No Kind Act Goes Unpunished
When does indifference become evil?
Last year was the year from hell, life had almost broken our unbreakable spirit, death after death after death, none of our kind acts went unpunished.
We did what we thought was needed to do and accepted the path would be hard but we didn’t expect people to try and destroy us for doing it.
One day I will write the full story because it is still unfolding. But in short, the year started with my friend of twenty-plus years dying, we had drifted apart after he formed a relationship with my then-partner. They got together and had a son. Then we shared the experience of the children’s mum leaving to start a new life in the USA without telling the children she was going.
My twelve-year-old daughter, who hated Lisa for no reason, had been sent to stay with us for a month to allow things to calm down between her and her mum, this turned out to be a cover for her escape, and my daughter and I were blamed for her needing to leave the country. I barely spoke to her mum since we separated. So many issues, I will write this amazing story at some stage, and the gifts it offered me. But back to now, well the beginning of last year.
My friend was seriously ill and my daughter told me he was having problems with his fourteen-year-old son, we decided to offer help in the form of advice at Christmas. My friend apologized for “the terrible things he had done to me”, he told me he had been praying for forgiveness.
I was the happiest that I’ve ever been in my new life with Lisa, so I’d let it all go anyway. His son came to us for a meal on Boxing Day, we felt it was important to build his relationship with my children his brother and sister who live with us.
He had cloned himself on his older brother, every outfit my son wore in a picture he got and copied the picture. His dad suggested he had some serious mental health issues but everyone dismissed his concerns and suggested it was his limited experience of teenagers.
Two weeks later my friend died, and my twenty-two-year-old son was told by a social worker that if he didn’t take him he would go into care. My son still lived with us and while he had his son at weekends, he embraced the single life.
We had picked his brother up from his home after his dad died, and he stayed with us that night. Lisa took him to school the next day to explain about his dad’s passing. They told her that if she hadn’t brought him in to school that morning they had planned to call social services to take him into care. He still lived with an uncle, but he had just had a heart attack and wasn’t well enough to look after him.
Lisa agreed to pick him up that night so he didn’t have to go into care. The social worker continued to phone and pressure my son to take him. I finally got to speak to the social worker and explained that trying to arrange for somebody to come and live at our house without talking to us wasn’t going to happen and pressuring and setting my son up to fail wasn’t acceptable either.
After a few days, he finally visited and offered a family arrangement to look after him. This meant we would receive no financial support and no service support, but more importantly, he would be in the system for support in later life if he needed them. The social worker just wanted to clear his books. We had realized by then that the mental health problems were very real, he had a complex set of needs, including autistic traits.
We were fortunate that this happened during our winter tour break so we were available, but without support, a long-term solution was going to be difficult to put in place. It was complicated by the fact that our friend and tour manager had cancer if we stopped touring it would have been difficult for her to maintain her business which was her life. We enjoyed touring but it did mean we would be away a lot and my son would have to step up. At first, we felt that could work, but as he became more unwell we realized we couldn’t cope.
The social worker was unbelievably bad, with no interest in the child, and unprofessional, all the other agencies complained about him. He constantly talked about how bad my ex was and how he was going to get her arrested, she was going through a court case in America after being sexually assaulted by a doctor in a hospital. He had no compassion for her and tried to turn her against us while trying to belittle her to us.
A strange thing happened, my ex contacted me, thanked us for our involvement, and offered her support if we wanted him.
To be honest, she had a history of making things about herself, but since the assault, she had been receiving counseling and was a different person. She was totally focusing on her son, so along with her husband we became a team and still get on. We needed to because the social worker was toxic. I can go on all day about him and trust me, I’m a let-it-go type.
My friend’s son’s behavior went from showering five times a day and blocking the toilet around twice a day to taking four hours to get ready for school, freezing in a stance for five to ten minutes. He became paranoid and my son started sleeping with something behind the door, food was the only thing that calmed him. We burnt through our small amount of savings, the social worker told my ex we were greedy and in it for the money.
The school couldn’t cope with his increasingly disturbed behavior and he was the target of bullying.
The school and mental health team were amazing we maintained him for ten weeks, but sadly he was detained under the Mental Health Act from our front room, the mixed emotion was unbelievable, a feeling of failure towards both him and my friend coupled with a relief it was over and a feeling of being safe again.
We had to drive him twenty minutes to the hospital, he didn’t want to go and we had to trick him with an offer of a McDonald and said he would have a choice at the hospital if he wanted to stay. I felt so guilty but the alternative would have been so traumatic for him. He didn’t believe he was ill and couldn’t understand why people were doing this to him.
We visited him at the hospital regularly but he didn’t seem to improve even with medication, he kept begging us to come home, and we were useless our hearts said yes but our heads said no, not that the hospital wasn’t going to let him out anytime soon.
We supported him at his dad’s funeral, where teachers from school attended and supported him.
The social worker was still doing all he could to stop us from visiting as we weren’t family, but we were his only visitors apart from some staff from the school, they were amazing.
Finally, just before his birthday, the social found him a placement, things were looking up, we had arranged with the hospital to take him out for a meal, but he was moved the day before, and the social worker didn’t tell us where he had gone, and when we found out from his mum and we rang the place we were told we weren’t allowed to see him because we had been inconsistent and hadn’t visited him at the hospital. We were in his care plan there. So his birthday plans were scrapped, and we managed to get his presents to him via my daughter. We were treated like abusers.
Last week we got a call from a new social worker who had taken over his case, she apologized and said that she could not see any reason why we had been banned, did we want to start revisiting, I’ve not written this before because I didn’t believe people would believe we were innocent, I’m social workers don’t just do that do they?
To be continued ……..
