Version 2
I started to write about this in 2018, when my son was unofficially excluded from mainstream school. I found out that the Local Authority case worker and the school SENco had colluded in this outcome and, as time went by, I was horrified to discover more details – such as the school not having taken my son off roll by the time the funding came out in the Autumn of that year, which meant that they potentially got extra money because my son no longer attended the school.
When I telephoned the school’s ‘business manager’ in 2019 she told me she wasn’t sure whether they received the funding, and told me that this would have been decided by the local authority. I should telephone them, she said. By this time, I was treading water – to put it lightly – to maintain my mental health, as I sustained, in 2007, a brain injury.
A teeny-tiny “severe traumatic” brain injury. Despite the hospital’s classification, and because I had been advised to make a claim for compensation after the road traffic collision which dealt the injury, various medical and legal people sought to reduce the payment that I would receive by complaining that I might not have been wearing a cycle helmet. As is so often the case, the cyclist becomes the ‘villain’ because I should have known to be properly equipped; never mind the race taking place between the thieves of the mopeds, which happened to coincide with me on my bicycle on my way home from work.
As it turns out, the bruising to my brain was caused by whiplash: the sudden jerking of my head under unexpected applied acceleration was enough to cause my brain to be shaken about and its frontal lobes to hit the bony ridges which protrude at the front of the skull, and a couple of little vertebrae in my neck became detached, apparently.
As a result of the compensation claim, I received better attention than I might otherwise have done, as the bid to prove the degree of severity and culpability was an important factor. It turned out that I had a “not inconsiderable” injury and that, for months, I had something called “post-concussive vision”, which was like looking through gauze, never mind that I had no peripheral vision for some time.
Anyway, as if this wasn’t enough to ‘weird me out’ for several years, the arrival of my son brought new joys as well as new challenges. I shall never know whether I might have skipped joyfully back into paid employment, because life took such an extraordinary turn in all kinds of ways. My son’s father and I split up after a campaign of difficulties and behaviours on both sides, which proved our incompatibility beyond any doubt. The arrival of depression, however, was not looked upon kindly by these new (and temporary)extended family members, and I deduced that the general feeling was that, after three years, the brain injury ought to have slid into the background, and that I was either ‘going on’ about it or was making it up.
If only. This was before the breakdowns, but I had enough difficulties to feel concerned and, having no self-esteem, I felt so guilty for seeking help as a single parent with a baby that, when Home Start said they had found someone to visit me, I cancelled because I was sure I was perhaps making a drama out of nothing much. I was sure that other people had far worse circumstances; despite not being able to calibrate my own difficulties.
Something about which I often feel incensed is the fact that Surrey County Council would neither know nor care about the welfare or education of any child, let alone one with genuine additional support needs. Every so often, the news carries an utterly heart-breaking story about a young child horrifically killed by parents to whom they were either returned by Social Services, or whom Social Services didn’t bother to examine and investigate properly.
In 2019, I received a telephone call from a lady from Social Services following a nasty tactic employed by the case worker who, it seemed, had been ignoring my emails for about a year. “We’ve had a report of a risk,” said the lady, “about you hurting yourself and your child, by an individual.” When I asked whom, she said that all she could tell me was that the person worked for Surrey County Council.
“Ah,” I said, and named the case worker. She couldn’t affirm or deny, she said. They had seen something online, she said, which had worried them. This was the clue.
“Does the name ‘Day Twenty One’ have anything to do with it?” I asked. Why yes, as it happened; it did.
I told the woman why I write; I told her that since sustaining a brain injury rated as “severe” years ago, my hormones – in particular progesterone – cause me Hell On Wheels. The reason that I write, I told her, is because I have to express my pain and this helps to diminish it. I would never dream of hurting my child, I said. Day 21, I said, is when progesterone levels tend to peak, and the thoughts described in the blog post are exactly the kinds of thoughts and feelings which happen. I write because I have to let out pressure, I told her, and it is partly why I wouldn’t dream of carrying those things out in reality. We chatted a little more, and she said, “I’m not worried at all; I’m going to close the case but, if you ever need to talk,” and she gave me her name and telephone number.
