What our social worker actually helped with

Started 22 December 2025 · 13 replies · 111 hearts · read 915 times

LandoLeeds, UK · 22 December 2025

7 months ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: What our social worker actually helped with

Practical question, and possibly a silly one.

I have a plan for the ordinary weeks and no plan at all for the unusual ones, and the unusual ones are where everything has gone wrong.

The thing I have not been able to find anywhere is how people manage this when the week has no fixed shape at all.

My household has adjusted to about half of this and the other half is causing small daily friction that I have not known how to raise.

Thank you. This circle has solved four practical problems for me already and I am hoping for a fifth.

SerenLlandudno, UK

What I found is that the logistics assume a person with a spare afternoon, and I have not had a spare afternoon since 2019.

LinnetKendal, UK

My own appointments come last, always, and this was the first thing in a decade I have organised for myself.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

Thank you for the honesty about how hard the logistics have been. The accounts that admit the planning is exhausting are the useful ones.

17me too 4

KeeleyBlackpool, UK

Not a solution, just company.

NkosiJohannesburg, ZA

I have stopped apologising for the length of time it takes me to reply to things. Everybody here understands.

ÖzlemIzmir, TR

Wren — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

My experience is that this is entirely doable while caring, and that it needs more planning than the guides assume.

SableCape Town, ZA

Reading Keeley, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What surprised me was how much I needed somewhere that was not about him. This circle is the only place in my week that is.

PamSouthport, UK

The best practical advice I have had here was to prepare for the bad weeks rather than the good ones. Everything I built assumes a difficult week.

5me too 9

FitzLimerick, IE

I would gently say that if you are the only person holding everything, that is worth telling somebody clinical rather than absorbing.

BramberSteyning, UK

#10

My respite arrangements took nine months to organise and are the reason I am still standing. Do start that conversation early.

IzoldaVilnius, LT

#11

I read this twice. The second time was for the last paragraph.

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK

#12

A standing reminder rather than a correction of anybody: suggestions here often quietly assume a car, a spare afternoon or a household that can absorb the disruption. Several members have none of those, and it is worth saying what a suggestion assumes.

GigiNaples, IT

#13

The appointments are the difficult logistics. Finding cover for an hour is harder than any of the medical side.

5me too 7