Friends of the family foster our son as he cannot live at home because he has autism and ADHD and has challenging behaviour. He was previously in Local Authority care for four years and had seven foster carers in this time. This was a voluntary placement with us maintaining full parental rights, due to him kicking and punching the other children. Friends were interested in becoming official foster carers, giving up work and being paid full time, and when our sons' placement came to an end when he took a knife to his last carer, they said they wanted to go ahead and officially foster him. When they were turned down by the Local authority they said they would take him anyway if we helped with looking after him. We agreed because we wanted him to have a permanent home, and not be moved around. However, she works shifts and looking after him is proving difficult and stressful because of this. She has cut some shifts and we pay her to do this, from the dla, child benefit and child tax credit (my husband has been ill off work since last January). Neither of us is well, my husband suffers from severe clinical depression, and I have rheumatoid arthritis. If we look after him at their house our family is split, and the other children, one of whom is also autistic and has special needs get very unsettled. If we bring him home he cannot stand the younger ones and is becoming increasingly verbally aggressive. He needs one-to-one care at all times. They do not accept that this is a difficult for us, and when we tried to talk to them they told us it wasn't their problem. I have also found out that they are not giving him his medication, which impacts upon his behaviour around his siblings. They have organised others to come in and babysit so they can have an evening out, which is fine, but they didn't tell us, so I don't even know who these other sitters were. There is no communication from them about our boy, despite us asking to be kept informed. We try to be easy going, and to have him when they ask, but communication only seems to go one way. We are beside ourselves with worry because although our son seems happy, this placement has had a big effect upon the other children and on our own health. We are grateful that our friends have given him a home, but we expected to still be a part of deciding what happened with him as we have always maintained full parental rights; we love him very much and want him to be a part of our family, despite the fact that he cannot live with us. Any thoughts on how to handle the situation would be greatly appreciated as I feel very bleak at the moment.
