Jacky works for 'Access Social Care'- an organisation which provides free legal advice to people with social care needs, helping to achieve a better quality of life. In her work role, Jacky supports parents, carers and young people who are planning for adulthood to understand their options and to uphold their rights. Jacky is also parent and carer to a young man who is autistic, and has a learning disability. Jacky's own lived experience enables her to support other young people and those who care for them. In this video, Jacky shares the experience of one family she supported who had not been provided information about assessment and support options in their first language, which was not English; and had also not been offered a translator to support them with sharing information about their son's needs for the assessment.

I see quite a few assessments for young people. Um, you know, come across someone who's like 23. Um, his family, his dad speaks quite good English, but has got very advanced Parkinson's and so he's under CHC care care staff coming in. His mum's main language is Bengali, doesn't speak very much English

You know, she speaks, you know, she can go and do a shopping and all of those sorts of things, but struggles otherwise. And Um, So they didn't know that he was entitled to stay into education beyond 18. Her son's got learning severe learning disability

But absolutely could have carried on learning and wanted to, but they, he left school at 18, didn't know that, and they were like, well why are other people going to college? But nobody explained that to them. Um, then, because her son was getting, you know, just didn't have anything to do, she's got other children as well, you know, it was all getting too much, so people would refer her into adult social care. Enablement came out

And walked him to the swimming pool and said, well, he can do that by himself, that's fine, signed him off. He's not going to walk to the swimming pool, he's got mental health and anxiety issues as well. Um, And um We pushed for an assessment for him and Cause they, they also said that they couldn't, they didn't send a translator with the enablement team

So the mum doesn't speak, can't communicate about his needs in English, and he's got a severe learning disability, but he didn't have a translator. Um. And um then a new assessment was done

But It wasn't Cara blind, talked a lot about what his mum did for him. And at the end, um, even though we've referred them in to say it's mum's not coping and he wants to be more independent, against every eligible need, it said mum will do. So, you know, we've had to push for another assessment now we're on the 3rd assessment to try and get it right, and they are actually looking for him to go to an activity day place to start making friends and getting out and about

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