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hi , hope this doesnt induce intense yawning...lol ...hey i did my best, have a read see what you think , and er....be sure to get back to me wont you, it would mean an awful lot, thanks!!!

I am a single parent with 2 boys 20 and 11. My eldest is on medication for panic attacks, anxiety, OCD etc, but despite this he has coped well.hes a very bright lad and I am very proud of him, he started his masters degree in animation at university September 06 I have Fibromyalgia Syndrome this is a chronic pain/fatigue condition that affects my muscles, making it very difficult for me to get around at times, and leaving me feeling devoid of energy.

My 11 year old has had difficulties for as long as i can remember. From the age of 6, he started school refusing, I knew he had problems with his writing and was constantly bullied by the other children in his class, mainly because of his snort that he couldn't help doing....
From the age of 8 years, his absence from school had become a chronic problem, I was beside myself as to what to do as he would rage out of control becomes destructive and at times even violent. We have had a complex problem in that he was school refusing and I was finding it extremely difficult in the mornings to get to grips with him, as my Fibrofog tends to be worse in the mornings and also when the weather is cold, this causes me a lot of pain.

The Education social worker became involved, at first she was quite nice and helpful towards us, but she soon started to show another side......she started to ask me for a signature to release all of my psychotherapy records from 6years ago......considering that this intensive psychotherapy was totally voluntary and upon my own insistence i refused to give her the signature, besides , those files were mainly about my past and contained confidential, sensitive, personal information........i didnt see why she needed access to them so i refused.......she didnt like this, saying it wouldnt look good for me once she told everyone i had refused her request.... She would come to our home on a daily basis saying to my son that if he didnt go to school this proved that he didn't care about me and didn't love me and if I ended up in jail, it would be his fault. I don't think it is fair to emotionally blackmail any child, especially a child who is as vulnerable as mine was, my son was not the rebellious teenager with some major attitude, he was a 9 yr old child, communicating the only way he knew how to, that something was very wrong..



I kept insisting that I did not believe my son was simply being stubborn and that i felt there was something wrong, all in vain.
one day she just turned up on the doorstep, saying she needed a favour, she said she needed me to write all life events from birth including a parents, brief description , events, places i lived etc.
well i did it... the chronology of my life events.... i was rather upfront about my past, my childhood as being in therapy taught me that no-matter how traumatic past events may have been it was the hear and now that mattered....i did a good job. in fact i mentioned the fact that my mother was a drama queen that saw everything like mountains and not mole hills....eg. if i cut myself she would go on about septicemia etc. thats just the way she was....overanxious....

i guess ed soc worker was quite a forceful lady, quick with her mouth and that was used to dealing with rebellious teens....my son was 9 but this didnt stop her from prodding and poking at him when he complained he felt sick , and sitting on him refusing to move until he promised he would go into school.....all done in a lighthearted way of course but never the less this wasnt the way my son had perceived it, it really wasnt the way i imagined a educational social worker to conduct herself...
in the end connah had had enough of her verbal assaults and locked himself in the toilet room refusing to come out, he was scared of her
and i cant blame him.....at this point she gave up on trying to get him to attend, thank god!

Upon my insistence, he was rushed an appointment through to CAHMS as he had other ongoing problems such as,
1. he is too scared to go to the toilet alone,

2. wouldnt sleep alone
,
3. would follow me or his brother around the house, He felt the need to be with someone constantly as this made him feel safe and secure.

4. He didn't seem to understand the simple things which we take for granted.

5. and has had constant physical symptoms, headaches , tummyaches, feeling sick, constipation, which continue to this day.

6.he had never played alone as children do.....he always needed input from others

7.he has fears of any type of insect that often stops him from playing outside in summer
in winter when it rains he constantly scans the floor for slugs, it seems to bother him a lot

8. he hates water, therefore doesnt swim, doesnt ride a bike,hates the dark, has problems fastening buttons or zips

9. hates any interference in his fixed routines, e.g.he has a laptop ever since he got it at christmas he will do nothing else than download
tv clips of certain favourite characters.... this go s on 24/7 we have had to empty his hard drive twice so far, aprox 40gb of clips.....
any suggested variation to connahs pc habits are met with a short and simple no....

10.social isolation is a main feature , always has been, though others blame me for this, it is connah that isolates himself.
over the years i have tried everything, he seems to panic when he sees other children.

