Monday I had an all important network meeting with social services and just about everyone concerned with my eldest son (18) and his care (or lack thereof).

Jermaine is really disabled, I mean, mentally and has been since he was 11 months old, we don’t know what happened and it really isn’t worth working out what it might have been, it won’t change anything.

Well, he is the eldest of 4 children, I have another boy now 17, a girl of 13 and another at 12, the eldest girl also has special needs but they are only moderate and a breeze in comparison to our Jermaine.

I say ‘our’ but, really there is just the 5 of us as I divorced their mother in 2000 and she has shown little interest in the kids since, she refuses to have anything to do with the eldest and does a real fine job of pretending she is not even related to him.

Up until just recently I had a partner but the lack of outside support with the really challenging violent behaviour from Jermaine ruined it.

So far this year we have received not one day of worthwhile respite. Social Services have allocated a respite centre but they deemed, that is, the respite centre decided they were not an appropriate placement and so did I and we were both proved right when Jermaine started attacking the staff and other clients. The days he has had there have beeen assessment days. These are days where the respite centre choose to have him and decide just how unsuitable he is for them and, to make matters worse, I have to pay for that at £8 a night!

We have no guarenteed respite for the remainder of the year and that is what Monday’s meeting was about. The best I was able to get out of it was a commitment from social services that a placement would be found by the end of May this year.

Well, that was Monday. Tuesday was one of those days where really it was not going to be that bad but boy do things change around here so quickly!

I had agreed to go to q:space in Milton Keynes weeks ago to talk about funding with one of the funding groups and that was fine, I had the time. The meeting went well, I don’t imagine there will be any problems. After that I was to drive number 2 son, Matt, to the dentist in Northampton for what I believed to be 12:45 but it should have been 11:45 so that was buggered. Still, even before that we got a call from Jermaine’s school in Kettering to ask me to go there and pick him up as he was attacking anyone within striking distance. As I was on the M1 at the time I explained they would have to wait.

Well, we got to the dentist and found out they were closed, checked the appointment time and then Matt blames me for not knowing the right time, it was his appointment! I decided, as we were not meant to be in Kettering exactly at this time that I would head over to a local Chrysler dealer in Northampton and discuss buying a Neon from them and arrange a test drive. It’s a nice car but far from perfect and I have checked the pricing for what it should be and a model in immaculate condition should be no more than £5000 and they wanted £5750! I tried to reason with the dealer but to no avail and I had to let the car go. I had another one in mind just down the road that was almost identicle but was £4995. I liked the car and agreed to buy. In the meatime I was having to deal with several other calls on my mobile, not least because I had managed to leave my major credit card in Milton Keynes and the stupid card company had told the shop to destroy it, flippin’ idiots!

Now I was running well late and had to dash around doing school stops to get the youngest at home to be there for the eldest girl when she got home. Number 2 child needed to be a few miles away to meet his girlfriend and I was stuck in the 4×4 rush to pick up loads of lazy kids that could have walked.

I eventually arrived in Kettering at 4:30 totally shattered to be greeted by a punch from Jermaine, something he continued to do on the way home.

The rest of the evening continued in a similar fashion and I was glad to get to bed.

Today I have been to the volunteer centre in Northampton sorting out some jobs I could do, watch this space.