Category: Exhibition

This is why the SEN whistleblower’s words
have landed like thunder across our hearts.
Not because they shocked us.
But because they confirmed
what families have whispered, shouted, written,
and wept over for years.
Not bad luck.
Not misunderstanding.
Not miscommunication.
Not isolated mistakes.
A pattern.
A pattern of delay.
A pattern of avoidance.
A pattern of missing records.
A pattern of withheld truths.
A pattern that left children waiting while families carried
burdens they were never meant to bear.
For too long, institutions stood behind process,
behind policy,
behind carefully chosen words,
while parents stood alone
holding together lives that were falling apart.
And these burdens were never small.
Children living with trauma.
Children living with disability.
Children with profound and complex needs.
Children ‘the theorists’ would not have a chance of caring
for.
Children whose struggles do not pause at sunset.
Children who needed support,
yet too often found only barriers.
And their families, already giving everything they had.
Caring is hard enough.
Parenting is hard enough.
The appointments.
The assessments.
The therapies.
The sleepless nights.
The crises.
The uncertainty.
The lost dreams.
The fear of what tomorrow may bring.
Hard enough.
So why were families forced to become investigators?
Caseworkers.
Legal researchers.
Archivists of every email and meeting.
Campaigners for rights already written in law.
Why were exhausted parents expected to police the very
systems created to protect their children?
Why were they forced to prove, document, challenge,
appeal, and fight for every inch of ground?
The anger did not appear overnight.
It was well earned.
Earned through years of being ignored.
Years of delay.
Years of lies and false recording.
Years of being unjustly blamed.
Years of systemic ignorance
Years of watching support withheld.
Years of seeing children left behind, while process was
protected more fiercely than people.
And beneath that anger,
something deeper.
Trauma 24/7.
The trauma of opening an email and feeling your stomach
sink, or rage at the slippery decisions to deny.
The trauma of entering meetings already braced for
disappointment.
The trauma of repeatedly explaining your child
to those who don’t care, but hold power over their future.
The trauma of watching them suffer while being told
everything is working exactly as it should.
Perhaps the hardest truth of all
is knowing so much of it was avoidable.
While families were blamed,
Many deliberately to destroy those who challenge, the
failures that often lay elsewhere.
While parents were called difficult,
they were responding to difficulties that should never have
existed.
While families were scrutinised,
systems protected themselves.
While children struggled,
energy was spent managing complaints,
controlling narratives,
limiting accountability,
deflecting responsibility.
Finance used to systemically protect, rather than support,
Finance used for control and proceedings, but not available
for help.
Many know what it feels like
to become the target.
To raise concerns
and watch the spotlight hugely turn toward them.
To challenge decisions
and be labelled the problem.
To ask for rights
and be accused of confrontation.
To expose failings
and be blamed for the conflict those failings created.
Those experiences leave scars.
Because this is more than neglect.
It feels like betrayal.
The betrayal of trust.
The betrayal of duty.
The betrayal of children
who depended upon adults to do what was right.
And when blame is placed upon families
to disguise or minimise systemic failings,
the harm grows deeper.
Parents begin to question themselves.
Replaying conversations.
Re-reading emails.
Second-guessing decisions.
Wondering whether they are asking too much, when all they
seek is what the law already promises.
This is how people are worn down.
Deliberately.
Not always by one dramatic act.
But by relentless pressure.
By denial.
By delay.
By dismissal.
By being forced to fight
while being told there is no fight at all.
Many families have lived for years
under the weight of chronic stress.
Not because they are fragile.
Not because they are unreasonable.
But because responsibilities were placed upon them
that never belonged to them.
That is why this report matters.
Because it confirms what families already knew.
The distress was never the problem.
The distress was evidence.
Evidence of harm.
Evidence of pressure.
Evidence of families pushed beyond their limits
while caring for children with life-altering needs.
And perhaps the most painful truth remains this:
While budgets were debated,
parents were holding children in crisis.
While emails went unanswered,
families were managing trauma,
anxiety,
school refusal,
mental health struggles,
Financial struggles,
developmental challenges,
and the uncertainty of every day.
While decisions were delayed,
childhood was slipping away.
Lost months became lost years.
And those years can never be returned.
That is why accountability matters.
Not because families seek revenge.
But because children deserved better.
Because parents deserved better.
Because rights deserved to be upheld.
Because trust cannot survive without honesty.
Families should not have to be investigators.
Families should not have to be lawyers.
Families should not have to be auditors of public bodies.
Families should not spend years proving what professionals
should already know, and what the law already requires.
Their role is to love.
To protect.
To advocate.
The role of institutions
is to act with integrity,
uphold the law,
and provide support.
When those institutions fail,
the consequences do not remain on paper.
They are carried in minds,
in bodies,
in relationships,
in futures,
long after the files are closed.
This is why this moment matters.
Because when thousands of families tell the same story,
and voices from inside the system begin to confirm it,
the question is no longer whether harm occurred.
The question is:
Who will finally be held accountable?
Families did not create this crisis.
Families did not create these failures.
Families did not create this trauma.
They simply lived through it.
And they have carried the cost for far too long.
Many feel not only failed,
but blamed.
Not only unheard,
but discredited.
Not only abandoned,
but made to carry the burden
of protecting institutions from scrutiny.
Yet the truth remains.
The harm was real.
The trauma was real.
The cost was real.
And so too is the demand for justice.
The time for truth is now.
The time for accountability is now.
The time for justice is now.
And to those who believe this story ends here, remember
this:
The Post Office scandal shocked a nation. Tragic.
But countless families know there are more hidden truths in
systemic injustices,
corrupt and deliberate practice, still waiting to be heard,
that involve thousands and thousands of the most
vulnerable families traumatised by systemic toxicity, power
and control.
And those truths will not stay buried forever.
The truth will be spoken by thousands.
The truth will be heard.
THE TRUTH
WILL BE TOLD.
IM READY.
ARE YOU ?

