After the last goodbye.

[BongoJim]

I know the last thread was removed because there was too much speculation and I get that. I believe a lot of people shared a lot of personal stories and experiences which were important and gave powerful insights. Would we be able to continue the debate without the speculation (start your own topic for that) and instead just continue to debate where cases like this need to change going forward, how court processes can change as a result of such difficult cases and what lessons can be taken from this awful case without it being a thread about a thread? It would be a shame to lose being able to discuss every other aspect of an important debate just because one aspect of it is problematic for MN. Is it even possible to continue debating the wider implications thrown up by a case like this? If it's not then my all means MN please delete. 🥺

Who is saying these things.

@HappyHamsters
It's over social media so you can't really comment if you haven't seen the articles about him being depressed. About her not being a good mum in the past.

There are other forums apart from Mumsnet, HappyHamsters, and some of them aren't so wedded to a "preferred narrative" which posters aren't allowed to depart from

The much-mentioned Kiwi Farms is especially foul, but one thing I will grant them is that they're very good at digging things up and expecting evidence, as opposed to somethoing some fool said on Twitter

Thats why I dont bother reading social media articles about this, its all full of peoples own opinions, insults and speculation and doesnt help anyone.

I don't think that's correct. The Court allowed an appeal from the decision. That's quite different from saying the decision was incorrect.

To be clear , being given leave to appeal doesn't imply the original decision was wrong.

Well yes, allowing an appeal is certainly saying that the judge or judges below got something sufficiently wrong to mean that the decision has to be set aside. In this instance, they held that the judge was wrong to make a declaration of death.

But in this case they were not only given leave to appeal, the appeal succeeded and the original judgment was set aside.

Here is a good summary of the various court decisions. It's really stretching it to say the appeal succeeded. The reality is none of the courts thought it was in Archie's best interests to give into Dance's demands.

www.expressandstar.com/news/uk-news/2022/08/04/timeline-in-the-case-of-12-year-old-archie-battersbee/

I think rightly the court of appeal overruled the ruling that he was dead, not because it wasn’t true but the legal implications and precedents from having that as a legal ruling meant they wanted to pushback. This was definitely I think the right move for future cases because the lines between legal and medical were blurred.

it didn’t change anything for this case

This only made the Court of Appeal - the Supreme Court held that there was nothing to appeal.

That summary clearly has not been written by a lawyer and is incomplete in various respects. For example, it says that on 16th May "Two specialists attempt a nerve stimulation test on Archie, but no response is detected" which is misleading - what actually happened was that they tried to do the full brain stem test, for which a preliminary peripheral nerve stimulation test is prescribed, in order to show that the patient's muscles would respond if the brain were to trigger them. AB failed that test so they couldn't proceed to do any brain stem test. As a result, the hospital went back to court to ask for permission to do an MRI scan, an event which is completely omitted from the summary.

The report is also highly incomplete in saying that all the first CA ruled was that "evidence relating to what is in Archie’s best interests should be reconsidered by a different High Court judge". What actually happened was that the court asked counsel for the hospital trust and the guardian whether they accepted the parents' argument that the judge had been wrong to make a declaration of death where no brain stem test could be administered, making it very clear that the court did not feel it is the job of the law to find someone has died when doctors themselves feel unable to do so. Basically both shuffled their feet a bit and said that the judge probably should have gone straight on to best interests once it was clear that the brain stem test could not be performed, and the court agreed with them and the parents' lawyer. Therefore the finding that A had died was set aside and the case was remitted to another judge to remake the decision properly. On any interpretation that's a win for the appellants. It was open to Hayden to find that it wasn't in A's best interests to withdraw treatment and you wouldn't, I take it, claim that the parents had lost the appeal then. The result of the appeal isn't governed by the eventual outcome when the original case is reheard, it stands alone.

Given that this point was originally raised in response to a claim that "It was clear from the first court decision that Dance's position was wholly unreasonable and untenable" it seems to me it must be accurate - as she won this appeal you can't say that absolutely nothing about her arguments was tenable, because an important element of those arguments was in fact found to be tenable by the unanimous Court of Appeal.

The funeral date,time and place etc has been published and the army are invited. Already been picked up by the media in their articled about it.
The media shouldn't attend but no doubt will especially as she said before about asking them... sad. Hopefully after this can get the support needed.

I wonder if Sky will attend.

www.itv.com/news/anglia/2022-08-25/archie-battersbees-family-announce-funeral-date

This is interesting. Covers a lot of things we've discussed on this thread about the process.

That's the wrong link.

I was linking to a story from this page about their MP writing to Barclay.

It's a very good article and quite measured.

Quote from their MP, Anna Firth, in a linked article:

“Any decision about removing a child from life-support should, ideally, be made with, not to, those who love them dearly.

“Compassion, communication and mediation must be at the core of the process and, critically, sufficient time to process the tragedy they have been through.

“Dragging them through courts and legal processes with courts and NHS trusts, especially without equal legal representation at the very start, automatically creates an adversarial relationship between the parents and those caring for their child.”

The thing is, that is exactly how the vast majority of these decisions are made in practice. However, she doesn't seem to have any answer for what should happen if parents simply won't accept what they are told no matter how compassionately it's put to them, and if they won't go to mediation. It cannot be the case that in that situation they get their way even if it is not in their child's interests. And what is "sufficient time"? Are we all to be entitled to demand that our dead relatives are kept on life support indefinitely while we process what has happened?

I wonder if she has spoken to the hospital and heard their version of events

Is this the same MP who was blasted in the press for taking part in an innapropriate photo shoot with archie and his mum where she is waving a union flag and showing off a photo of the Queen during the Jubilee Celebrations while he lays unresponsive in itu.

@HappyHamsters yes.

That photo is so odd! Why did anyone think it was a good idea.