THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO

Cutting Free Bus Passes For Disabled People

A Tory-led council has provoked anger after asking the public if they would support an end to free bus travel for disabled people and pensioners.

East Sussex County Council asked in a consultation whether it would be reasonable to charge elderly and disabled people half-fares for off-peak bus journeys that they can currently take for free, and East Sussex announced that despite being limited by legislation, it still wanted to test the water on what people thought of charges for a variety of services.

But even though East Sussex County Council are rigidly defined by law in the charges they’re allowed to make for services, they would still like to know if there are any additional charges people might believe is fair if the law changed to allow them.

Amongst the ideas that would ridicule prevailing legislation were: Half-fare on buses for pensioners and people with a disability; a charge to enter household waste and recycling sites; and a yearly charge for membership of the library.

The consultation infers East Sussex is unobtrusively measuring support for proposals to combat cut resources previously untested by local authorities, and the council said acknowledgements to the inquiry, which concluded on 31 December, will form part of their discussion with the government in the months that ensued and ahead of the next spending review.

The Local Government Association, which stewards authorities, warned last year that the way free bus passes are subsidised by the central government in Westminster has not kept up with rising demand and increasing costs, but disability and older people’s charities responded with outrage to East Sussex’s consultation, which comes after nine years of austerity and cuts of over £119 million to its budget, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People said that the charity was concerned at the prospect of half-fares for disabled people.

Buses are an important lifeline bringing independence to numerous people with sight loss, and this could hinder blind and partially sighted people from going about their daily lives freely, and with confidence, and disabled people are usually massively reliant on public transport.

Of course, many council’s are financially stretched, but surely life is more important?

Disabled people usually have no option but to pay more on basic goods and services like heating, therapies and equipment, but we should all be striving to decrease expenses for the disabled, not looking for ways to ramp them up.

Almost 10 million people qualify for concessionary bus travel in England, and being able to take free journeys adds to broader advantages to local restraints, and the free bus pass is unquestionably essential to countless older and disabled people, and local authorities need to realise that the free bus pass has extended benefits, and it’s estimated that for every £1 spent on concessions for older and disabled people, there’s a return of £3.80, and it’s disheartening to see that even as a consultative exercise, the idea of removing the right to free bus passes for older and disabled people is being considered.

But East Sussex County Council stated that the core offer consultation was a vocalisation of the level of assistance they believe residents should be entitled to expect from the council given the prevailing challenging financial climate, and that it was meant as a means to oversee their prospective financial planning and to show to the government the funding problems they encounter, what was important to local people, and to help them make the case for a realistic level of funding.

They further said that it wasn’t something they were aiming to do and to do it, it would, of course, need a change in the law, and they were simply seeking to assess what resident’s preferences were and what they considered vital services in the future if the prevailing funding squeeze on local government were to continue, and that they’re position remains that they’re calling on government for a truly fair funding review which takes into account the particular needs of counties, such as theirs, which are mainly rural in nature and have a large symmetry of older residents, so wouldn’t it only be right that they left bus passes in place so that their older occupants could get out and about, rather than being housebound?

It’s absolutely essential for older and disabled people to keep their independence, which is why local authorities are given £1 billion to provide the free bus pass scheme each year, and at the moment they’re no proposals to amend legislation, but it doesn’t mean that it won’t happen, put an idea in the governments thought process, and of course they will do it.

Why would they even contemplate taking bus passes away from OAP’s and the disabled who use the bus as a means to travel, and instead of even considering it, why don’t they just make cuts to the more affluent who promote this sort of drivel, and this is an authority on the brink of financial collapse, but perhaps in their desperation they might like to ask their various moneyed residents whether they would be prepared to contribute more freely, but I suspect that they won’t do that because they know what the answer would be to such a plea.

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Before the General Election in 2010, David Cameron, on two separate television broadcasts, promised that the most vulnerable members of our society would be protected from the worst of the austerity measures. Unfortunately, since winning that referendum it’s been the most vulnerable members of our society that have borne the brunt of austerity.

Now 1 in 200 people are homeless, the Trussel Trust gives out millions of food parcels. Approximately 4 million working people are living in poverty. Universal Credit problems are adding to the hardships of God only knows how many people. Brexit preparations are costing this country billions. And now this.

Plus the Conservative Party are hellbent on selling us everything again that we already pay for, taxing tax on top of the tax. Perhaps they should try taxing these multinational companies that make billions of profit and line their pockets and the Tories keep it that way.

There are only two reasons why someone would want to vote Tory, one is if you’re stinking filthy rich, the other is if you’re deluded, to work out which category you fall into, just open your wallet, and look inside.

Labour, of course, couldn’t do any better, and I’m in despair of the people that are actually running our country and are so lacking in intelligence, and all striving politicians should be forced to live a year in lowly circumstances, and middle-class circumstances, this would give them an insight into how people live, and then perhaps they might become good politicians and not let their egotism and their own agenda’s run the show.

