empathise with Child A whilst maintaining a professional relationship. (PCF 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7)

Around a year ago, Child B was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which has been defined by the NHS as is a behavioural disorder that includes symptoms such as inattentiveness, hyperactivity and impulsiveness (NHS, 2018). A few months later he also received a diagnosis for autism; defined by the National Autistic Society as a lifelong, developmental disability that affects how a person communicates with and relates to other people, and how they experience the world around them (National Autistic Society, 2018). The National Autistic Society also report that autistic children may be at higher risk of being abused than others, this can be more difficult to detect due to the limited speech, communication difficulties and the struggle some autistic children face with identifying their emotions (National Autistic Society, 2018). Upon receiving the diagnoses, mother admits that she found this difficult to manage and struggled to process this information emotionally. When we explored this further, we discussed how this could have been the trigger for mother’s decline in emotional wellbeing; leading to the suicide and self-harm that bought the case about. (PCF 3, 6 and 7)

Child B is still in mainstream school who feel that based on his presenting needs and behaviours, Child B would benefit from one to one support. Child B was recently excluded from school following a residential trip where he had run away and tried to start a fire, and then again when he took a decorating tool into school. School had discussed with me the correlation between mother’s emotional wellbeing and Child B’s behaviour. They believed that if mother was low in mood, this caused Child B’s behaviours to become more challenging. When this was explored with the family, we were able to build on strategies for mother to adopt to try and prevent the impact of her emotional wellbeing on her parenting as it is not something that had been previous bought to her attention. (PCF 6 and 7)