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Hugs We had to parent from a distance and have used Section 20 and for the situation we found ourselves in , this was our only option Other people have used 52 week therapeutic units. Funding is a major issue Contact the Potato Group for further advice. Johanna x

htps/thepotatogroup.org.uk

Sorry wrong typing Check on Parents of Older Adoptees last thread. X

There are others that know more and hopefully they will be here to comment. But first if you haven't contacted the police you need to. They can start to put pressure on social services; and if he assaults you again they will already be familiar with the situation. Also if your daughters are still children then the council has a duty of care to protect them; you might need to push that angle. If your daughter's school is supportive you may ask them to push too. Take care, BdF

Thanks for comments so far. AS is obsessed with emergency services due to past trauma. He has even contacted the police himself to say he has assaulted me. They are filing the reports but nothing is being done. CYPS are putting pressure on SS to take AS away for respite so we can think about next steps but we have been told we need to co-operated with the few hours they are offering. Respite is coming tonight at 7pm for 2 hours to take him out. Not sure what that is supposed to achieve, he hits and verbally abuses me all day then gets taken for a treat when he should actually already be in bed! Complete madness. As SS are ingnoring our pleas for respite, CYPS have even tried to have AS sectioned to protect my family but apparently AS needs to be 11! I have even contacted local MP and still SS are coming up with nothing. We are at such crisis point CYPS have now started medicating AS with antipsychotics so we can get through the weekend and start the battle with SS again on Monday. This is not how I expected adoption to be.

I'm so sorry, I have no advice but wanted to send you a big hug. Potato group is the place to go. take care x

So sorry This sounds extreme SSD are covering their backs by saying they have offered respite You have other dependants and you need to say how much this affects them. SSD are using bullying tactics by threatening investigations on your girls ....if they are unwilling to take one child into care why would they take three? Keep notes and records of what other agencies are saying. We have had battles ourselves with SSD ... it is extremely stressful but if your son.has extra and additional needs which you cannot meet and some behaviours which put you at risk.of harm, then parenting from a distance should be considered. Johanna x

We have struggled with our son’s escalating violence for over 6 years now. A line was crossed a few months ago and we have asked for our son to be accommodated under Section 20 (you retain parental responsibility) and for our son to go to a 52 week therapeutic community. It has taken a good couple of months and support from our PASW and our son’s therapist to acknowledge the need for ‘an alternative placement’. We found the following combination of things helped: Scrupulous recording of evidence of each episode of violence getting a ‘history marker’ placed on our property by the police (showing that there is a history of violence within the home) going through a Safeguarding Assessment that evidenced that our son was a source of danger to our daughter support from our son’s therapist, who put into hard hitting technical language what I had referred to in vaguer terms as our son’s ‘dark inner world’ telephone calls and emails from our county councillor demanding action emails from the local chief of police demanding action emails from our son’s therapist questioning why there hadn’t been action regular phone calls from me to keep up the pressure threats that we would instruct a lawyer (true, we were about to)

(writing this on my phone.....) (continued..) Amazingly, to me, despite clear evidence of a Safeguarding risk and that our daughter is at physical risk and is being traumatised, plus evidence that we have tried EVERYTHING that we could and our commitment, it has taken over 12 weeks to get them to acknowledge that ‘an alternative placement is needed’. SSs now say he is too complex and risky to find a Foster placement for, which perversely is a good thing, as it increases the chance of getting funding for a therapeutic community. We now wait for the next step. Agreement to fund. We’ll have to apply more pressure for that. And all this fighting is for an outcome that we don’t actually want and one that is utterly heartbreaking! Good luck getting what you and your family need. You will almost certainly need to fight every step of the way!

I don’t have any experience of this, but I just wanted to send you my love and support. You sound like you are under such a huge amount of stress and pressure, and you should be getting more support. Is your son a risk to your other children? If so you need to put this is writing to social services ASAP. They owe your other children a duty of care too. Personally I would also instruct a solicitor to write on your behalf. You need to instruct one who has experience and expertise in this area. I think that if social services are formally put “on notice” of the safeguarding risk to your other children and also have a solicitor writing on your behalf, social services will have to start listening. If Camhs are medicating him in this way, sound pretty serious to me and sounds like he needs some expert therapeutic support like a therapeutic community. Do Camhs think this and if so will they put this in writing? Take care xx