Take a tour round Jack Moore’s home. It’s full of surprises…!

Click here to watch the video

Here’s our in depth analysis of why Building the Right Support has failed…in the form of a poem.

Click here to watch the video

On The Inside

You’re looking from the darkness to the light,
And even on the inside, it is night.
No festive joy is yours,
Just locked and lonely doors
While those who should will never do what’s right.

The names are piling up

I remember I can speak, write

Something that does not occur to me while they are

Alive,

Eating cereal with plastic baby spoons

Or not eating at all, except maybe through the nose.

But when they are dead, and it feels the worst,

I fucking roar

Quietly and with respect for those around me, who may have noise sensitivities.

      God surely must be quite tired of checking mentally ill children into heaven.

The coroner must be tired.

The nurses must be tired.

I am very tired, it seems relentless these days.

Another day, girl girl girl boy they/them she/them he/them reduced to death by misadventure or chronic or deceased or worse, somehow, EUPD which might have just been autism and/or ADHD and/or PDA profile and/or what does it matter they/them are dying/dead.

I am in love getting married and it’s been 7 years and they’re still dying/dead and I’m here/alive feeling guilty. When does it end? The children without help without choices without voices?

I’m getting impatient.

I would really like to know.

Written by Anwen

 

Jessie Eastland Seares died in Mill View psychiatric hospital in Hove at the age of nineteen. A young autistic woman, she is remembered for being artistic, creative, funny, kind and colourful. Yet, she was failed by a system that was supposed to help her.  She asked her parents to share her story and so we are proud to share some of her wonderful artwork here.

Thank you, Jessie

 

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Dannielle is autistic and her poem is about the trauma of sexual abuse within the walls of a psychiatric hospital. Her bravery and her determination to use her creative skills to keep going shine though her words.

The video of her poem is here and is read by Alexis Quinn.

Josh’s mum, Leo, tells us a bit about Josh’s art.

Josh is 16 and a young artist.
He loves art and can name any famous artist in seconds since  age 7.

He goes to art lesson on Saturdays.
Being an artist has given my son huge confidence.
Josh has autism and OCD with social and health anxiety.
Those issues hinder him hugely but I am so very proud of him for going to those classes as it’s hugely difficult for him to deal with society and groups of people.

One of his pieces have been acquired by Lush cosmetics for Christmas 2023 paper. On that paper will be little secret messages that both Joshy and I did.
He is so very proud of it and so am I.

He has sold two of his paintings.
And was choked by how much it went for.
The money goes to the charity that gives him the lessons.
So he has not made any money.
A Chinese gallery in Hong Kong is interested in taking the painting of the monkey to Hong Kong.
We don’t know if it will happen but if it does, again it’s a huge achievement for a young man who would not speak to anyone or ever go out unless it was to school and even school was hard.

It goes to show that if you have an ability and you have autism or any other disability and people tell you what you can’t do and not what you can , you will never know what you can go for.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t.

We were sent this anonymously. Read it out loud for all those detained.

ATU’s Mother’s Day

My child is a prisoner, I the walking wounded.
He cries at night, Mum! My body and soul bled of the life force I so desperately need to get him out of there.
“He’s fine today, he ate his dinner”, cold comfort six months later, detained he’s still a sinner paying the price for not being ‘nice’ for being autistic.
My son, my love, my centre of being, my thoughts of you now, of what you have seen, heard, endured in that hell-hole of the absurd where so many others have been. You didn’t deserve this.
Tomorrow is Mother’s day, our 30 minute visit cut short to allow other mums to elicit a reaction, smile, hug, from their own traumatised childen, sustaining them another week, while they ask when will this nightmare end.
It’s the night before Mother’s Day and while I believe this day was made more for Hallmark Cards and florists than me, this Mother’s day will get my attention, the day my son remained in secluded detention for something he didn’t do and the failure of this nation, despite the First World location, to understand he is:
autistic

As Mother’s Day approaches, we’ve been thinking about all the parents who have children in ATUs and all other institutional settings, and of all the parents with a learning disability and autistic parents who may be stuck in these places.
We wondered if parents in these situations will be apart from their children on this day when so many other families are able to celebrate, so we made a video to look at the issues.
In this video, we hear a poem about how it feels to be so exhausted from the battle against the system. We then hear from Alexis Quinn, Dr Dawn Cavanagh and Julie Newcombe about their own personal experiences of being apart from their loved ones.
Finally, there is information about blanket restrictions and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (respect for your private and family life) that people might find useful in challenging hospital decisions not to allow visits.

You can watch the video here:

We asked our members what words they would use to describe a good life. This is what they contributed.

Continue reading “Word search – Good Life”

Click here for the website for  the Rightful Lives Online Exhibition which was put together from  2018 to 2020 

This was how we got started, an online exhibition that explored the theme of the Human Rights of  autistic and learning disabled people.

The idea for the exhibition came about through a conversation about how the legal framework of the Human Rights Act seems to barely touch the lives of people with learning disabilities and autistic people.

Contributions to the original exhibition ran from 2018 to 2020 and this can be viewed at the link just above. We still welcome any relevant exhibits anyone would like to send us and will share them here.