True Horror Of Universal Credit

A spirited group of unique mums reported the real chaos of Universal Credit in a damning testimony to Parliament. The ladies explained how the Tories six in one benefit, intended to be a better system that makes work pay left them with £1,000 childcare charges, overdue payment fines and even being booted out of the nursery.

One mum said she was forced to turn down her dream job because it would have left her with only £2 a day for food, bills, nappies and petrol.

Thuto Mali, a mum to a two-year-old boy, confessed: “We were at the food bank last Christmas because it got that bad, and it’s not that she didn’t want to work, it simply doesn’t pay to work.

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Four women gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, but Universal Credit has now been rolled out to 1.2 million people and is due to hit 3 million by December 2019 which is forcing the needy into rent arrears and food banks.

Theresa May is facing tremendous demand to pump more money into the benefit, which has been bundled up with billions in welfare cuts since it began in 2013, and so far campaigners have centred on this and other difficulties with the benefit, like the five-week wait for payment.

Nevertheless, the single mums talked about another side to the narrative, on how Universal Credit affects childcare.

Working parents on Universal Credit can claim back 85 per cent of their nursery fees, but they have to pay up front first, and then claim the money back later. This policy saddled mum of two Vikki Waterman with a £1,300 bill which she had to wait five weeks to be paid back.

The 34-year-old was further fined £50 by her nursery because the late benefit payment meant she was two days behind paying for childcare.

She told MPs: “We don’t want to sit at home when we didn’t plan to be single parents,” and she certainly shouldn’t be punished for that. These women want to be able to go to work and to provide for their own families, but at the moment it appears as if there’s a roadblock everywhere they turn.

Hairdresser and mum-of-three Gaynor Rowles, from Heywood, Greater Manchester, was required to pay up-front costs for her three-year-old twins. She was required to pay £188 per week, and she simply didn’t have that sort of money upfront.

In the end, she was only £9.37 a week better off in work, and she’s changed as a person, she’s really not her usual cheerful self, and it’s pretty depressing really, but there are more people out there that are much worse off than she is, and it’s fortunate that she’s got a good family, great friends and good support.

Thuto Mali reported her little boy was even suspended from the nursery. She was paying about half or three-quarters of it and his dad was supposed to pay the other, but it didn’t actually happen, so she got whacked with an £800 bill.

She was forced to turn down a job with a £32,000 salary but after paying £1,800 a month for a full-time nursery place for her son she would have been left with only £60 a month to cover bills, that effectively £2 a day, it just didn’t pay for her to work.

Nail technician Lucy Collins, from Manchester, left her position in the police because she couldn’t fit shifts around her children, aged 9 and 3, only then did she realise the difficulties of being on Universal Credit, she simply got passed from pillar to post, and she found it so complicated.

Astonishingly, MPs learned how the system was more kind to well-off parents than it is on people claiming benefits.

People on Universal Credit must present receipts and invoices on an “online journal” to ensure they get the money back, and there’s a really different burden of proof on more middle-class parents. You don’t need to present receipts, you simply need to have a registered childcare provider. The money’s in your account and you, as a parent, are able to transfer that directly.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokeswoman stated that they’re doing more than ever before to assist parents with expenses of childcare and by 2019-20 they will be spending about a record of £6 billion on childcare support.

But under Universal Credit, working parents can claim back up to 85 per cent of qualified childcare expenses, compared to the 70 per cent of expenses covered under the former legacy system, and supposedly, it’s the highest level of support ever, but if someone has accepted an offer of paid work, they’re expected to pay the costs for the month preceding starting work.

And why are people so shocked that the middle class are better off rather than those on benefits, after all, this government loathes anyone who has to rely on state support, yet they see nothing wrong in treating themselves to lavish expense accounts, or giving out bonuses to wealthy landowners, or giving the Windsor’s millions to restore their homes and afford security for their weddings, and all out of the public purse.

Universal Credit should be suspended with immediate effect, and even though it appears that the government alleges to have gotten millions into work, it’s failed to report on the fact that Universal Credit affects some more than others.

More specifically, those on lower incomes and single-parent families, largely women following a breakup are then left with the children. What doesn’t help is that some employers are not that adaptable when it comes to working hours, or when they set their rotas.

Which then means it enforces some need to additional childcare costs, which then generates more hassle and financial hardship on those workers, whilst waiting for Universal Credit to compensate them, and if they’re not sorted out and quickly could mean that they end up in debt, can’t pay their rent and end up homeless, or resort to giving up work as they believe they would be better off, but then the government can pretend they’re helping record numbers of people into work, so it’s an ongoing cycle, but with salaries hanging behind inflation it will make it more difficult for some to see any advantage in going to work.

