Hi
I’m sister-in-law to a woman with autism and learning disability. My brother had a learning disability and they were married/together for over 20 years. Sadly my brother died this year leaving my sister-in-law in a very changed situation. They had done everything together, going out shopping, on holiday, to their clubs etc. They lived in sheltered accommodation for the older age group (my brother was older than her), and they had support - me (at a distance) and their social worker and support worker. Without my brother, my sister-in-law has needed a lot of support and currently has personal assistants with her every day for several hours. But there has been some increasingly challenging behaviour, including an incident where her PA could have been hurt, and it is becoming clear that her support workers are not really specialist in autism so there is a huge lack of understanding of what it is like to be her and experience overwhelming emotions she cannot express. My sister-in-law was offered access to a specialist psychologist to help with bereavement and understanding relationships but she refused to go. I think she needs that specialist help, but also the team looking after her need to be guided by expertise. I think they need to understand Positive Behaviour Support as it just sounds to me like they are blaming her for what happened rather than asking themselves why and how it could be prevented in the future. What support for my sister-in-law should I be asking for? (I will be asking her social worker.) Any advice welcome.
Thank you.
