Graceelsie
Member
Hi all. Have just joined here last night and posted in the welcome/tell your story bit. I am adoptive parent/carer to a young woman of 27, S, who is in fact a distant relative through my first marriage but my second husband and I have taken her into our home since May 2007 and relate with her as parents/daughter. She has mild learning difficulties and mental health problems loosely defined so far as Conversion Disorder, dissociative amnesia and PTSD.
Anyway, one of the problems I am having in caring for her is coping with her compulsive spending. She is on disability benefits. She has bouts where she just orders stuff irrespective of whether she actually has any money in the bank to pay for it. Once she ordered a thousand pounds worth of clothes on a clothing catalogue when she had already incurred £150 worth of bank fees due to being overdrawn so often that month. Thankfully the catalogue told her she had a limit of £200 credit and did not accept the rest of the order. That same week she bought two mobile phones at £80 each from eBay. She has a thing about mobile phones and has up to ten at a time. In the past she got into huge trouble signing umpteen contracts to get cool phones, and we paid off a lot of debts for her when she came to us.
When she runs out of money we have to bail her out buying her food, and she doesn't contribute anything for gas, electricity etc.
She doesn't want me to handle her money for her, because in the past carers have abused this (mostly her ex-husband and mother in law). And she doesn't want anyone to have LPA. Besides which neither she or we can afford to set it up.
As she shares our surname and lives at our address I live in fear of baillifs arriving and toting off our possessions as she can be very secretive or lie about what's going on with her debts.
I can point out to her the huge proportion of her benefits going on bank charges (up to a quarter of her monthly income sometimes) but she just sort of shrugs and promises to do better in future.
Some of the stuff she buys is just daft, dozens of party frocks this past fortnight when she hardly ever goes anywhere - once when she was in amnesia and thought she was 7 she wanted to buy loads of dolls - she spent £50 on fridge magnets one week and then had no food money.
Yesterday another mobile phone arrived, her umpteenth in current use.
Anyone had any similar experiences and can offer advice?
Anyway, one of the problems I am having in caring for her is coping with her compulsive spending. She is on disability benefits. She has bouts where she just orders stuff irrespective of whether she actually has any money in the bank to pay for it. Once she ordered a thousand pounds worth of clothes on a clothing catalogue when she had already incurred £150 worth of bank fees due to being overdrawn so often that month. Thankfully the catalogue told her she had a limit of £200 credit and did not accept the rest of the order. That same week she bought two mobile phones at £80 each from eBay. She has a thing about mobile phones and has up to ten at a time. In the past she got into huge trouble signing umpteen contracts to get cool phones, and we paid off a lot of debts for her when she came to us.
When she runs out of money we have to bail her out buying her food, and she doesn't contribute anything for gas, electricity etc.
She doesn't want me to handle her money for her, because in the past carers have abused this (mostly her ex-husband and mother in law). And she doesn't want anyone to have LPA. Besides which neither she or we can afford to set it up.
As she shares our surname and lives at our address I live in fear of baillifs arriving and toting off our possessions as she can be very secretive or lie about what's going on with her debts.
I can point out to her the huge proportion of her benefits going on bank charges (up to a quarter of her monthly income sometimes) but she just sort of shrugs and promises to do better in future.
Some of the stuff she buys is just daft, dozens of party frocks this past fortnight when she hardly ever goes anywhere - once when she was in amnesia and thought she was 7 she wanted to buy loads of dolls - she spent £50 on fridge magnets one week and then had no food money.
Yesterday another mobile phone arrived, her umpteenth in current use.
Anyone had any similar experiences and can offer advice?
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No matter how hard we try we cannot offer her enough love to fill that gap. You're right, I think, we have to try to get tough with her, although its not easy as she will protest she is being treated as a child. However she does live in our house therefore surely we have some rights to impose a rule or two. I have hesitated simply because social services/mental health already think we protect her from herself too much and should let her "face consequences". Trouble is, although her IQ would suggest she should be far less affected, she really is more like a 12 or 13 year old than a 27 year old in many respects. My husband works in IT so I will see what we can do to limit her Internet use, which is the cause of most of the spending as she can't get out much. I don't like to cut it off completely as she has friends online and has a hard time finding people her own age to socialise with otherwise. Many thanks, especially for the hugs!
peole thats the place to go. Mind I'm entered into a comp for an £800 handbag, which my mum would like and I had loads of samples which I then gave away to a woman I dont even know but she told me that she is very lucky!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't sweat it, James. 