I thanked her for her call and said, “So, what you’re telling me is that … they can read at the County Council.” She laughed. I had been emailing as many members of the SEND team as I could find names for about my mental health difficulties since the very start of my son not being supported by the education system; I had thought that perhaps they couldn’t read. Now I knew that they don’t care.
As facetious as this may sound, I often think, “Well, thank goodness I’m not one of the killy parents.” I mean, I could be; and this is why, whenever these articles in the news come up, my blood boils and I am simultaneously triggered into terrible grief for the poor little soul who endured such an awful existence before it ended.
Now, in 2024, we are into the next incarnation of County Council obtuseness and laziness; two emails I have sent have not received a reply; the case worker we had seems to have ceased altogether to exist, and the support that we receive is the same as the interest that these people take – a big, fat zero.
Today, for example, I have gone on to the Surrey County Council web site, in search of services for children with special educational needs and disabilities. One could be forgiven, at first glance, for imagining that Surrey is a well-provisioned, conscientious council, boasting such services as:
Learners’ Single Point of Access (L-SPA)
Both parents and practitioners working with children in Surrey are welcome to call the L-SPA.
It is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, all year round (except Bank Holidays) on 0300 200 1015.
The L-SPA will:
- Will give children the right support and intervention at the right time to help them meet their learning and developmental milestones.
- Gives you direct access to information and advice from a multi-disciplinary team of professionals from education, health and social care including:
- Occupational therapists
- Specialist teachers
- Qualified Social Worker
- Speech and Language Therapists
- Educational Psychologists
Goodness me, but how lovely. I have emailed the person who was, apparently, the Area SEND Manager for NE Surrey and, until April 25th, replied to my emails enquiring about the lack of provision and lack of monitoring of schools, EHCPs and support for children with SEND.
I wrote to the NE Area SEND Manager on 13th May, 2024 and, today being 29th August 2024, am still awaiting a reply. I sent an email a couple of weeks ago to remind them that I still await their reply but, alas, they also appear, like the case worker, to have vanished into thin air. I have been taking a look at the Surrey County Council Local Offer for people and children with SEND, and I felt immediately the energy flood out of me and the foggy vision and tiredness begin to take over. Visions of self-harming and crying fly across my mind’s eye. Apparently, I think, it is the beginning of term at the online provision that I have paid for for my son, but the very idea of encouraging him to engage with it fills me with dread. I see emails between other parents about the new term and the software platform, and want to curl up into a ball and scream.
I don’t get any help with this; not from my son’s father, who goes to work and is busy and lives with his wife in a mostly childless state of marital bliss; not from my mother, who would help if she could, but who is finding, at 78 years of age, that her brain is tired in so many ways now, and I can so relate to that. The Local Authority seems as impenetrable an obelisk as ever, and my father has only ever shown the tiniest bit of interest. He doesn’t know about the Tier 1 Tribunal case I have initiated against the school that off rolled my son after providing no support or provision for more than a year; he didn’t send me any of the information that I asked for about the investment-backed villains who run all these schools, despite me saying that, in the wake of the brain injury, my capacity for concentration and multitasking is diminished. Especially with a teenage boy at home and household tasks to do, and a mother to shop and cook for, et cetera et cetera …
Isolation
It is an interminable slow-drip waiting process. I send a communication, it is ignored; I send another one, and I send it to people whose job titles seem to imply that they might actually do something about the situation; with the exception of out-of-office auto replies, these are also ignored.
I confess that my addictive personality has led to me spending hours on my ‘phone playing games. These have become almost a proxy for peace of mind on the go, as it were; I am as addicted to nicotine as ever I was, and the best chance I stand of calm, alert proactivity is by doing a workout. The trouble is, when I am at a low ebb, the best I can do is to get on my bicycle to get small grocery items, and to walk our dog.
I know that I have to get back into working out regularly: it removes fatigue, bestows energy and enables me to stay regulated. Sometimes – like now – I’m contrary, though – I have writing to do, and it needs to pour out, and art is coming to the surface, too – this is wonderful; I will work out again but, right now, this is therapeutic. This is about me making a come-back, after years of being silenced by the low self-esteem upsurge when the brain injury knocked me into a lower energy vibration.
Capital Punishment 