Hello ! So very sad for your situation, and so sad that this scenario is repeated so many times. You need to take photos of all your bruises and cuts and house damage, just in case, if you do get some Respite, that you don’t find yourself being “accused”, with CPS investigation. Also, the pictures will remind you, in times of despair, exactly why you perhaps had to resort to residential care or s20. SS seem unable to take in that an 8 year-old can inflict such attacks, especially when at other times they are “settled” and appear to be doing really well. Once the pictures reveal the extent of your issues (SS wrote ‘only Mr and Mrs D have seen behaviour’ implying we were making it up, until Children’s Guardian also saw it), but beware, once behaviour is acknowledged then your parenting comes under fire, because blame has to be directed somewhere. I am thinking of you, and hoping you get some real help. Becoming a punch-bag will may leave real health issues for you much later down the line xxx

To me it is obvious that you have adopted a special needs child, do you see it this way? What a rubbish that he can not be assessed for autisme, you just need to be at the right place. Call the autistic society, they know places for 'difficult to assess individuals'. https://www.careplace.org.uk/Services/11577/The-NAS-Lorna-Wing-C My child has two assessments when from asd experts and a whole asd team, whatever was wrong it wasnot asd, well he's severe now at 17. I am not saying this is the case but say he has asd, than by parenting him like a mainstream child or 'attachment parenting' (not saying you do that but as you have experience with birth children it is easy to think that you use strategies what worked with them) those children can become extremely agressive. I think he needs proper assessments in the first place, instead of a whole list with disorder you need to know his primary difficulty. Just something to think about! not being critical but 8 is very young and if it is autisme there are many things what can be done and he's likely to respond to favourable. I think you need to see the two hours not as 'reward' but as opportunity to have some distance, it is very easy to get sucked into a negative vortex when children hurt parents, and it is tricky to react differently. I remember years ago when I was having my first experiences working on groups with children with asd and other behavioural difficulties that there was always a 'person on call', than what you talk about was happening, they took the very challenging child out the situation, I felt like a failure, the child was 'nice' to them. Later when I was on call myself I learned that it had nothing to do with giving the child fun or extra attention. after they showed horrible behaviours. It is a out breaking an impasse, creating breathing space and a 'fresh' start when the child returns. If you feel resentfull when he returns it is difficult to greet him with enthousiasme. I know it might only last two minutes or the rest of the bedtime routine....... But start at the beginning, your child has brain damage and you need to know for sure where this originates from otherwhise it's very challenging to parent in such a way he responds positive. He has an attachment diagnose? you do what you think is good for such child? If fasd or asd is his main problem this way of parenting is unlikely to resolve anything. A good tip whatever you do is try to think quicker than him, try to prevent things going pear shaped, and treat him years younger, have expectations as if he's 4. Medication could be a support to help your family through this tricky time.

I would back up what twocats said about photos. I was advised to do this by a friend who is a doctor and sw advised us to write a record of every incident. Your son may be admitting it at the moment, but in the wrong mood that can change( or if sw are looking to blame you) words alone can get turned around easily or ignored. ) Plus keep an exact record of incidents and your own actions leading up to them so it's clear your parenting was not the reason. It seems that some sw struggle with the idea that it is the kids trauma that makes them behave violently, and that the parental cause is not the present parent(s) but the one(s) in the children past. Sounds like your son needs a full time therapeutic placement and might struggle with foster care, Fot getting the authorities to react in a no blame manner, I would be approaching this from a special needs angle rather than a social work angle. SW procedures have to blame the parent as the whole system is towards protecting children from difficult parents not to protect the parents from difficult kids. Given the list of issues above your son has special needs. The special needs system isn't a blame one( though these parents still too often have to be very persistent to get the child's needs addressed properly ! ) If you have any official diagnosis or can get one of E.g. the global development delay and the FAS! As either on its own can require special schooling, and even any paperwork that mentions these as a possibility can help. Have a word with the doctor to see if he can produce anything as evidence of special needs. When we got school support for our sons dyspraxia a doctors letter was accepted as evidence of need , even though the OT who mentioned dyspraxia had not actually written a formal diagnosis down. Evidence from school that they cannot meet his needs will also help. My hubby does school transport and one kid he transports sometimes has autism. He has a full time placement but comes home once a fortnight for a weekend. The parents still have parental rights there is no care proceedings with its blame culture. The hardest bit is getting agreement of funding but rattle every special needs cage you can and don't expect anything useful from SW ! I can't advise on funding as its different system here in Scotland to anywhere else in the UK. Hopefully others can advise. Best Wishes Pingu

Totally agree with Pingu - although I don’t have any direct experience of seeking therapeutic placement - I would go down the medical / education route as much as possible and get as much evidence as you can of his needs - also contacting police and getting incidents / involvement logged with them - if your daughters have been to the GP or had counselling to deal with things or even if it’s affected them at school then maybe you can look st letters supporting this as evidence. I would try and find / visit appropriate residential placements and then make a case for them. I presume he has an EHCP so depending when the review is - and you can ask for an emergency one I believe - make a case for the need for the placement. Are school on board - can they support this? You can get respite through SEN / disability services too. Personally I’d steer well clear of SWs unless absolutely necessary - though if you have PASW involvement sometimes they can be very good and really push other services to work

