I am gob smacked!

I have not blogged much about Little Man and his ADHD/Aspergers or daily life with him. I have begun to document our journey, the start of our concerns and have reached the first contact we had with CAMHS which was not a good start all told, as she told us the problems were due to a new baby, me spending a vast majority of the latter stages of pregnancy confined to a hospital bed some 20 miles away, and us being over anxious parents - totally missing the fact we had requested the referral due to our concerns before I was even pregnant. Either that or she thinks I am some scientific miracle who had sustained the longest human pregnancy in the world.

Anyhow without going into too much detail as I will continue with blogging about our journey, we eventually got referred to CAMHS, got seen by a lovely lady who actually listened and worked with us. Despite this CAMHS appointments were slow to come through, being booked months in advance, each thing our lovely Dr C did then had to be reviewed by a board which took a couple more months and in short it took up to a year to get one thing in place. The school he was at also seemed very keen to work with us, and the ed physc had Little Man's number.

I was concerned about the move back North as finally after 4 years I felt we were making progress and at the stage of getting the right assessments and help. But I have been nothing but impressed. We were seen by the CAMHS dept here within 4 weeks of moving, we were also seen by a paediatrican at the Children's Development Centre, the ed pysch came in within 5 months of him being in the school (took over 2 years previously) and so far since October we have had 5 appointments with CAMHS. The school SENCO is also brilliant and even without the say so of the ed psych, they have implemented 1:1 support on a daily basis for reading and writing, a teaching assistant every morning to over see him and bring him back to focus, and support in the playground.

All of the above has had me thinking that infact our old town and school were pretty rubbish.

Tonight however has taken the biscuit and I am bowing down to whoever needs to be thanked. 3 weeks ago Little man was given the proper Aspergers assessments, as to date everyone just cites 'strong aspergers traits' which in laymans terms means jackshit if you want to use it to get extra support.

Tomorrow we are going in to discuss the results - yes within 3 weeks of the assessment, that in itself is amazing. Last week I asked the school SENCO if she had heard anything about the Ed Pyschs report as I want to take it with us, so it was chased. Today I was stopped in school and told the ed pysch sent her apologies and would try and get something over to me today, and had asked for my contact details to save time - WHAT! I can't beleive it hasn't had to go via bloody Dubai to reach us.

TO cap it off though at 7.41 my mobile rings and it is the ed pysch herself explaining what the delay has been, apologising, checking my email address, asking me to proof her report and let her know my feedback before she cc's everyone else tomorrow, and to tell me she had tried to ring CAMHS to speak with the team today but had no success but would try again tomorrow morning before we went for the meeting.

Lets just say I needed a rather large glass of wine, and a sit down to comprehend what had just happened.

Do you know this is proof that some local authorities do actually want to help your child, and do really care, you child is not just another number in the system. As far as I am concerned this was above and beyond what I would ever expect.

And just to say I think her report is very fair and makes some brilliant points about Little Man and how he should be managed.