First of all, learn one thing: The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the squeaky mouse gets the cheese. Start with child support enforcement and be that squeaky wheel. Call them every week, or if you think they are just blowing you off, every day. Call Medicaid for the kids and demand they treat your son - incl the pooping issue. Tehy can't deal with it and they are the professionals, how can you??
Second thing: Get your info organized. Follow the link in my signature and read about our Parent Report. in my opinion it was the second most important tool I had. My refusal to be ignored was the most important. Without a PReport, I would have not had nearly what I needed to make the professionals in all the MANY fields listen to me. I had to know what we had already done in order to move forward, and with each new person wanting to start over with things we had already done, my son would have been old and dead before they got to anything new. So I had to know if we had tried that medication and what it had done, or at least I had to be able to find the info super fast in an appointment, Know what I mean??
Third thing, do not be afraid, ashamed or too proud to show them your tears and how overwhelmed you are. Trust me, if you cannot handle your kids and they have any kind of problems, social services is NOT going to take them with-o overwhelming signs of abuse. Why not? They already know they cannot do any better than you can. They threatened to take my kids and when I asked why they gave some mealy mouthed exuse, then they spoke to a couple of teachers and backpedaled real fast - and my kids did not cause any real problems in school other than being smarter than their teachers and being bored. AT home it was a whole other issue, but after a few minor stories about my oldest, social services could not get away from the whole 'we will take them away' nonsense. Of course I was lucky enough to have parents and inlaws that would have sued them until kingdom come if they had taken my kids, but that never even entered the equation. I had just asked for help and residential treatment because my older child was torturing my younger two until they truly feared for their lives and so did the rest of us. It is different if you ASK for their help rather than them being called by someone else because something happened.
I also found out about a LOT of programs that NO ONE wanted me to know about. Why? BEcause I might tell other parents and then more people would know and send kids to them. HOw is that logic? No idea but it is what I was told when I was asked to give up my copy of a list that someone had given me. I did give it up, but I had copies at home and a digital copy on my computer, so I had no problem letting them have a copy, did they want it on pink, blue or bright green paper? Yes, I did ask that question. No, they did not find it funny but I did, and still do, esp thinking about how the man's face got so red. Plus, I gave a copy to my kids therapist, one of the top therapists in town who didn't know of most of the programs because they were hidden from common knowledge. She heard about them asking for the list back and then gave one to every therapist she knew - and she knew almost all of them.
How did I get the list? I sat down with a phone book and a yellow legal pad of paper. I wrote the name of the person - be it a therapist, a reverend/pastor/priest/rabbi, social worker, or other person. I wrote their phone number and then I called them. I told them our story (nutshell version - violent older child with autism hurting younger siblings and need serious help), often complete with tears as I was past frustrated. I asked if they knew of any programs or of anyone who would know of a program and then I wrote any info they could give me down. Then I called those people/programs or the next person in the phone book who might know of any programs and told our story and asked if they could help or knew of anyone who could.
I filled that legal pad and another one, but I got a list of people and programs and got to, of all people, the school resource officer (cop stationed at the jr high) who gave me that list.
I ended up not needing that info, but I have kept the memory of how I found it so that it might help others. One place that surprised me was the medicaid card number. I had already called a bunch of people that day, so the tears were close and I probably sounded like I was about at the end of my rope. But the lady I spoke to was horrified by our story and that our psychiatrist had not sent my son inpatient for more than a weekend at a time. She arranged a bed at an inpatient hospital that was geared to take kids for long periods of time, not just a few days like most. My son was inpatient for 4 months and it helped. Lots! Of course I bullied the doctor until he just got used to me being there for the weekly meetings, otherwise I never would have seen him because he 'didn't DO parents" in the staff's words. Yeah, not really his option with me. The weekly meeting started at 6 am to discourage parents from coming, so I showed up half an hour early with donuts. Then I insisted he not mumble so that I could hear, and I spoke up with my Parent Report info when he wanted to trial a medication that had reacted badly. You could say the man could not stand me. I could not have cared less. The donuts, or fresh homemade muffins baked that morning before my 80 min drive for that 6 am meeting, made me a hit with the rest of the staff. The nurses loved that I showed up not just for therapy each week (which many parents had to do by phone), but also for visits at least 2x a week. I bake when stressed, and those months were HARD, so I often took overflow to the staff. Kids could not have anything not pre packaged, but the staff thought I handled stress WONDERFULLY, lol!
If you get the right person when you call medicaid via the number on the card, you might have better results. I would keep calling. I would also find out who is in charge of the case mgr and whatever genius told you that they couldn't handle the pooping issue, and I would call their top boss. Not their supervisor, whomever is the top of the state agency or medical center or whatever. Because telling you that they, the professionals, cannot handle this is just, well, the stuff that falls out of the back of a bull.
One way to look at being that squeaky wheel is that the people in child support enforcement and other places you call will get tired of talking to you. I used to get irritated at something a kid did and then I would pick up the phone and call whatever number I was squeaking at. I figured if I had to be irritated then I could spread the wealth. I was rarely ever rude, because it got nothing for us and because it seemed to irritate some of them when I was nice to them. Which the ODD in me finds amusing, sadly. I swear there were numbers I called more than daily for things, because I figured that if I bugged them enough they would get my stuff taken care of sooner because I was NOT going away.
