Yusuf’s story

Read more as Muneeba shares Yusuf’s story:

Yusuf’s care package needed a change as it hadn’t been updated since he was 11. He wasn’t seen by social services until July 2023 (when Yusuf was about to turn 23), which was last year.

It’s taken me from July 2023 all the way up until now to get him to go to respite once a month. Which has taken me how long? Nearly a year. I have been backwards and forwards with social services and still I haven’t had confirmation to say yes we can do this every month. It’s painful.

I’ve contacted social services at least two or three times a week since July 2023. I would say now once every week, sometimes two to three times because, quite frankly, I don’t actually want to talk to them at times. I contact them more often than I’d like – way too much. It’s just the incompetency as I was telling you before, they didn’t pay for one of Yusuf’s regular services which he goes to four times a week so he couldn’t attend that service. He was stuck at home with us for two, three days. And how is that possible when someone’s in a routine? How can you do that? And he’s been going there since the age of 5. It makes no sense and there is no accountability for it, no-one is responsible.

Muneeba feels as though local authorities are leaving Yusuf in constant limbo.

“This is agony and stress for no reason – it doesn’t have to be this way.”

If they’d give the care in the first place, you’d stop all this – you’d give the parents respite, you’d give the young adult respite and it wouldn’t need to go any further. All the stress adds to the family – you’re in limbo permanently. You can’t prepare your young person to go because what happens if it doesn’t turn out. It’s all unnecessary stress – I mean, I have stress on a day-to-day basis with being a carer for a young person with a disability. That’s an ongoing stress and you live with it and deal with it. This is agony and stress for no reason – it doesn’t have to be this way.

Revitalise got social services to agree to the 6 months respite up-front, but this year they’re taking so long and I’m having to do it 1 month at a time. Again, Yusuf has been coming to Revitalise since he was 18 – he was in children’s services at this time and didn’t have an issue with payment and since he’s got to adults’ services, everything has been an issue. This is the same borough and brokerage team that he was with as a child, nothing has changed, it has just become adult services. All the same people – just 1 different team. The brokerage team are the same as he had as a child, the same people deal with both adult and children services.

Yusuf has just come back from Jubilee Lodge today and from tomorrow, I will need to start calling Redbridge again for the whole month to get the approval for next month’s stay. This really shouldn’t be my job to do.

It’s incompetency across the whole board with social service. You feel like you’re hitting your head against a brick wall – the amount of emails you send and they don’t get answered, they don’t get picked up, the managers are the worst, you can never get through to them, they never reply. There’s no empathy, they don’t get it. They don’t need to get it – I’m not asking for people to feel sorry for me or Yusuf, I just need them to put things in place that work and the problem with social services is there not held accountable for their mess-ups that they do, and there are countless.