The money is there to support people but of course, we wouldn’t want to end austerity, and besides it’s bound up in company tax fiddles and offshore banks, and the people who can prevent this, won’t because they’re profiting from those tax fiddles, and in case people don’t realise who I’m talking about, it’s MPs and I do include Labour MPs as well.

A parent can’t be in two places at the same time when they have children, but there are countless people out there in the same situation, and they certainly don’t need other people’s mocking pity, especially when the father makes a run for it and leaves the mother with the child. Someone’s husband may have passed away, which is really sad, but then they become a single parent, after all, not everything in life can be rosy.

You might have had several children, but at the time you could afford it, and then something terrible happens in your circumstances to change that, but how were you to know, not everyone has a crystal ball attached to their behind!

And it might be true that some people have children to get things, but most people aren’t like that, but those people that do deceive the system get what they want, well, that’s what people will say, but then so do people from the middle classes, and wealthy people do it, not only people on benefits, and if you earn the minimum wage and work 40 hours a week, you may as well not bother working as that will be your days pay, and you will end up in arrears, especially if it then costs for you to travel.

How does anyone come up with these outlandish prices? £1,800 to look after a child, how exactly does this service justify that amount of money? And after tax one would need to make at least £32,000 a year, so to live and pay bills everyone would need to get a minimum of £50,000 a year, and clearly, that’s not plausible.

The sad fact is that our government don’t care about the poor, and they never will, and it’s felonious how they get away with the policies they come up with.

Of course, it’s not cheap running a business and for one member of staff, it will cost approximately £1,500 a month in salaries for a 40 hour week, more if they’re over 21. On top of that, there’s the insurance, supplies, resourcing, business rates, rent, consumption costs, electric, and heating et cetera.

But yet the government want people to go back to work, and there are numerous people out there that really want to, but they simply can’t afford to because by the time they’ve paid out for childcare expenses all their money has gone, and now they can’t pay for things like insurance, rent, consumption costs, electric, heating et cetera.

YOU COULDN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP IF YOU TRIED!

But the government apparently think it’s okay for people to live on the breadline indefinitely, but if they believe that it’s such a great idea, maybe they should be living on the breadline as well, after all, if it’s good enough for the goose, it’s good enough for the gander, but then perhaps if they quit sending money overseas we might not end up like a third world country, I wonder who will send us aid when we need it?

The problem is, the family is breaking down in 21st century Britain. Childcare never used to be a problem because parents stayed together and were happier with less. The world has evolved, but not everybody has evolved in it.

Once upon a time families with children who needed to work relied on their parents or aunts and their relatives to help out with childcare, it wasn’t fail-proof, but most of the time it did work because the family unit was solid, there’s no family unit as such these days, and we’re being torn apart by radical idea’s that families can’t childcare because they need to be CRB checked and vetted because there might be a paedophile in the family unit.

As I said, it’s not all fail-proof, but it did work most of the time. It meant that families got together, they played with their cousins and sisters and brothers as a unit, and that’s when families were families and not something out of the Stepford street gang.

But sadly, there are countless people out there that think that being a single mother is a life choice, and those people are literally yesterday’s child, and no wonder there’s so much suffering in the world today, and people’s views of single-parent families is truly pretty repugnant.

Some of these people didn’t put themselves in this situation deliberately, there are many complex situations encompassing each family, and many of those parents have disabled children and people shouldn’t stick their nose in the air and judge for most of those people left school and worked hard, got married and worked hard, or went back to work following maternity leave and worked hard.

But things can turn on its head and we never know what’s around the corner, and these people don’t ask for much, just a little help and basic understanding from the government, but instead, it’s a sporadic shambles, and people shouldn’t judge what they don’t understand, and people should open their eyes because if you’ve never been in the system you wouldn’t know how difficult it is, and this is what adds to a single mother’s suffering, this mass premise that everyone on benefits is living the good life, and that’s really not true.

I mean, how can you actually plan for a relationship breakdown following ten years of marriage, and then you end up falling on difficult times because for most of the marriage you’d been a stay at home mum and homemaker, I mean, really, who’s going to employ you with no CV to talk of and no skills or the ones that you did have are now archaic and not worth the paper their written on?

It appears that having a child now is simply for the vested and not ignorant, greedy or shallow people because the government don’t want to pay for them to have children, the thing is, it’s not the common joe that’s selfish or stupid, it’s our government that are the greedy shallow ones because they seem to be able to do as they please, and not only that, they get away with whatever they want and people simply turn a blind eye like it’s something they were born to do, and yet people make excuses for this government.

Maybe our government should explain to the children whose father has died that really they shouldn’t have been born if their daddy was going to die, heaven forbid, they didn’t see that coming, but then maybe no one should have children because at some point their parents are going to die, but the Royals keep knocking out children and they’re the largest benefit receivers in Britain, especially if they’re feeding them on taxpayers money.

