights this time of year and you can't get all connecting ones. Plenty of availability. Not sure when we abort Sri Lanka. No need to do anything before 10th so will just see how things evolve.

I think there's a huge backlog of ESA claims. I sent in DD2 & DD3's work capability questionnaires in November 2025 and haven't heard anything. Somebody on Facebook said they had got a response that their claim was cancelled because there were too many claims. How true that is...well anyone can guess.

Today was very bad. DD1 managed to get a knife and hurt herself, then took it upstairs. I had to try and balance the risk of her further hurting herself, vs accidentally stabbing me if I escalated things...not sure if I did the right thing but I chose to initially say that I wasn't going after her and needed her to put it down. Then I managed to get near her and as soon as she put it down beside her, I pushed her away and took it. She also left the house and went towards the main road. She's 15kg heavier than me now, so not easy to contain when she's distressed. DH carried on eating his lunch because he thought I had everything under control and hadn't been in that situation before.

I don't know how to help her. I can't show that she's distressing me because it escalates everything and makes repeat episodes more likely. Yet, if I don't show it, she thinks I don't care. 1 mg of lorazepam (I had to push to get the increase from 500mcg) does almost nothing to calm her. I don't think she knows why she's behaving as she is.

She's seeing the psychiatrist on Tuesday and the Psychologist on Friday. She didn't understand that I can't just call them and they don't work at the weekends. In fact, the psychologist doesn't work on Mondays, either.

@Lougle - doesn’t your mental health trust have a mental health helpline, out of hours? Ours does. Carers can use it too. I remember ringing them about 10.30 pm and couldn’t get through, not long ago.

DD2 said when she was an inpatient, another woman patient took 1 mg of lorazepam and was asleep for 10 hours - it had more effect on her, than 2 mg had on DD2! DD2 says 2 mg is the max dose people can have. DD2 was a size 10 at that time, so it wasn’t about weight.

I’d watch it about ESA claims. I claimed for DD1. About 6 months after I’d made the claim, I rang up the Dwp in about September to find out was happening. They said, they hadn’t opened a file for her, but they would. I rang up every month the next three months, and got the same excuse. Then they asked me, if I still wanted to make a claim for her? Obviously, I said yes - what did they expect her to live on? In the January, I made a formal complaint. They put her in the basic rate group, while they looked her claim. It took 2 years for them to decide she was in a disability premium group and they paid her about £7,000 in arrears, after I’d made a second formal complaint!

@lougle that sounds like a horrendous day. For you and DD1. I know you know this, but it is OK to tell the psychiatrist (or out of hours services before then if you need to) you can’t keep everyone safe anymore. That isn’t a failure or anyone’s fault.

I’m not surprised 1mg of Lorazepam doesn’t help. DS1 has Lorazepam 2mg PRN for when he is reaching crisis and can take another 1mg 60 mins later if necessary, then a further 1mg another 60 mins later if necessary. And I suspect your DD1 weighs more than DS1. I hate giving the higher doses because of the respiratory depression but sometimes it is necessary.

We are still waiting on ESA decisions too.

@BlueandWhitePorcelain I'm really reluctant to involve people DD1 doesn't know. She's so complex (in the true sense of the word), so suggestible and yet so convincing that we could end up with completely the wrong decisions being made with the best of intentions. I worry that we're at a fork in the road and if she does go down the inpatient route it could start a revolving door. It feels like she's swapped the physical pain>need hospital route for mental pain/suicidal> need hospital route.

@Lougle you know DD1 best, besides herself. Events like today are scary but if you are reluctant to escalate there is a reason you don’t think the fork is right. Doing a sweep of sharp things and securing cupboards etc is one thing (DD found the floors and walls) until you get to Tuesday. I’m so sorry DD1 is so unwell you done all the right things and kept everyone safe. I lied a lot when DD was very unwell, she got a lot of comfort from Drs calling me to say various instructions in between or waiting for appointments.

Ironically, the knife drawers have been secure for a long time. But DH was making lunch and he just doesn't think in that way. So despite DD1 already being heightened, he had the knife drawer open because he was using a knife. It didn't occur to him to open the drawer, take a knife, close the drawer, wash the knife, open the drawer and return it. He just thought he'd use the knife and close the drawer once he'd finished with it.

Food is a massive trigger. This all started because we needed to pop into a shop and DD1 wanted us to buy lunch. I said we would have lunch when we got home (shop was 15 minutes away and I needed one item). So a difference of 20 minutes, but of course a shop bought lunch is far more yummy than anything we may have at home in her eyes. It stsrts the spiral and then she can't seem to get out of it.

I know the quetiapine is partly responsible for her appetite increase but food is all she talks about and she's heading for obesity. With her ED history, a diet would be really tricky, so I'd really rather we didn't have to go down that road.

DD2 is upset. We had a meeting with the supported internship lead. They won't allow DD2 to do a level 1 supported internship because her school attendance is too low and they feel she won't cope with 1½ days at college and 3 days in work experience. They will offer the entry level 3 pathways 2 but feel that she would be better to start at the lowest course which is entry 3 and focuses on PSED because they can give her a reduced timetable that builds over time.

