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seeing less families in crisis and if that support was withdrawn all the money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………