So if anyone wants to contact me to talk about things more, or even to come and visit court with me, please feel free.
As you wrote to Dawn, does that mean you are her constituent because, if so, I'd like to take up your offer in the new year.
The problem in this country is that the general public is now so suspicious and contempuous of social services that it will avoid having any contact with them. The feeling is that they exercise an extreme form of political correctness and, as a result, any parent could find themselves on the receiving end of SS attention for very little reason. You hear people saying that SS only go after the easy targets.
You may disgree with that but that's what people I meet in real life think about SS.
That's the public perception. That's what SS have to overcome to be seen as a benign force, let alone a force for good.
Almost a decade ago now my son experienced a severe decline in his MH due to the unrelenting physical and mental abuse he received at school, something school prefered to call 'anti-social behaviour' (much gentler term than ABH /GBH).
He was referred to CAMHS where he was interviewed for a few minutes by a locum Consultant Psychiatriast and diagnosed with a severe mental illness (the same sort that the Italian lady is supposed to been experiencing immediately before she was sectioned).
In an effort to help my son I read extensively about the illness he had been diagnosed as having and soon realised that this was a misdiagnosis. It was clear he actually had ASD - and the reason he had been so badly bullied at school and had a breakdown in his MH was because he was 'different' and therefore a target for 'anti-social behaviour' at school.
At the same time as I was realising that a misdiagnosis had been made, the Community Paed, Educational Psychcologist and members of the LA SEN Panel were arriving, quite independently, behind my back at the same conclusion.
However, when I tried to raise the possibility that my son may have been misdiagnosed with the locum consulatnat psychiatrist who issued that dx I was met with hostility, raising of voice, and threats. The main threat being that he would section my son to ensure he received the treatment that his (mis)diagnosis warranted.
Can you imagine yourself in that position? A threat has been made to take your child into care on the basis of what you believe (and other professionals believed) was a dangerous misdiagnosis.
The immediate thought of his father and I was to engage legal help. The first solicitor I rang obviously thought I was unhinged myself as it was quite an incredible story I was telling her. She sneeringly said that she didn't handle 'that type of thing'.
The next solicitor I tried agreed to listen, agreed that the dx was almost certainly wrong and started writing to the necessary authorities. Something I had already done but, as a mere parent, had just been ignored.
Meanwhile, DS's father and I were actively planning to move our family to either Ireland or Spain to remove DS from the jurisdiction of this rogue and incompetent locum psychiatrist.
It took a further 4 months and several thousnads £ of our own money, to have this misdiagnosis overturned by competent medical professionals and for DS's needs to start to be addressed by the NHS and LA.
By this stage I was quite unwell myself with anxiety - who wouldn't be? I appealed for help to SS. It clear that DS needed a residential placement that would help him undertand his condition and provide the specialist support he would require in rebuilding his life after his breakdown. DS, meanwhile was languishing as a day patient in an adolescent psychiatric unit waiting for a residential placement to be found and funded by the LA, who were dragging their heels. I was told that before DS could secure such a placement an LA board would need to convene with SS representation.
SS knew I was at the end of my thether trying to deal with a child who was so unwell that they had been wrongly diagnosed as having a serious mental illness, while trying to secure him the help he needed from an apathetic Education Service, while so unwell myself by this whole experience that I was off work with anxiety, but still SS refused to intervene. I asked SS outright what would happen if, as I was a single parent, I could no longer care for my son and was told that they would expect his father to care for him. Anything rather than assist my DS to secure the expensive placement everyone knew he needed. Any respect I had for SS evaporated at that point.
It was clear that SS refused to assist DS because they knew that if they did so the Education Service within the LA would probably ask them to chip in for the very expensive specialist residential placement that the LA had already determined he should be provided with after his stautory education ended at post-16 i.e. when he was no longer the LA's responsibiity so the LA did not have to fund that placement. Very cynical behaviour from the LA.
As someone with 37 years experience in public service I'd consider myself a parent who was quite competent in dealing with agencies and other authorities, but I have never experienced such a group of vile, apathetic, uncaring, incompetent jobsworths that I met during my son's illness. I can quite imagine a less able parent being totally steamrollered by them. I was lucky that I could afford legal assistance as it was the ony thing that finally got these people to respond. And legal aid was not available in this case as it dealt primarily with SENs.
In retrospect I should probably have let the rogue locum consultant psychiatrist go ahead and section my son. That would have provided my son with legal representation to fight the ridiculous diagnosis, but having seen at first hand the way SS, LA and even NHS operated I was not prepared to take that risk.
So mistakes do happen. Innocent people get hurt and that colours their opinions permanently.
So I can understand while parents flee abroad - we almost did without any encouragement from JH. I can understand why some people would never willingly contact SS even over very serious matters - I wouldn't and that's without any encouragement not to do so from IJ.
People make up their own minds on matters based on their own experiences.
After what my son and I were subjected to I am entitled to hold the views I do.