She says she has done 4 years of basically doing nothing and she isn't sure she can cope with another year of doing nothing. The school careers lady says that if DD2 doesn't take it, she has nothing left to offer because DD2 can't cope with the local animal care college (who says she needs to be independent in class).

Oh that's hard for her. Does she feel she'll cope with the internship better than school? Is she not going because she's doing nothing, rather than because she can't cope?

I think it's a combination. I think she generally doesn't feel well (nausea, fatigue, on/off headaches), and the environment isn't always peaceful because some of the students express their needs in a very physical way that needs physical containment from large numbers of staff. This means that she needs a lot of motivation to overcome those barriers before she starts. Then, she did her Functional Skills last year, so nothing she is doing this year will actually help her progress in education. That means she feels that she's wasting what little energy she has. In truth, she's spending large portions of her week pottery painting, which is fun and allows her to build tolerance for being out of the house, and build relationships with staff, but doesn't feel like progress.

It is disappointing the school isn’t ensuring the year is productive. There is progress to be made, and qualifications to be achieved if that is what DD2 wants, even if DD2 has FS.

Do you think DD2 could cope with 4.5 days/week? It seems like it would be a big jump. Would DD cope on the MS animal care college course with support? If so, support in lessons could be given. DD2 doesn’t need to be independent in class.

I think DS would suit an animal care course too but given he has 1:1 now I don't think he will have outgrown support by 16/17.

By the way I've asked a really complicated question in Legal about our first world income/inheritance problems if anyone has time to take a look. I probably should have thought about putting it somewhere higher traffic.

You know your DD, the best in the world.

Ime, it’s not a revolving door to inpatients, unless they have psychosis. From what DD says, people get taken there under section, because they have been acting out in a public place for instance. The HCPs look at the meds. As an inpatient, they live in a routine - they have to take their meds, they get three meals a day, they can play table tennis, do quizzes, etc and if it’s somewhere reasonable, they can talk to the other patients awake, and the staff 24/7. They come out of the psychotic episode and get discharged. They go home - don’t bother taking the meds, eating and drinking properly, or taking care of personal hygiene. They end up in another psychotic episode and being sectioned again.

DD was admitted twice for being very suicidal, this after 50 plus instances of suicidal behaviour. After the second time, even when a mental HCP assessed her in A & E as needing admission, the gatekeeping psychiatrist refused.

Ime, psychiatrist’s thinking revolves around drugs, and waits for any other kind of treatment are 2 - 3 years long. I’d say, for people who are not in psychosis, being admitted here is about as easy as getting an EHCP for an expensive residential school!

Uh oh. Scouts this week involves whistles. Can we get one for DS that doesn't make a noise...

Top tips - they don't work so well if they accidentally get wet. Also, if they have a tiny piece of paper accidentally pushed into the cavity, they also don't work brilliantly.

A curious thing has happened. DD1, for years, has had cups of tea at Nanny and Granddad's house. We have exactly the same tea and exactly the same travel mug here, but she always declines tea. It's a weird 'only at Grandad's' thing. Since she's been on the higher dose of quetiapine, she's suddenly become fixated on having cups of tea here. She was up at 5.05 this morning, asking for tea. She hovers in the doorway of the lounge, holding her mug, saying "just in case you are making tea soon...." I can't work it out. It's no hassle to make her a cup of tea when I make mine - I make tea for DD3, it's just odd that she's suddenly switched.

Hmm...reading the side effects, dry mouth is one. I wonder if she's noticed that and has just decided that tea is the tipple of choice.

That is exactly the tip I needed @Lougle.

@ZairWazAnOldLady was DS at college yesterday? How did it go?

@ExistingonCoffee I didn't see your post. Yes, I think that realistically, 4.5 days is far too much. I'm not sure she'd cope with the demands of a T-level at this stage, and she doesn't even have enough qualifications to do the level 2. The lower level courses have students with LDs like DD1, which she wouldn't cope with.

I'm wondering if an access course over 2 years would be viable. The local animal care college does a veterinary access course, aimed at those wanting to do veterinary science or veterinary nursing, etc. But it still wouldn't solve her people issues.

DD1 saw the psychiatrist today and begged to be admitted. They have decided to increase her anti psychotic and we're going to give lorazepam routinely an hour before lunch and dinner for a week, to see if it helps to relieve trigger points. Apparently, DD1 has been accepted by the Intensive Support Team so I should hear from them soon.

DS has been messaged today to become a Youth Guarantee Trailblazer by the council and asking if he's in education, training or employment or looking for work. Apparently if you are in any of education, training or employment then leave you alone for a year, if looking for work you get a coach. I have replied on his behalf to say he can't speak or write and is on LCWRA. Can't see DS being a trailblazer for anything, maybe spreading mud, but doubt there's employers looking for that.🤔

Hope they can find a solution that helps DD1 @Lougle and works for you all.

Cleaner cancelled and a different cleaner she knows is coming tomorrow. I've cancelled all the hotels / trips / car park / driver for the holiday as it was free to cancel and gives them some notice. The flights have to be resolved and it may be we lose £1,000 on them or they get fully refunded if they cancel but we won't know that until a few hours before. Sometimes they reroute people but think its flight by flight and that would not work for us as we have to be back on the date we have.