Published on 12, July, 2020
My son is currently in the last year of school and has just had his 18th birthday. We’re in the process of navigating what will be the next steps for him.
For information my son is non-verbal, cannot read or write, cannot dress himself, wash himself… the list goes on…
we are getting very limited support from the PFAL and we feel like the responsibility is on us to find the right setting for him once he leaves his current school. As you can imagine. For us as parents this is a stressful and worrying time. We are having to wait for budgets to be approved, we have lost respite while the red tape is being sorted. It feels like stress upon stress.
one area that is a particular area of confusion is where we need to manage his finances. This includes things like his child trust fund and his benefits. He does not and never will have the mental capacity to manage anything like this. But we are not sure what we need to do.
Is there anyone on here with previous experience or does anyone know of people we can talk to for help and support?
Thanks in advance
Hi, we had a similar situation when our son was leaving school. The social worker is supposed to help have a plan for post 19 either further education opportunities or other social services available for your son once he leaves. My son has autism and severe learning difficulties involving very little communication and this can lead to behaviour problems due to not being understood. We had to remove him from school early and I had to do the ground work to get him into a local centre for adults, basically doing the social workers job as they take forever to sort things out. We got no advice or support about benefits so we just contacted the job centre who told us to apply on line for universal credit. You can be an appointee for your son’s finances and have them go into your bank. For child trust fund you will need power of attorney as the account is in his name and this is a costly process. If you didn’t put extra money in his account over the years then it’s probably not worth pursuing. Our son is now 20 and has just been dumped by the adult services centre due to his behaviour outbursts. No warning or discussion just said don’t send him in as they had no staff. Now trying to pursue other options or be his full time carer so very stressed at the moment. If you don’t get any joy from social worker then citizens advice will help you work out any benefits your entitled too. Hope this helps a little.