A stat to begin with. I’ve sent a total of 37 emails since I last posted on here (end of January – sorry about that!) and we have made zero steps forward in terms of sorting Jude’s living and education situation out.
These emails are to lawyers, service managers, social workers, team managers, SEND managers, SEND coordinators, more lawyers, service providers, and more recently complaints managers, directors and MPs.
Do you know why?
Because our local authority is doing the old ‘radio silence’ trick and ignoring any email that doesn’t require a generic yes or no or a ‘I’ll look into it’ kind of reply. They’re good at those – ‘Oh let me find out and I’ll get back to you’. Yeah sure you will.
Needless to say it is only Jude who suffers. But then they seem to care entirely about costings so clearly we are coming at the ‘best interest’ discussion from different approaches.
In fact, the people who have said no to what Jude needs are those who have never even met him. If it wasn’t so horrendous, it would be funny, right?
We continue on the local authority roundabout for the time being – I think it was back in October I first referenced this yet here we are, nearly in April and we’ve got no-where at all.
I won’t talk about this situation too much in detail but as, I’ve mentioned before, once Jude is in a better situation, a colossal can of beans will be spilled. The local authority is beyond a disgrace and the details of their ‘processes’ and techniques need to be shared to stop any other family from going through this hell.
Detour Convo…
On the positive, Jude had the most wonderful birthday last week <3
Thank you so so much to his wonderful friends for coming to enjoy a birthday lunch with him – he hasn’t stopped talking about it and keeps asking when we can do it again.
These friends are, of course, from his old school/care team and I truly cannot thank enough for their involvement in making Jude the happy wee man he is today.
Back to my Rant…
So anyway, this is a very random post so I’m sorry for that, and for the two month silence.
I will update at the end of the week to see if any progress has been made. I’m going to guess it’ll be a massive NO but we live in hope…there must be SOMEONE at the local authority who cares, right?!
But they get to go home every day and live their own life.
It’s just a job to them and that breaks my heart – they don’t think about the young people who’s lives they dictate when they’re not sat behind their laptops.
This is why young people like Jude need to be given the care and support they need so THEY can have these lovely lives to. Simply existing is not enough. I’m sure no-one at our local authority would put up with the way Jude has to live right now and he shouldn’t have to either.
Til Friday amigos x