Forced To Quit Job To Look After Relatives

With social care funding cut to the bone, more and more families are forced to step in to look after vulnerable family members owing to an extreme shortage of trained assistance, and many are leaving work and endangering their jobs and their own well-being and happiness to shoulder the responsibility of a task that should be done by qualified personnel.

Research implies the nation’s army of voluntary carers has risen from three million in 2011 to five million today, and so extreme is the situation that over the past two years, more than 600 people have left their jobs every day to fill the gap in social care left by £7 billion cuts since the Tories came to power.

The Mirror has started the Fair Care for All campaign, with seven demands to stop the crisis sparked by years of harsh Conservative austerity, and this deluge of people having to give up work to care for an elderly relation is the direct consequence of harsh Tory austerity which has seen fewer and fewer people and families able to access social care.

Cuts to council funding mean £7 billion has been lost from social care spending since the Tories came to power. That suggests limited social care for vulnerable people and poorer quality care for those that do get it, adding pressure to give care on to their hard-pressed families.

State funding for social care has declined by 27 per cent since 2010. This has left 400,000 fewer people getting expert attention, and Carers UK is calling on employers to support staff who have to look after elderly or disabled relatives.

Better workplace provision for people balancing work with caring is becoming an increasingly major problem, yet the Department of Health and Social Care have stated that they’re determined to help carers to stay in or gain employment, including through the Carers Action Plan, which is a two year plan of targeted work, including working with councils on the best practice for carers breaks and respite.

Terry Kirton gave up a well-paid job and went back home to care for his frail 92-year-old father, Rod. He gets an allowance of £62.40 a week, which hardly meets the expenses of running the house, and Rod’s benefits were cut when his son returned home.

Along with Income Support, the two survive on about £400 a month, but when Terry went back home one time something had changed, he just looked like a fragile old man.

Terry asked him how he was doing and he simply said “Okay”, but he could see he wasn’t coping, and his father just broke down sobbing and said the house was too large and too difficult and it was too much.

So, there was no other choice but to go back home to look after his father, but being a carer is extremely isolating, you lose your individuality, you lose your colleagues at work and going to social functions.

Only child Terry was a manager at a Harley Street hospital in London before going back to Monmouth, South Wales, and it’s shocking that there are so many unpaid carers, and if all these carers decided they couldn’t cope and stopped for just one day, then the entire system would fail.

The Government needs to understand there’s so much goodwill out there amongst families, but you can’t pay the bills on goodwill, and there needs to be a creation of a National Care System that works beside the NHS.

Professional carers need to be paid the Living Wage, and there also needs to be an end to carers coming into homes and staying 15 minutes or less because people that I’ve talked to have stated that carers are coming in, and the families are timing them, and they’re in and out in less than 15 minutes, consequently things are not getting done correctly, beds are not being made how they should be, food is not given correctly and countless elderly and disabled people are not being washed well enough.

They should also increase the carers allowance for unpaid carers, and promote a national system of volunteering to spend time with the elderly and disabled because many of these people are housebound and have nobody to talk to, and are usually pretty isolated.

They should further have a dedicated Minister for the Elderly and Disabled, and a National Commission on how to finance the care revolution that the elderly and disabled need because many people leave employment to care for their elderly or disabled families and have no idea how to cope.

The Department of Health and Social Care stated that they’re determined to help carers to stay in or gain employment through their Carers Action plan, they’re having a laugh!

The reason most people have to give up work is to look after a family member, it’s not like they even have enough time to look for work, but technically they’re employed because they’re looking after a family member, they simply don’t get paid for it.

Giving up work to become a full-time carer will steal that person of their job, their friends, social life, well-being, their money and their dignity, and eventually, it will take its toll on the one thing they have left, their relationship with the very person they care for.

The government don’t care, why should they, they have a cheap labour force working for them under the pretence of the title of “unpaid carer”, but most people would do the same all over again because they love the person they care for, but one should consider really carefully before taking this step because it’s a slippery slope to a life of hell where you have nothing much coming in and creditors hunting you for debts that you’ve built up, and it’s no picnic, and there’s no respite, and any assistance you do qualify for you will have to pay for because nothing is free.

Inside The Newcastle Food Bank Made Famous By ‘I, Daniel Blake’

Stepping into the Newcastle West End Foodbank made famous by I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach’s scorching film about the victims of Tory austerity, a humble little old lady held a cheque.

Aged 80 and living nearby, in a faint Scottish dialect she modestly declared a regretful life had been made harder than in her salad days so she wanted to support families less fortunate than her own.

Manager John McCorry, who runs the venue Church of the Venerable Bede in the Tyneside city’s Benwell area thanked the pensioner and coaxed out her address to send a polite letter of appreciation. He noticed the cheque was for £250, but she asked him not to publish her name as she was doing only what was right and warranted no public recognition.

