Javed is a family carer for his brother Mohammed, who has a learning disability. He's also a community champion and is involved in lots of initiatives at local and national level to support families and communities. In this video, Javed shares about their experiences as a family, navigating the move from Children's services to Adult social care during the Covid-19 pandemic, making sure that Mohammed's rights were upheld during the process, and that he continues to be supported to explore his individual interests and aspirations as an adult.

Um, today regarding with the Children's social care going to the adult social care. I would like to talk about my brother. He's our youngest brother, he's Down syndrome. Uh, his name is Mohammad Akhtar

And I've from birth when he was born, the gap between him and me is 19.5 years, so he's 19.5 years he's younger than me, and I've always been supporting him on the medical side

So from prectic to the adult doctors, social care, I've dealt with all his paperwork. It got delayed for 2 years from children's social care, going to the adult social care. It took 2 years and we had, we still had meetings on teams uh and on Zoom, but then at some point when the lockdown got a bit eased, we had a face to face meeting at the property

So they came to the house, met my brother, and all his needs. It took us from 2020 to end of 2021 to get all the right things for him. The information which was provided was really good

I'm also good at research work, so Google, um, just what I'll do is I'll go on to Google and Google a lot of stuff. So if I do have any questions, I can ask the the adult social care, which I did. And she looked at me and she says to me, I was going to give you this information, but you're already up to date with the information

And which was more helpful because I understood exactly what my brother's needs were and what help he could get. I personally think, you know, before anyone meeting you, they should provide that information beforehand so that person is could be fully prepared or the carer could be fully prepared. But giving that information afterwards, when you're reading that information and you would say, oh, I missed this question, I need to ask this, and to rearrange that meeting again it's not easy

It can take months. The experience wasn't too good. We ended up really pushing them on several times for arranging the initial meeting, um, because they would keep saying that we shot staff and then on a couple of occasions they said we don't have the information and I've said, look, I've sent it by email

And I've got evidence that the email has been opened because whenever someone receives an email from me from my original email address, it always tells me that the email has been opened at this time on this date. So I had that evidence as well. So providing that evidence and resending the email again with the appropriate evidence they required, it took a bit of time and I think

Lack of admin work on their side was quite poor, that they could improve on the admin work. We started getting this the correct support and my brother really got the help and support he needed. And the appropriate facilities were also fitted in the property as well for his needs

He's doing well. My brother, I mean, has been Down syndrome with severe learning difficulty. I've sent him to many different places, and he will go for about 3 or 4 sessions and after that he'll say it's boring

I don't want to go. So he loves, he loves his music, so I've sent him to a Bungar College, music college where he was doing dancing, music. He really enjoyed it

And then after about 6 sessions, he says, I can't do it anymore. I do have networks, but also there's been like nationally, you know, disabled people's days. So I've been taking him to some activities where we've been picking up some leaflets, been talking to other people

Who had Down syndrome, some something like mencap has been really, really helpful. Um, local authority has been really helpful as well. Um, he lost one thing he loves to do is he wants to be a police officer

Because my son's a police officer and he's always, he says, I want to be a police officer as well. So I managed to get a police van with a uniform and a hat and let him explore the police van and what the police do. So now he's interested

Now he wants to go to a police station, so I'm going to speak to one of the senior commanders in Leeds to arrange a visit to one of the police stations in Leeds, and whatever my son does. Or whatever I do, my brother wants to follow up my footsteps, and he says, I'm a policeman, I'm going to be a police officer one day. So just to get his wishes through, I've managed to arrange for the uniform and the policeman they got into the the driver's seat

They put the blues and twos on for him, and he says, I am the policeman now..

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