Hello @Shaz51
Thank you for continuing to think of me here. I always appreciate it when I see you've tagged me, but I don't always have time to respond. I've started my last Uni assignment for the semester, so currently reading journal articles. This assignment is focussed partly on assisting people who live with mental ill health and their parents/carers, so I'm finding the research super interesting as it has so far very much validated my lived experience and that of my son and I'm learning so much.
Our boy will be 18 this week. He will finally be able to do legally what he has been doing for several years!!! 😳 I am sure he's not alone on that one. He's working again, has decided to continue his apprenticeship that he lost in August last year. He will have completed 12 months soon and will be a 2nd year apprentice.
After his hospitalisation in January/February we decided to divide one of our living rooms (in our very small cottage) to give him his own room, and his younger brother then having his own room too. It was a lot lot cheaper than building a granny flat in the back yard, and a very good decision. It has given all of us a bit more 'space' from each other, and I think our boy has really appreciated that he feels valued that we have made a nice and inviting space for him. He's very happy with it and our other son loves having his own room too. We've still had our ups and downs and recently a fair bit of turmoil as a family, particularly between my husband and I. Trying to find that balance of how to parent, how to allow some space and let our son to learn from his mistakes, while also trying to protect him and everyone else. We settled on coming up with some 'house rules' which are written on the fridge. They're pretty much targeted at our oldest son, but because they apply to everyone, including his friends, he has accepted them. The rules include no smoking on our property, and a limit on how much alcohol can be consumed per person per day at our house. We don't enjoy drunkenness, and he wanted to use our back yard as party central, so all his friends now know that's not going to be accepted. They need to be respectful of our home and everyone who lives here. They've been good with the new rules so that's a bonus.
I've contacted a carer respite provider to request some assistance with respite for our son when I go away on holiday with our younger son in late August. Son number 1 won't accept any help from any support orgs to learn skills/budgeting/living skills etc, and he doesn't want to apply for the NDIS, so I've decided that I'll get some services for me. That way, when I'm away I can be sure that our house hasn't become a party house, and his new 'hobby' of tattooing himself won't result in ink all over the house. I've also requested some domestic/cleaning assistance to help me. Will see if my application gets approved.
We also got a letter from the adult community mental health team, claiming our son had missed an appointment recently (that none of us knew about) and so they'd 'carefully considered' his service and decided to close his file. On the one hand, we have been very dissatisfied with the staff/lack of empathy/and lack on consultation and partnership from the staff there, so we don't want a service from them anyway, but the advocate part of me is pretty angry that they can act in such a punitive way towards a person who supposedly didn't attend an appointment once. I hate to think what would happen for some people who would just react to a letter like that and not trust or engage with the community mental health team at all in future - it's very poor form in my opinion. I think their actions and readiness to 'close a file' shows the lack of diligence, understanding and care they need to have for the people they are supposed to serve. While on the one hand, yes, if a person doesn't want a service that's ok, but they didn't even call me, and I think that reflects very badly on them.
We don't need their service anyway, the psychiatrist who saw our son during his last hospital admission has agreed to see him privately anytime we need, and we have a new GP who is just about to start with our son, so I hope between them, and the inpatient unit if we need it, we can support our son on his recovery.
Anyway, better get back to my Uni assignment now. I'll make more effort to show up here when the semester is finished. All the best to everyone, thank you for reading my update. 😊
I look forward to hearing how you are Shaz and everyone else here. Tinker
