Emma tells us about the period of transition that her son, 17 year-old Joshua is about to face and the services that are available to help the transition.
I have always feared Joshua becoming older as it felt like a step into the unknown. Every birthday sounded so much older than the year just gone, the jump from 9 to 10 years old for instance seemed enormous, but of course it wasn’t at all, it is just a number. Now the jump from 17 to 18 , where we are approaching now, that is a significant change. In the eyes of the law, Joshua will become an adult next March, when he turns 18. I cannot keep my head buried in the sand about this one, this change is approaching rapidly and so I need to face it head on.
“I don’t need to think about that yet surely!”
Even as young as 15/16, health and education professionals referred to ‘Transition’ and I tried hard to ignore them and joke that I did not know what would happen next week, never mind that far ahead. But the references to transition did not go away, they gathered pace and they cropped up when we saw his neurologist who would be handing him onto an adult neurologist, our children’s epilepsy nurse who has taken care of his seizures since he was 4 years old would be passing him on and in his Education Health Care Plan meetings, when they would ask what we wanted Joshua to do when he left school at 19? I wanted to shout out loud “Stop it, he’s only 16… I don’t need to think about that yet surely!!” We had finally got to a comfortable place – he was in the best school for him, we had found respite provision that suited us all and we had established doctors who knew and understood him – and now, because of an anniversary, everyone wanted to throw all that we had carefully built up into a big bag and shake it up. I resisted it with all my might.
Opportunity
Then something changed this May and I began to relax and embrace the change, to see it as an opportunity rather than a threat. This change was due largely to one person: a social worker who was allocated to us from ‘Futures Plus’, who would represent Joshua once he was an adult. She paid us several visits, getting to know both us as his parents and Joshua in his home, school and respite session. She always delivered what she promised to do and most importantly, she listened, giving us the time to explain how we felt or how things are, she even saw my husband and I separately, which nobody has done before, to explore our very different perspectives.
Respite for young people
In my mind I had envisaged adult daycare and respite services as being grim places, where my 18 year old son might be mixing with 80+ year old dementia sufferers, with the staff trying to juggle their very different needs. Our social worker immediately explained that there were facilities specifically for young people and so I relaxed and decided that Joshua might actually enjoy the next step of his life, rather than it being a necessary evil. She visited all of the local adult respite places and even rated them from her own perspective, but encouraged us to visit each one to make up our own minds. I am confident that she too is determined to find somewhere suitable for Joshua’s needs. We have prioritised Respite as his current facility cannot have him beyond 18, whereas he can stay at school , in 6th form, until he is 19 so we have an extra year to find daycare solutions. So far we have looked at 2 of the 4 in our local authority area and I plan to get round the others this month. Joshua had to go out of area for his current short breaks and we have been reassured that if there is nothing suitable locally, we can argue that Joshua’s needs can only be met by a provision out of area. So far I have to say that I have found nothing that comes close to his current provision. I will not compromise, he will not be going somewhere mediocre just because it is local. I now know what I am looking for, as we have experienced the best, and I will keep searching until I find it.
Change
I have never been good at change, it always seems to be forced upon us just when things are settled. I can recall begging Joshua’s nursery school head teacher if he could stay with her until he was 16 please. She replied kindly, “No Emma, he can’t, he will get to be too big for the furniture here”. We made the move to mainstream primary, then to a special school and then to his current special school so, given that I hate change, we have done a fair amount of it in Joshua’s 17 years and of course, we survived. The difference is that this time we have a social worker by our sides who will help us to negotiate our way through this mysterious maze and help to pull us through – I am sure.
As we approach March 5th, I will update you on how we are handling transition and will outline the highs and lows that we are bound to face. I sincerely hope that our experience may help some of you who might also have a son or daughter who is approaching this critical age. I do not want to scare those readers who have ten year-olds now, but this Transition will come much faster than you think, so it is worth thinking about it sooner, rather than later. If I had read that in 2011, I know I would have ignored that advice, thinking that it was not relevant to me, but I would urge you not to be an ostrich like I was. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes, so that you can hear the ‘transition’ word without a shudder.