She was one of the fortunate ones because she got a nice council house and a decent job, and now a modest pension, and she’d wanted to go to the Church for weeks, and believed that it was evil what was happening to people, and that they should be helped, not punished, and that formulating poverty is inexcusable.

Earlier a couple of handsome siblings in stylish trainers and designer threads, sauntered into the food bank located in the Church of the Venerable Bede in the Tyneside city’s Benwell area, and builders Behzad and Behnam Emami, 29 and 34, started to clean up.

Four years ago they had been asylum seekers from Iran who began volunteering when banned from paid employment, but they continued volunteering after the Home Office let them stay and find employment, and when they’re available they simply come to help out because helping people is great.

Later in the city’s famous indoor Grainger Market, with its famous Marks and Spencer’s Penny Bazaar, an old man in shabby garments also wanted to help. He had a handful of coins as he meekly approached a unit the food bank operates with Newcastle United fans to collect “Toonaid” donations from a Geordie nation doing what the Conservative government isn’t, and the kindness of people is amazing and completely touching.

The food bank gives life-saving packages from two centres, including the Church of the Venerable Bede, and a warehouse in Newburn co-ordinate delivery, but without these amazing volunteers and all the people collecting and donating food and money, it makes you question what might happen to the people in genuine need and that are going hungry.

It’s not only adults, but it also’s the children too, and demand is growing, and poverty is growing as well.

The Newcastle West End Foodbank is part of the Trussell Trust network and the biggest in the country, serving close to 50,000 families this year with 106 tonnes of food worth £209,000.

Hot meals are served and packages are given to take home. Meanwhile, an integration programme seeks to sort out problems with landlords, benefits, health, both physical and mental, plus treatments for addictions, and the gut-wrenching stories of families left in desperation by gaping holes ripped in the welfare state by the Tories are commonplace everywhere in the country.

Slum landlords, DWP sanctions, bad bosses and Universal Credit are evils either endured or administered by self-righteous Conservative Ministers, and people sleeping on the streets or in cars and vans is expanding.

One mother was £3,500 in debt after the council charged her £30 a week bedroom tax despite her readiness to move into a smaller property the local authority couldn’t find, then if you look around Newcastle’s West End food bank you’ll see two unkempt young men who were once soldiers and are now living rough.

One was ready to give up, feeling rejected by the country which put him in a uniform and sent him to war and then dropped him like a sack of potatoes, but to those people out there who are going about their everyday life and have a job, it’s not always that apparent to them that there are people out there that are struggling.

People simply don’t have the time to consider stuff like this, it’s like material that comes out of a Dicken’s novel, and it’s expanding at such intensity that people are blind to what’s going on.

Christine Wood, a retired library worker proud of her MBE, represents herself in I, Daniel Blake’s food bank scenes, and she sees genuine people being treated badly, and sometimes you’ve really got to bite your lip when they tell you what’s happening, now they’ve got no money and are very desperate.

You could cry but you can’t afford to cry or let yourself go downhill, and you couldn’t help them if you did. So you show compassion and try to put a smile on their faces.

We all know who are formulating this misery, and what the government’s doing, and they’ll never be forgiven, but ordinary people have the ability to change these things, and we all need to stop voting Tory.

Austerity is not over, but then Theresa May doesn’t appear to think that people going to food banks is a problem, but then the Tories simply don’t care because they’re cruel.

What Could A No-Deal Brexit Actually Mean For You?

Theresa May’s Brexit Deal has been voted down by MP’s, meaning we’re getting nearer and nearer to a No Deal Brexit, but what could a No Deal Brexit mean for us?

So, we wake up on March 30th 2019, and the United Kingdom has now left the EU. The idea was to have a deal in place by the time we left, making sure we had a farewell and ease out of the union.

Theresa May announced that she believed that she could get a deal delivered for Britain, and Philip Hammond said that we would be able to strike a deal that will work for us and that will work for them.

But now, none of that’s in place, so what’s really going to happen?

One of the first issues would be, what about the UK border? If there’s no agreement about customs checks there could be significant delays. Lorries that used to be weighed through will probably now require their details checked, which will then require reams and reams of paperwork to be verified before they can go through.

According to the freight industry, that could mean queues of up to 17 miles at the port of Dover, and because of that, there are concerns it could interrupt distributions of food and medication coming into the United Kingdom.

But, the Deputy Mayor of Calais has stated that on the French side, they’ve been planning for a No Deal for over a year, and he announced there will definitely be no holdups at the border in the event of a No Deal.

Now, problems at the port are one thing, but there could be even bigger dilemmas at the land border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. There used to be a physical border there with customs checks, but for numerous Irish Nationalists, this was regarded as a symbol of British rule.

All those barriers were removed as part of the Northern Ireland peace process, so for many on both sides of the border, putting up barriers once more would seem like a return to the problems of the past.