11. connah is hypersensitive to the light, despite reports from parenting partnership to the contrary, the optician has seen it for
himself and put a 25% tint on his glasses and just recently has darkened them even further... he also is sensitive to certain sounds, like toast being cut, the hoover, music with a lot of bass etc etc
in addition to this he is hypersensitive to clothing, it seems the older he has got the worse it has become. he tolerates clothing if
he is outside the home environment but as soon as he returns he strips off and basically exists inside cotton quilt covers....
this was noted by two camhs nurses and perceived as neglect. its funny as i purposely allowed connah to stay in the way he
normally is in the home environment. as i believed this to be useful to their assessment of him.

12. my son has never had any real friends, unfortunately mainly the type that want something from him....just recently he was
elated as two local boys from his old school had called round.
they wanted him to bring his yu-gi-oh cards with him so they could swap.....i saw how excited connah was and though
skeptical i had to let him go....needless to say he came back with half the pile he went with but insisted he did some good swaps.
then the next time they came he sold a big pile of yu-gi-oh cards for six pounds and came back , counted his money it only came to 3.85...
he refuses to believe that the boy did it purposely. he will tolerate most things to maintain friendships.

13. control is also a vital part of connahs day...he is the king of the tv....though on the surface this may seem im a soft touch but we have
been through the years of aggression and oppositional behavior all because we want to view something that interferes with his set timetable of viewing.

14. connah is constantly bored, if i suggest things he may be able to do.....he wont do them i learned that a long time ago...it has to come
from him. he jumps from one task to the next usually watches 3-4 programs at once flicking from one to the other. and if you want to talk to
connah you must accept that he may be playing with a ball or playing with bluetack or anything besides focusing on that person.

15.his eating is very restricted in that he will only eat certain things, the once quite sympathetic dietitian has now put her foot down
stating i have to go shopping daily, etc etc she sent us a diet sheet through the post which i found pretty unhelpful to be honest.
we have endured weeks of rages, tug of war in the kitchen,oppositional behavior and then more recently ,connah worrying about being sent away because he is overweight,
due to the publicity about another little boy that had the same threat looming over him...
however we have had some success and weightloss, im really hoping he can keep it up..... i just cant get him to stop hitting out. his emotional age in my opinion is
like a toddler an when hes frustrated he tends to slap me over the head an pull my hair i cannot get him to stop this....

16.sleep in our house is all over the place, mainly due to connahs anxiety/excitement concerning the events of the next day
he sometimes doesnt sleep till 4.00am eg. a few months ago the ss were pressuring connah to have blood tests....i knew he was
scared and tried to re-assure him but he was so anxious he stayed awake till 6.00am the next morning.
17. connah has vocal and physical tics , at one stage his head jerked down to his shoulder on one side and would snap back
also......these days he does facial grimaces and tongue clacking....
his tics change from time to time, he will do absolutely anything to hide them, he will go into public loos if hes out, when
he was at school he suppressed them in class but this took up an enormous amount of energy and will power so
much so that his work suffered, he was unable to concentrate.
he would later slink off into the toilets shouting his head off releasing his physical tics....sometimes he released in the school
yard, it was pretty easy to do it their as everyone was shouting and running around anyway.
the sad think about connahs tics are that he is overwhelmingly embarrassed and ashamed of them , obviously down
to past bullying experiences...he views them negatively and go s to great personal lengths to conceal them from people.



He went to CAHMS and was apparently assessed, the CAHMS doctor said there was nothing wrong with him
and he must resume school immediately.
I managed to get him in for a few days but the same pattern emerged - he would stick it out for a couple of days and then flatly refuse.

I was called to a meeting, child in need meeting number 4, i was told by the education soc worker and parenting partnership that
they had approached the ss on my behalf and that it was very good news , the ss had promised to listen to my concerns and
promised to try and help our situation. at first i refused as in the past i had got absolutely no-where...however they were pretty
insistant and eventually i agreed....i arrived to a meeting that was the direct opposite to what i had been told.... because the
doctor had said there was nothing wrong and because of his ongoing refusal they insisted they started a core assessment on
my family,.during the meeting the bullying chair decided that everytime i opened my mouth he would tell me to be quiete!!! I was told in no uncertain terms that if I failed to get him in school, I would be taken to court by the LEA and my son would be
placed on the Child Protection register, I just sat there and sobbed, I felt so lost.

