Case Study 2 (West)

Case Study 2 (West)

Girl’s mother has been ill since she was 15 years old. She has been diagnosed with Arthritis. This has severely impaired her mobility and lives with pain on a daily basis. She suffers from long term poor mental health, being diagnosed with depression. She takes on a number of practical chores and support within the home. Due to her mother’s pain and poor mobility, she helps with opening jars of food, carrying things in and out of the house and a large amount of household chores. Her brother is suspected to have Autism, but this has not yet been diagnosed. She supports with parenting of her brother and gives a lot of her time to keeping him calm and occupied.

She is a 13 year old female who lives in the Ellesmere Port area with her mother, her mother’s partner and her younger brother. Her biological father has no contact with her. This is due to her mother being underage when she got pregnant with her. Her father was then put on the sex offenders register.  She attended the local academy for her education. She reported consistent bullying.  She was taking on a large number of household chores to support her mother along with supervising her younger sibling who is suspected to have Autism. She was finding it hard to witness her mother being in so much pain and worried a lot about her mother’s health. The pressures on taking on extra chores and the worry of her mother’s health was having a strain on her. She dealt with this by bottling it up and internalising her worries and stresses. This was affecting her resilience outside of her home and was apparent in her lack of socialising and being withdrawn from other children her own age group.

She continued to attend the targeted fortnightly sessions. She has had a number of months in this new group. She has been finding the transition from the 6-11 group to the 12+ difficult. She finds mixing with others difficult and displays a level of social anxiety within the group. The session lead has made efforts to integrate a number of the young carers who have similar interests and outlooks. This is still early days and efforts will continue at each session to improve integration. However, recently, her mother has informed the caseworker that she is feeling like she was not enjoying the group as she feels she doesn’t have any friends that attend. The caseworker has arranged to meet with CB at school to discuss her attendance at sessions and to explore what support she will require for future sessions.

Progression has been made around the concerns of her sending sexual images and videos to males both younger and older. After a discussion with her mother, it was decided that a referral into ESAT for target support would be appropriate. Based on the information the caseworker had provided, ESAT requested that the caseworker complete a CSE screening tool. The caseworker actioned this immediately and contacted he mother along with the other agencies that she was linked with, such as school, the TAF lead and the local Police officer who was dealing with the allegations to gather a complete picture of her situation and vulnerability.

She has regular time away from the home environment and responsibilities and demands on her own personal time. This time gives her a feeling of being important and gives her a small level of control over her own time.

Her mother feels reassured that she has an organisation that has her daughters needs as the focus of its support. Reassured that she is mixing with other children and is being exposed to new opportunities.