Surviving half term was a touch-and-go event. At some points, I wasn’t sure that either myself nor my daughter was going to make it. It was a relief to drop her off at school on Monday morning, and send her off with a wave as she happily disappeared through the door.
I slept. For two days, she was at school and I slept. On the third day, I still wanted to stay in bed, but just about managed to drag myself out for a walk with my husband. It was with some relief that I got a call from the Disabilities social worker telling us that, even though it was not as much as she promised, nor what she promised, we have got 8 hours a week of direct payment during the holidays.
Direct payment… what the f**k is direct payment?!
If the above statement is going around in your head in some form or other, rest assured, you are not alone. I had no idea either. It turns out, what it does is to allow you to employ someone to act as a personal assistant of sorts for your child – to take them out/babysit for a number of hours a week.
In the cases of disabled teens, including fae, this allows them to go out with friends without supervision. Well, not without supervision, but without their parents helicoptering around them. Instead they can have a teacher, LSA, or other professional they know. Which is much better, I’m sure, and doesn’t put any crimp in their social life.
In the case of our 5 year old, it means she will get to spend time with one of her favourite adults from school during the breaks, and hopefully I won’t go insane.
To get this underway, you have two choices in our council: option A, you can undertake the sole responsibility for being an employer: sort the HMRC; PAYE; DBS; and the rest of the paperwork required for an adult to work with a young person – all by yourself – and submit it to the disabilities team for approval. Or, option B: you can have them put you in touch with a non-profit charity which gets you and the prospective adult in question to fill in a few forms, and then they do all the liaising for you. The advantage of option B is that all you need to submit on a rolling basis are timesheets to show when your child was with their ‘personal assistant’ – as they are called (seriously, she’s 5 and she has a personal assistant. I’m 8 times her age, have far more to do, and significantly less sense of order. I want a personal assistant!)
The advantages of option A is ….. umm anyone? Yeah, I got nothing. If anyone does please comment below.
So, I have a small tree’s worth of forms to fill in, but I’m hoping to get that done in the next two weeks, and have this actioned in time for the summer break (ambitious, I know, but I can live in hope). If not I will be googling ‘How to keep your child occupied during summer’ every day for the coming 6 weeks.
If only I had a personal assistant to do the paperwork…
Raising the Modern Fae 