Have got a Tranistion worker, but don't find her much help as all they keep saying is we've never done this before your right in that childrens and adult Social services teams do not work together and seem to find it difficult to get together about things like this. We have expressed that it is not respite unless the two boys are in respite together but sometimes feel its falling on deaf ears. When your child reaches 18 and moves to adult services in N.Ireland that means we now have to pay for his respite and we will get a quarterlyy bill from the Trust so your very lucky you get your paiid for. Have explored direct payments before but no one would work for us because we have the 2 boys and the trust wouldn't give us 2 separate packages for each boy it was one amount to share between the both of them - so after we exhausted that situation we gave up and decided we didn't want direct payments.

i only get mine paid for as matt is still under childrens services next year we have to pay a percentage but its only a small amount but if they decide he has got behavioural problems (which is why ss kicked him out of their respite ) then he comes under health and that is free respite apparantly but only found this out last month from transistional sw

the whole idea of having a transitional social worker is that she can work between the childrens and adults services but if you have to pay for you adult sons respite then you get to choose when he goes surely? how do you get your dates for respite? i used to get a years dates every may (not that they didnt come up with "emergencies" to change them) that way you can plan when to put older son in with the adult respite.

We will get our dates 6monthly the same as childrens services, we cannot pick any of our dates, they will ask us is there any essential dates this is for anniversarys or birthdays, but they won't guarantee we get them, I haven't got neither of these dates this year as they prioritise who gets these dates. I always get my dates in 4 months early but am lucky to get anything I ask for, I would imagine when our older son comes into adult services I will have to give both bodies my copy of dates that I would want and hope for the best, the rest of the six months they will slot you in where ever they can but its how they assess you over here, everyones level of respite is completely different, some people only get respite every 3 months so we have to see how they assess us and make sure we still get the level of respite we are getting now. I constantly fight my corner that I have 2 children and i am entitled to extra help because its double the care we are giving!!

if you have a care assessment and a carers assessment this should show that your needs havent changed and you still require the same level of respite, i would contact your transisional s/w and if she isnt helping go over her head as you dont need this stress along with everything else, also see if you can speak to someone in adult services about how they work respite out in case it is different in that you can request the dates rather than be told when they are.
are there any support groups that can help you fight these battles like a carers group?