My eldest son tried to reason with them by asking "What do you expect my mum to do? carry him ? she isnt well and can't
do this" their reply was ITS NOT OUR PROBLEM!
The pressure was on, I was so scared I was going to lose him, I told him how important it was he went to school, he
knew he didnt have a choice.....
Every morning for about a week he would wake up feeling sick, then he would clutch his throat saying he couldn't breath and would vomit. I was beside myself with worry, I couldn't keep doing this to my son, some mornings I would find myself
crying with him through sheer frustration. It was horrible. I told Social Services what was happening and they told me they didnt care what he did, be it panic , vomit , he must get in school. I decided from there that Social Services were not taking
his emotional wellbeing into consideration, so I had to do it.

I de-registered my son from school in January of this year, the very next day Social Services came round announcing they
were calling a case conference as they felt i was 'purposely isolating my son from his peers'. The case conference was a farce
, there were reports with gross inaccuracies and blatant lies, I exposed the CAHMS doctor for the lies he had told meregarding the non-diagnosis ,the only response i got from this doctor was the apparent training he had undertaken and the
qualifications he allegedly had..... i quoted , code of practice, acts, legislations and protocols. I was fighting for my family,
i'd done my homework and knew my stuff, I stood against them all, on my own, but it was no good, as soon as i was seen to
be making a point they start , just like a pack of wolves......They put my child on the 'at risk' register for emotional and physical abuse.They have also implied I have what is called FII a variant of Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, insinuating that I was
making his difficulties up to draw attention to myself. if i wanted attention, i would definitely use some other way of getting
it thank you very much......
If the matter wasn't so serious I would have laughed at them, it just seemed so unreal.
Since then I have found an independent consultant that specializes in learning difficulties, as Social Services wanted me to
sign my son over to voluntary care.
My son was diagnosed with Aspergers, Tourettes, ODD, ADHD scores 8out of 9 inattention,3out of 5 hyperactivity,4 out of 4
,impulsivity and Sensory Integration Dysfunction. I believe this speaks for itself. I was in the process of taking the camhs doctor to the General Medical Council and the LEA to judicial review in the high courts in London as they will not assess my son for special needs.
He has been without an education now for two years, Social Services will not assess my sons needs or mine for that matter as they feel we do not fit their criteria. I have found the service to be absolutely deplorable. My social worker suggested I sign him over to voluntary care, so that they may assess him in a different environment, I asked her on that occasion to leave my home, I was gravely upset.
I feel their plan of action is to leave us with as little support as possible and they are waiting for me to drop.
The fact is, the entire situation has a massive impact on my illness,as im supposed to avoid stress like the plague, trouble is when stressed my body, eg, muscles carry the tension resulting in an constant elevated pain levels throughout my body..... I am in a state of exhaustion. I cannot rest during the day, if I sleep my son panics as he is then on his own. His social life is zero and has been for four years as has mine. I'm screaming inside at the unjust way we have and are being treated.
We need help yet no-one will help us because the local authorities doctor says there is nothing wrong, they deny me any access to services for children with special needs and thats how it stands until i can prove otherwise. Isolation feels like a sentence, the question is what did we ever do wrong? Meanwhile I can only watch as my son gets worse, his tics, obsessions and short
term memory are at an all time high, I try my best to keep his spirits up, however I am no
match for the corrupt professionals , Social Services and such like. They dont care about us, despite their 'Duty of Care'.


Unfortunately, that was my first mistake you see, once upon a time I actually thought they did care and would have been happy to help with easing our situation.


I am also told that at the case conference review 6th october 2006 Social Services are likely to initiate care proceedings. To say I'm scared is an understatement, they are coming at me from all sides.
recently discovered that my solicitor wasnt looking out for my families best interests, there is a definate conflict of interest when it comes to serving the general public....
Changed solicitor to one that is less fond of the Social Services, good move i feel .....
i have some good people behind me who know how much i cherish both my sons, surely ,no law in the land would be so cruel as to remove my youngest.....
But i know different, thats the problem, i know so many mums who s world has been destroyed it really is gut wrenching....
We havent long since had assessments from a couple of independent court appointed Experts, both psychiatrists, one Adult psyche and one Child psyche. I really wasnt shocked when i read the reports, upset , yes, shocked, not at all..........