As I write this I am totally at my wits end as to what to do with my 14 year old niece.
My sister, her mum, passed away when she was 6 years old. My husband and I are her legal guardians. She witnessed many things at home between her parents that a child of her age should not have witnessed.
I considered berevement counselling for her at the time and went as far as calling a charity who specialised in helping bereved children for advice on a couple of ocassions. They thought that she was doing fine and behaving normally and coping well so I never pursued this. In hindsight I should have.
As she has got older she has never been a particularly happy child. She would constantly fall out with friends, be argumentative and extremely angry. Her behaviour has got worse as she has got older.
Over the last 3/4 years my husband and I have sought assistance for her from our GP, CAMHS, private counsellors but no one has believed us when we talk about her behaviour and actions. We kept being told that it was just childhood/teenage tantrums and she would grow out of it.
Since starting secondary school things have progressively got worse, she is rude, abussive, violent, argumentative, displays risky behaviour and puts herself at risk. She lies constantly so much so that she does not actually know what the truth is and she believes her own lies. She does not live in the real world, she has no grasp on reality and lives in her own little world! She has extreme highs and lows, I have wondered whether she has a personality disorder.
She thinks nothing of staying out until anything between midnight and 3am, when she doesn't come home at her curfew time the police are called and eventually track her down. Her current batch of "friends" are kids that we don't want her hanging around with. They come from the roughest area in town, they drink, smoke, stay out to all hours of the night and their parents don't bother. She is a follower not a leader and will do whatever these kids are doing. She is skipping school and not doing her homework, when she can be bothered at school she is clever and a number of her teachers speak very highly of her ability. My husband is a bad guy in his own house, I can argue with her and she will speak to me again within a few hours but if my husband tells her off in the slightest she won't speak to him for days and will just ignore him.
Social Work became involved about 6 weeks ago due to the referrals from the police after they constantly brought her home when she stayed out. After speaking to my husband and I and taking her out twice the social worker said that no social work intervention was required despite my husband and I raising our fears about her behaviour, anger and mental state. So yet again we were not believed.
Life at home has just been getting worse and worse, she has been hysterical a few times and has told me that she is not coping with everything in life. She has also been self harming. She has never been able to admit when she is wrong or apologise, nothing is ever her fault and she never does anything!
3 weeks ago things got to a point that I didn't they would reach, she disappeared on a Saturday night, my husband and I went looking for her. We found her with the aformentioned group of "friends" most of them including my niece had been drinking. I tried to speak calmly with her with the aim of taking her home. She started shouting abuse at me and swearing - I've ruined her life etc etc she then grabbed my hair and pulled my head down and tried to punch and kick me, at this point my husband pulled her off me. She was hysterical but I continued to calmly reason with her, she attached me again and again my husband pulled her off me. She was out of control and not listening to reason and screaming that I wasn't her mum and she wanted her mum. At his point all of the friends "clucked" around her oh poor you etc. She has played on this since her mum passed away. She then disappeared and eventually answered her phone to my mum so she stayed there that night.
The next day she eventually came home, I tried to speak to her about her behaviour the night before but as far as she is concerned she did nothing wrong. My husband tried to talk to her about her behaviour and she was squaring up to him and the next thing she grabbed a knife from my knife block in the kitchen and said she would stab him. I managed to get the knife from her and she ended up back at my parents home where she has been since.
Social work were informed of her violence towards my husband and I. They took a statemtn from her and she totally lied about everything and went as far as saying that my husband pulled a knife on her first! Which just did not happen. She has started not coming home while staying at my parents and the police bring her home eventually. My parents are struggling to cope and I am worried about her being there incase she turns on them. Social work are now visiting her 4 times a week and have arranged for her to see a psychiatric nurse. However they seem to be going through the motions, they say there is nowhere else for her to go so she has to stay with my parents. It seems like a tick box exercise to them and still I feel that they are not fully understanding. I have been told that she has to be at least 18 before a pychiatric assesement and diagnosis can be made.
We have another refferal to CAMHS but the appointment that we got at the end of April is not until August. A couple of weeks ago I contacted them to try to get an earlier appointment but was told that she wasn't an urgent enough case.
I am so worried that she will hurt someone or that she will get herself into a situation and someone will hurt her. Currently she is not allowed to be at home due to the lies she told and due to the violence she showed against us.
I do not know where to turn to actually get her the help she needs, I am banging my head against a brick wall, still no one thinks it is anything more than teenage tantrums but we know that it is more than that. We are lurching from one crisis to the next at the moment with no end in sight.
I am sorry for this post being so long but this is only scraping the surface of the nightmare that we have been enduring. I was hoping that somone might have some suggestions as to where we can turn to for some help before it is too late for her.
Thanks