In 2016 I was told an “assessment and treatment unit” (psychiatric hospital) was a Plan B for my severely learning disabled daughter. Her specialist school were expelling her because I found out they were using prone restraint on her.
bbc.com/news/education…
bbc.com/news/education…
With no house no benefits and no care package in place we had only twelve weeks to get all this sorted. We had no help. We were desperate. I knew if Emily went into one of these places she’d never leave. There are NO council properties. Emily was by now 19. An adult.
Everything in place to help her was sourced by us. There were so many meetings so many people paid to support Emily. But Council houses, care packages & benefits cost money. Budget lines are easier to manage if young disabled adults who don’t vote get dumped in clinical prisons
We were told to register on a homelessness hub. When I wrote about having to register Emily as homeless to start looking for a house, I got abuse & a freelance journalist turned up on a Sunday morning on our doorstep with a camera. I doubt his story would have been positive
We looked as so many unsuitable properties for our learning disabled child who was severely traumatised from prone restraint. The whole time, THE WHOLE DAMN TIME The council had the right place. They had kept it back out of the general stock. Why? Well thats the question.
When I heard about it we went to look. There was a repair guy there and I asked permission to look through the window. He said yes. On the two bedroom doors there were Yale locks. You know what sort of residential properties have those?
Bail Hostels.
Bail Hostels.
In the end after we fought & fought & fought & FOUGHT to keep our girl safe, to keep her out of a psychiatric hospital, to end her repeated trauma & give her her life back, she moved into that house with a 24 hr care package. Emily doesn’t have ANY behaviours of distress now.
Emily is living the life she is entitled to. She wasn’t a violent criminal,she’s a severely disabled young woman who couldn’t understand why she was being held face down by up to 12 men and women for up to an hour almost everyday. We are supposed to be a caring society, we’re not
We’re a society who turn our heads away when horror is inflicted on other people who don’t look like us, or sound like us. We hate difference now because we’ve been taught to value ourselves and our own above all things. We’ve been made hard hearted and cruel by design.
