Tuesday 25 November 2014

Helping Hands




Helping hands don’t often come along but recently two have found their way.  A boost from a great, experienced advocate full of encouragement and support who is helping us parents get together to form a forum.  A councillor who has a child with Autism and his wife who want to make a difference and are asking for our help.

I’ve watched them sit and listen to the stories that I hear so often from fellow parents.  How the smallest of cuts are so deep and so destructive to a family. How preventative services or as one parent called them “stitch in time interventions” can make such a difference and save the public purse money.

I once visited my local MP.  It was just after the last election and the idea of “the big society” was unveiled.  We have a fantastic family support worker from an autism charity who supports over 900 families.  Her salary is paid by the local authority.  At that time they wanted to stop her funding, hoping that us parents would step in and provide the support that she gave and that we would do our bit for “the big society”.  We do what we can but even with the best intentions 900 families and our own to deal with for no salary would be taking the proverbial.  So I popped along to see my local elected representative.  

He was polite and a tad posher than me.  He didn’t exude ”man of the people “  I pleaded my case explaining how with no support I’d lost my marriage, my job and almost my sanity and how the role of family support worker can help prevent  that.  He explained there was no real proof of that, it was all subjective so likely to be cut.  I explained that although I didn’t have proof I knew the money had been wisely spent because we were seeing less families in crisis and if that support was withdrawn all the money and time invested would be wasted.  He asked me where they were supposed to get the money from so I suggested that perhaps they should stop building their shiny new council offices for now and use a bit of that money.  “but that would be wasting money, we’ve already invested a great deal on the plans” I pointed out that he had just presented exactly the same argument as I had.  His secretary smiled out of the corner of her mouth and he sighed.  He said he would “take a look at it”.  A few weeks later he sent me a letter saying there was nothing he could do. I sighed.

Thankfully the family support worker was saved at the last hour and her role is still helping many families in the borough. But as for the holiday schemes for disabled children, respite services, intervention teams etc, etc they’re facing being part of  another nine million pounds worth of cuts locally.  I hope that the tears that were seen today and the stories that were told will provide better proof than statistics or outcome measures, charts or tables.  Investing in the lives and futures of children with disabilities may not bring huge profits but compared to some dodgy investments that brought this country to its knees, I’d say those who hold the purse strings need to adjust their attitude to risk.

And those in glass houses, well………