But the EU has stated that if there’s a no Brexit deal, there would be no alternative to a hard border, so on top of all the trade delays a No Deal Brexit could create, there’s also the likelihood of renewed violence.

There’s real potential of fear from extremists wanting to exploit the chaos of a possible No Deal Brexit, but then Northern Ireland has seen this time and time again, no matter what the issue is in Northern Ireland, that people do tend to go onto the streets for either a short period of time or a more protracted period of time that they do see some serious public disorder, or indeed terrorist-related violence.

Now, what if you’ve booked a flight to Europe? But then we have a No Deal Brexit. Well, airlines will lose their automatic right to fly between Britain and EU member states. Authorities will have to reach some kind of agreement on air travel so that planes could carry on landing in other countries.

The EU has said that there’s an emergency plan in place to ensure some air routes remain running in the case of a No Deal. So, hopefully, people’s holiday plans won’t be affected, but also, the UK government will try and get a more comprehensive agreement, while EU countries, they still want to fly here, so it’s in their interests to keep the air space open.

But if things don’t go to plan, it could end in plans being grounded, meaning people won’t be able to take off, and they could be left stranded.

Now, what about those of you waking up in the United Kingdom on March 30th who are EU citizens? Well, your status in the United Kingdom will eventually change after a couple of years. Although, that would happen regardless of whether we leave with a deal or not.

That’s because freedom of movement will end, so EU citizens will no longer have an automatic right to live and work in the United Kingdom, also likewise Brits who live in Europe will also lose their guarantee to free healthcare in the EU, and on top of that, the value of your UK state pension could be in danger down the line.

However, before everyone starts panicking, the government has said there’s no need to worry. That’s because if you’re an EU national living in the United Kingdom, you can apply for “settled status” for £65. So, providing you can show that you live in the United Kingdom and that you’re not a security threat, all of your current rights and privileges will be protected, and once you’ve got “settled status” you can carry on living in the United Kingdom just like before.

EU countries are also in the process of announcing comparable schemes for Brits living abroad, but what other differences are people expected to see? Well, perhaps the biggest of a No Deal Brexit is the possible collapse of the economy. The Bank of England believes the value of the pound will fall, the economy will shrink, and that it will be even worse than the 2008 financial crash.

Now that’s founded on a lot of detailed predictions, but remember, they have sometimes been mistaken before.

A large part of our economy is our trading alliance with Europe, and being in the EU means we can buy and sell goods with EU countries without paying tariffs at the border, but if there’s No Deal, Britain would have to treat all countries equally whether they’re in the EU or not, that’s according to the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

So what does that mean, well, take cabbages for instance, under WTO rules, we could introduce charges on cabbages coming into the United Kingdom from the EU. That means cabbages and other food would get more costly for everyone.

On the other hand, it might be good for the British farming industry because it would make their cabbages more competitive. On the other hand, they could simply set additional charges really low, or even at 0.0 per cent, but because we now have to treat all countries equally, that would apply to the entire world, so on the positive side that might help keep food prices low for consumers, but it would further mean that British farmers might be undercut by competitors from around the world, and don’t forget because of problems at the border, EU countries exporting stuff to the United Kingdom might face additional paperwork and customs checks, and that all costs money, and it’s possible that the consumer would have to foot the bill.

So, will there be anarchy if we leave without a deal? Not necessarily, because the government have been planning this for a while, and it maintains emergency procedures are in position. For example, there’s an airfield near the port of Dover which will be turned into a lorry park, and companies have been selected to run extra ferry services to carry goods, and those measures are intended to reduce gridlock at one of Britain’s bustling ports.

The government has further announced plans to stockpile medicines and fly in essential supplies if needed, but much is contingent on whether the government will be able to strike so-called mini deals on various aspects of life following a No Deal Brexit.

These would be separate stand-alone agreements to solve problems like air traffic and congestion at the borders, but the EU has maintained it will only agree to basic contingency measures, allowing some flights and cross border trade for a short time, and don’t forget that many MP’s, they actually don’t want a No Deal Brexit, and have said they will seek to ensure it doesn’t happen.

In January for example, Labour and Tory MP’s came together to defeat the government, and give MP’s more control in the event of a No Deal Brexit. So, what about the rest of Brexit? Most EU law will simply be transformed into British law, so it’s doubtful that anyone will notice any immediate differences to the way their life is dictated, but there will be one enormous constitutional difference, EU institutions will instantly cease to have any say in how the United Kingdom is controlled, so any ultimate decision will come straight from our parliament.

Army Is On Standby To Help Police

As many as 10,000 troops could be deployed on the streets of Britain in case of a No Deal Brexit chaos, and plans have been put into motion for soldiers to assist the police and the NHS if the United Kingdom ends up leaving the EU without a deal.

