We were going, we went to child psychology in [town] and he went to sessions there. I had to drop him off. They wouldn’t let me go in on them and very unhelpfully, they would not tell me anything about it. I know I know about all the confidentiality and I used to say to them, I’m not asking you to disclose. I’m asking for advice. Is there anything that’s been disclosed in there that I need to change because if I’m part of the perpetuating problem. And it was just like, No, were not getting anywhere and were not going to discuss anything. And so that didn’t work because he soon stopped going to that.

I haven’t seen anything out there for parents really. CAMHS are ill-equipped I think, I don’t, but it’s not their remit I don’t I don’t think. Yeah, I don’t get anything back from them at all ever, which is a bit of a worry.

Yes, so you just take her there and you wait and then you take her away.

It’s very near to her school so she can make her own way. I’ve always picked her up and I think I’ve always taken her so far but, basically, I go there, drop her off, either sit outside or go and have a coffee and then come back and pick her up and I just go, How was it? Because you sort of want to know but I don’t want to pry.

And then I find out whatever she wants to tell me. Yesterday she had a lot to say but yeah, I haven’t, no, I haven’t heard from them at all. I did speak to them the other day when we had to move an appointment and I did, I do remember saying, you know, Let me know if you want me to come along. And I’m fairly sure they sort of sniggered [laughs].

But I’m fairly sure I’m quite tightly wound [laughs] at the minute, to be honest. I think my paranoia is kicking in. But I mean I don’t want to know what they’re talking to her about particularly. I just want her to be okay but it would be nice, I guess, all I’ve really heard is that they don’t think that shes got a mental illness and they’ll keep seeing her and they did come to a meeting at the school where they expressed their deep unhappiness at the school.

Do you have any messages for other parents and carers and for clinicians?

Oh for clinicians, please talk to carers. Don’t exclude us. Were part of the solution. We may be part of the problem. I think often clinicians’ perception, certainly in my experience, can be that you’re part of the problem. Well, I maybe but actually, if you help me out I can maybe be part of the solution too and that the National Health Service has more and more that it’s being asked to do and to deal with and to support and not to use the people who really want to be used to help deal with this, to help support people who are going through it, seems like a really short-sighted and wasteful thing to be doing, so engage with carers. Find out what carers want. Wherever possible, if it’s if it’s helpful, and I know it isn’t always, but if it’s going to be helpful to get the the the patient to agree to let the carer know about what’s going on, do that, that made the biggest difference for me.

Was having [my daughter] give her, was having my daughter give her consent, that made the biggest difference because that meant that me and her CPN could talk about how she was and he, you know, he he never divulged anything huge but he would say, I would say things like, Oh shes been doing blah blah blah and I’ve been behaving x, y, z and it’s caused these kind of problems. And hed say things to me like, Yes, she did mention that shed been behaving like that and she did say, you know, and yes, I know that that, your response is really winding her up but, actually, that’s okay. You know and it was it was just being able to have that frankness. He never divulged anything hugely detailed and, if he wanted to share something specific with me that she told him, he would ask her and if she said, no, that was an end of it. But there were a couple of occasions where hed say to me, She said something, she said x to me and I asked her if I could share that with you and she said that was okay. And I found that really, really helpful.

Because, when you’re really worried, when you don’t understand and you’re really worried, you need that reassurance. You need to know that you’re doing the right thing or some gentle guidance if you’re not doing the right thing as to what the right thing is.

I think, when she was very ill, I think it was very helpful to have a situation where we could see the family therapist without her and we actually, probably could have done with more of that. We saw them with her as well but certainly my husband found those sessions very, very valuable because he was he was angry and I was making him sit on that anger because I didn’t want him reflecting it back to her. So I was containing it very much and he needed somewhere where he could express that anger safely and I think that that was very, very useful to him that that environment.

And also her younger sister, similarly, she, it was particularly useful with the anger because the anger, I was terrified always of it being reflected back to my daughter and affecting her adversely so I was very, I felt like I was spent my whole time containing this anger from both of them and there was somewhere they could let it out there, which was very useful.

And so were you involved by those counsellors at all?

No, but that, actually that was my choice not to be involved at that point because I found them very, they were kind of targeting us as I felt like as a family, they was, was their problems, they were trying to say to my daughter like, Is there problems between you and your mum’s relationship? What’s your dad’s relationship like? How do your mum and dad get on? Very inquisitive and it was as if they were putting words into her mouth and then I was worried that they were thinking so I was like, Well I’m just standing back and she can do what she needs to do. So my dad took her to them sessions for the six weeks but he just stayed outside. She went in on her own.