Strategies parents have used

Initial Stages:

"Do everything you can to make sure all care assessment/support plans reflect your plan. You should always be presented with the draft. Read it carefully and don't be afraid to request changes/additions."

"Money is always at the bottom of any social services (i.e. lack of it!) and therefore any opportunity for them to tell us how well our young adults are doing is also a tick for them to say they need less care and therefore they cost less."

"Get clarification regarding terminology used i.e. what does ‘priority' mean? Your local authority may have a different interpretation!"

"The most important first step was to write to our Learning Disability Services:
• We outlined our son's plan, making it clear that he would not be returning to his parents
• We requested a face to face assessment with his social worker and a care plan completed in sufficient time for the plan to be in place by the time our son left college."

"Read your local authorities policy documents and don't be afraid to take your arguments to the top. We read 88 pages of Policy Documents and Strategy, and diligently followed up correspondence. At one point we were asked what we were quoting from - they seemed surprised it was from their own Strategy Document!"

Determination

"Be aware of all that needs doing - this is extremely important in order to feel prepared and minimize stress levels for all concerned (particularly parents!)"

To get what you want, you have to get very involved and stay involved in order for the process to continue to a reasonable standard."

"Fight for what you believe is right - don't be fobbed off! Make yourself heard and make sure you don't make it too easy for the social services to settle for anything other than what you feel is the best."

"We asked for a list of approved housing providers and visited with M anything that met our criteria (there was not a lot). When they told us that we could not visit because these were people's homes we said ‘ask the residents if they would mind showing us around' - the residents were delighted to do so. M's reaction when we visited different housing options helped reinforce in all our minds what we were looking for."

"We have had to be extremely determined to get what we want -we worked very hard looking at houses and sorting out all the various needs."

Give Them What They Need to Know

"We sent prospectuses from suitable housing options from around the UK explaining how they could meet M's needs - we were letting social services know that provision did exist and that we were not going to quietly wait and eventually settle for second best."

"Find out as much as you can about available options, decide what is right for you and put it in writing to your local authority asap."

"Investigate options that you think match your needs and feed back to the authority."
"I know this is not easy - but find out what is happening in other counties and find a good one to use as a comparison! You can hold this up as leverage for what you want."

Communication

"Follow up diligently on communication" - "keep in touch, ask for regular progress updates and keep referring to any agreed timescales."

"Always ask for timescales."

"Our emails, requesting clarification and asking questions on their own Policy Documents and Strategy, caused so many issues that we were "kicked upstairs". After a clarity meeting with the 2 head people, enormous progress was made."

And finally:

"Visit the Citizens Advice Bureau to obtain all the details on any benefits your young adult should be getting."