And as well as the thousands of military troops that have now been set to be deployed under the proposals, an extra 1,200 troops will be on 24-hour standby. This will supposedly be overseen by around 20 Operation Temperer officers, who are typically reserved for army response to terror attacks.

Segments of the military will help to keep order and bring medical supplies to hospitals, and further help with traffic problems near to ports such as Dover, and troops are on standby to take part in a No Deal situation, and of course, it’s always good to make sensible emergency procedures for all kinds of eventualities, but clearly the government are anticipating trouble, perhaps complete out and out anarchy!

At this stage, people appear to be convinced that there will be a deal, but if there isn’t, the army is ready to assist in any way they can…

At this stage I can’t see us leaving at all, it’s simply taking to long, not that I wanted to leave, and I did choose to REMAIN, yes, I did! It was a bad thing to join the EU in the first place, we all know that, don’t we? But it would be worse to leave now, sometimes it’s better the Devil we do know, than the Devil that we don’t, and why change something if it’s not broken?

And there will never be a good deal Brexit, this government couldn’t negotiate a kiss in a brothel, so getting anything that was going to be remotely good, was never going to be an option, but what a mess the UK is in, there’s just so much chaos everywhere you look, Brexit, NHS, Social care, the Prison system, Education, Housing, Universal Credit and the Transport system. Potholes on the roads, homelessness and people living rough. Twenty-one thousand police officers lost from our streets, and what do the Tories do? They gave the rich tax cuts.

But perhaps there will be no call for the army to step in because sadly the British people are like sheep, they will do a bit of bleating, and then settle down and form an orderly queue to their slaughter, led by their new leaders.

So, do they actually expect our soldiers to repress objectors? And what powers will they give them? Powers of arrest? Powers to shoot to kill? It’s a sure indication that the elite are getting worried that the peasants might rebel, mind you, there’s always that possibility that the peasants might revolt.

On the other hand, the government has been exploiting the Armed Forces for years with continuous cuts, pay freezes, neglected accommodation and the overall treating them like trash, and now they’re planning to let them loose on the very people they swore an oath to defend.

I’m not sure where we go from here because once we had an Empire run by an Emporer, then we had a Kingdom run by a King, and now we have a country run by ****!

Not Effective Or Safe Says Watchdog

Clayhill Medical Practice, Vange Health Centre, Southview Road, Vange in Basildon, Essex has been rated as inadequate by the Care Quality Commission.

The practice has more than 6,000 patients and has been ordered to improve by the health watchdog.

Some performance information which includes screening data was lower than local and national averages, and some childhood immunisation data was lower than target levels, and there have been numerous patients that have left the practice over a period of time, and a father died two days after being told by the GP the stroke he suffered was a bout of vertigo.

The widow called an out of hours doctor who diagnosed her stroke victim husband with vertigo over the telephone and escaped being struck off. Dr Francisca Ogunbiyi twice refused to attend Jeffrey Wingrove, 48, after he collapsed at home with severe vomiting and paralysing headaches, and instead decided he was suffering from vertigo and prescribed some anti-sickness medicines for his wife, Isabelle to get. Mr Wingrove who was the father of two and ran marathons died 48 hours later.

His family have since been awarded a six-figure sum in an out-of-court settlement for clinical negligence against the family doctor and East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, and Nigerian-trained Francisca Ogunbiyi could have been struck off by the General Medical Council, which heard Mr Wingrove would have survived if his stroke had been diagnosed quicker.

But instead of Ogunbiyi being struck off she was given a warning, which she then had to declare to her employers over the course of the next five years, but she appealed against the decision, which was upheld during a five hour hearing in London.

The point is that had Dr Ogunbiyi executed her job correctly and she had given him the medical care that he required he probably would have survived, but instead this poor man died and his family were left to pick up the pieces, so it does make you question why Francisca Ogunbiyi only got away with a warning and continued to be able to work.

Not only has she taken the life of a patient, but she’s further taken this man away from his family, and the system has failed.

Mr Wingrove fell unwell on the morning of December 9, 2006, at home in Braintree, Essex, after going to the bathroom and collapsing in horrifying pain. He managed to drag himself to his bedroom with a severe headache but was powerless to move the right side of his body easily and was sweating and vomiting.

His wife contacted her GP and was directed to an out of hours service run by the Mid Essex Hospitals NHS Trust by a private firm Primecare because it was a Saturday. Doctor Ogunbiyi called Mrs Wingrove shortly afterwards and told her to take her husband to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

There was a disturbing exchanged that was presented during the hearing. Mrs Wingrove who at 5ft tall was 1ft shorter than her husband, again asked for the doctor to come and see her husband because she couldn’t get him out of bed to get him to the hospital.

But Doctor Ogunbiyi told Mrs Wingrove that she would have to get him out of bed. Mrs Wingrove then rang NHS Direct and a nurse told her to demand a home visit from a doctor as soon as possible.

