Our youngest son R***, as you may know, is Autistic. He has a placement at a residential care centre and for the past 5 years, we have been increasing his stays there, from 1 day a fortnight to now 4 nights a week. He has gradually accepted the increase and we believe the reason was that we took it slowly. On the 23rd of March, he went off as usual. He has a Motability car and the staff at the care centre, pick him up Monday morning and return him home on Friday afternoon. Because of the issues caused by this virus, the care centre did not want their staff to bring him home, which we understood.

The plan was that K*** would take him back on Monday and she would pick him back up on Friday. It was thought that this would be the most practical solution. However, it all changed the day after. When it was announced that the country was going into almost full ‘lockdown’ with some restrictions on movement. The care centre rang and said that it would wiser to keep him there, as if he came home, he couldn’t go back until it was all over.

This caused K*** and me a fair bit of distress, but after a lot of deep thinking on the ‘pros and cons’ we decided that it would be in the interest of all, including R*** that he stayed put. It has always been the intention that he goes to live there on a full-time basis, but we wanted to build it up slowly, so we all gradually got used to it. This virus has changed everything. His care workers explained that there were problems and that he could not go home on Friday as usual. This immediately led him to ask about the next weekend, and when he gets something into his head, he will just keep repeating the question until he gets an answer. On Monday this week they changed his planner and explained that he could not go home for another two weeks. This of course led him to start asking (nattering) about going home on the 17th April.

We had said to his care workers, who know him well that it would be better coming from on how to progress this. So they took the decision yesterday to tell him that he was going to stay until the 7th of August. He appears from what they tell us, that he has more or less accepted this. He has written the dates in his diary and has got one of his care workers to add the words ‘Home’ to the weekends from the 7th August.

At the end of all this, he/we could have benefited from all this, as it might now be possible for us to create a planner for him that shows him to be away for however many days we feel necessary. It is what we want for him, and this virus has pushed us a lot further than we had pictured.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <>

No pictures today as I could not find any that I felt were appropriate.