Hi, haven’t read all the replies but I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Immediately you need to be safe. You can all the police to a juvenile incident and they might try fobbing you off but I have to tell you that they can remove him to a place of safety- so you aren’t getting beaten up Re the respite, go with it. It’s not about rewarding his crap behaviour. It’s about giving you a break. Your whole family a break. It’s also giving him a break from home, which frankly he can’t cope with. I’m afraid our ad was similar and frankly it was too hard for her to manage family Several crisis and no or little action meetings later... another crisis when she hurt our bc This time we were all present and all of us had an awful job stopping her. Psychotherapist said you have to find a way to get ad away from family or she will seriously hurt someone. The psychotherapist and other CAMHS reports suggested if blossom couldn’t be managed at home then she would require a therapeutic community placement. We asked for a ‘placement support meeting’ but tbh we were in the serious poop by then and to our surprise they all agreed to a tc but then none of the services would speak to health to sort it out and fund it. Mr pt and I went round to see a few places that met the CAMHS prescription of a tc that would be suitable. In the end, blossom stayed with my parents in the short term because I didn’t trust ss to take her into foster care and ‘then’ place her in a tc I suspected ss would ensure that she bounced around the fc system before they even considered a tc. We argued and won. Blossom went straight to a tc from our families care. Our MP intervened on our behalf in the end. Ss never forgave us for this. They were truly awfully horrible to us and accused us of abandoning blossom because we had Pip (convieniently forgetting we had already got partridge) Sheesh they were rotten Anyway. Once blossom was placed in the tc we went back to ss and asked she be made s20. Ss weren’t keen until I found a handy bit of government law that says any child placed to live somewhere by health, educAtion, ss etc must be made s20. They must have access to their own sw and iro mechanism. Most kids in tc’s are tripartite funded- educAtion ss and health. In our case, health funded the place because the recommendation and prescription came from them. Ss eventually coughed up a bit towards the fees. Blossom never had an EHCP and we tried 5 goes to get her one.... Have a look at Saacs provision and maybe consider the mulberry bush school and later the beech lodge school.

i was finally listen too when dd overdosed for the nth time ,she was dropped to the hospital by a third party and I rang SS to say I wasnt going to hospital. I got a lecture to say it was my duty and I said my duty that day was to watch me son play golf as I hadnt seen him play for over a year and it was his day and I wasn't letting dd muck it up again (she always did something to prevent me going).Put the phone down , switched off mobile and went with ds. not the way I wanted it but I got what I wanted . good luck .dont be fobbed off and if occasion arises it use it.

UPDATE - Another crisis meeting held yesterday. All services agreed we need respite. Minimum 2 weeks then ongoing support to be put in place. Only problem was SS still not listening and saying nothing available. Unfortunately I took unwell during the meeting and had to be taken to hospital. Amazingly SS found emergency placement but I had to sign a section 20 order. I’m not sure what this means or if I should have signed it as I was in no fit frame of mind. SS are now saying what we wanted as 2 weeks respite can now be prolonged for months but we can have supervised contact. I have woke up this morning and feel like I’m being treated as a criminal! Surely we could have been provided emergency respite without the need of a section 20? I say emergency but we have been asking for 7 months!!!!

This sounds frankly abusive. You were effectively coerced into signing a legally significant document with huge implications for your family when too ill (by the sound of it) for proper consent. Could you get some legal advice? I am horrified by how you are being treated. I think you should formally complain at the very least - but do understand how difficult it can be to summon up the energy for this. It sounds as though this cruel and abusive process is making you ill. Would your G.P. be a useful advocate? I am so sorry you are being treated like this - utterly appalling.

Dont panic you retain full pr under sec 20 and can remove your son if you wish to. It is not about making you out to be a criminal. If ss have concerns they could get an interim care order to stop you taking him back home tbut they would then have to go down the care proceedings route for a full care order . They would need a strong case to remove your parental rights under the circumstances and would have to convince the judicial system it was in your sons best interests. I think any child voluntarily placed in care for any length of time would need a sec 20 because you as parents are requesting your child be placed in foster care. As others have said though they dont like to leave children on sec 20 long term any more. I am a fc and had a 9 yr old once who had been in care since a toddler on sec 20 but those days are gone now it seems. So sorry things are so rubbish for you all atm . It sounds v hard . Hope you feel better soon. Xxx