Mum calls for help for parents battling alone with autistic children

Sarah Griffiths, 39, of Groom Road, Prestwood, had problems with her son, who she does not want to be named, from an early age.

At first it was thought he had problems with his hearing but his behaviour became increasingly difficult.
Sarah said: "He became totally destructive, I think we went through three cots and there was constant screaming all the time.

"I had my suspicions he was autistic. It's very hard to assess a child when they are very young with autism because it could be a lot of other things and they actually diagnosed it when he was eight."

Sarah and her husband separated in 2000 and she found looking after her son and daughter as a single parent increasingly difficult.

She said: "A lot of people kept telling me to put him into residential care, but I thought God has sent him to me and I have got to look after him. I started binge drinking about seven years ago because of the stress and then in the last couple of years things got really bad."

Then one day in March 2007 the stress of coping with her son, added to problems with her ex-husband, became too much.

Sarah said: "I flipped out and was absolutely hysterical. Three police cars and paramedics had to come up to calm me down. My son couldn't understand what was happening to his mum."

Social services intervened and her son went to live with his father, but Sarah's condition worsened and she even attempted suicide.

She said: "It was March 29, 2008 and I had planned it all out. My daughter wasn't talking to me at the time. I thought I had lost everything, I had got nothing left. All these years, what was the point of it? I was a wreck, I didn't care if I was dead or alive, I didn't care about myself. I just didn't want to be here anymore."

Sarah was saved by a close friend who suspected something was wrong and had to call the police to break into the house. After recovering in hospital she had a 12-day stay in the Tindal psychiatric centre in Aylesbury.

She is now receiving help, has stopped drinking, and has enrolled on a landscaping and gardening course at Aylesbury College.
She hopes to have her son, now 14 and currently living with a foster family, back at home within six months to a year.
Sarah said her problems stemmed from a lack of support from the authorities.

She said: "There was nothing, no support. When he was diagnosed we get allocated a social worker, but I never even saw them. I asked many times for help from the social workers and his school, but I never got it.
"I didn't know which way to turn and basically I just had to get on with it. I felt I was on my own, that's what I get so angry about. It was a lack of support and in the end I stopped asking for help. I asked for help and never got it so in the end I gave up.
"I know there are other parents with autistic children going through the same thing and I just don't want it to happen to other people."

Sarah now wants to see a support group established in the area for parents in her position and is asking anyone who is experiencing similar problems to contact her on 07500 162570.