At 12.20pm she called Primecare again but was informed by the doctor that NHS Direct was different there, and that she could insist and they could jump up and down but that they knew the system and it wasn’t fair on her.

Mrs Wingrove said: ‘You’re telling me I cannot get a doctor here? I cannot get him out.’ The GP responded: ‘You’re shouting.’

At about 9 pm Mrs Wingrove called paramedics who also said her husband was suffering from vertigo when they arrived, gave him paracetamol and failed to take him to the hospital.

The next morning Mr Wingrove fell off his bed and was then taken to Broomfield Hospital, he was later transferred to Queen’s Hospital in Romford where he died the following day.

Francisca Ogunbiyi, who lives in Benfleet, Essex, and works at Vange Health Centre in Basildon, was dismissed by Primecare following the misfortune, and she was unavailable for comment following the hearing.

Doctor Ogunbiyi was dismissive, and even though it’s really difficult for the medical profession to make judgement calls, she should have sent him straight to hospital, and it appears that the paramedics that did turn up, in the end, failed to recognise the severity of Mr Wingrove’s health when they arrived at his home and actually saw him.

We don’t need slothful doctors, and it seems like she simply couldn’t be bothered to do a home visit or even ring for an ambulance, and simply fobbed Mrs Wingrove off.

The paramedics were probably following the doctor’s diagnosis, however not taking him to the hospital was an absolute disgrace. They’re not fully qualified medics and should always consider the worst diagnosis.

Very clearly this gentleman was presenting vital signs of a heart problem or even a stroke, I mean, us lesser mortals have that pounded into us by the government’s ad campaign on TV all the time.

Mr Wingrove should have been examined at the hospital, if only as a precautionary measure, but the out of hours service in this country is diabolical, and because of this Mr Wingrove’s family had to say goodbye to him.

So many people have been hurt by this incident, yet Francisca Ogunbiyi gets off with a warning and is still licenced to practice at being a doctor, and it’s a disgrace.

Sadly, there have been many other comparable things that have happened in the NHS, such as a locum giving painkillers to someone with chest pain, and then the patient dies 2 days later, or a woman with bowel cancer who’s told that she has IBS. Or the young man with testicular cancer who’s told the lump is nothing to worry about until he goes to A&E coughing up blood or the woman who’s told that her brain haemorrhage was nothing more than a migraine. Perhaps we should simply bypass our GP, except for the pretty minor stuff and just go straight to A&E because it could SAVE your life.

I question what a doctor has to actually do before they’re struck off because it seems that being too lazy to do a proper job which then leads to a patients death actually isn’t enough.

Universal Credit Nightmare

A single mum with breast cancer was left with only 84 pence after a Universal Credit nightmare. Teacher Gillian Sykes found out she had cancer in January and is preparing to have a double mastectomy operation in the summer, and she has had to quit her job as a supply teacher but said that she’s been left to struggle for survival with the Department of Work and Pensions.

Gillian Sykes told how she has been turned down for assistance and was even made to take bank statements into the jobcentre only two days following her first draining round of chemotherapy. She further had money taken away because the DWP made blunders over dates, and she was eventually left with only 84 pence to live on, forcing her to rely on handouts from family and friends.

Gillian was further told she needed to be looking for work, which the DWP later stated was simply an ‘automated response.’

The 45-year-old, who lives in Ashton-in-Makerfield with her two teenage children, talked about the overwhelming moment she found out she had cancer. She discovered a lump on the 28th December when she was going to bed, and she cried herself to sleep because there is a family history of cancer, and it would have been the 20th anniversary of her mother’s passing.

Gillian was in an all-out frenzy and got an appointment soon after, then two weeks later she was sent to see an oncologist who confirmed what she already knew, that it wasn’t a cyst, it was a solid mass, and a week later she got given the news, but everything progressed pretty swiftly from there, and now shes had three rounds of chemotherapy, and her hair is coming out in handfuls every day, and this summer she will be having a double mastectomy, which isn’t nice, and yet Gillian has had to start a long, exhausting battle with the Department of Work and Pensions to get the benefits she required to support her through an astonishingly hard time.

Following her cancer diagnosis, Gillian said she was never informed she qualified for Limited Capability for Work Related Activity, which is deemed to give additional cash for those who are unable to work, so she was left fighting with the department for weeks in an effort to get the additional help.

And to be going through chemotherapy is enough, only to have to dispense with the Department of Work and Pensions, after paying into a system as a teacher, and now she’s having battles left, right and centre with Universal Credit, problems with not being told what she can and can’t claim for, in fact, she’s had more help from the Macmillan nurses than the government.

And two days after her first chemotherapy session, she was informed that she had to take her bank statements into the jobcentre to show that they had taken money from her that they shouldn’t have, and Gillian has had her statutory sick pay penalised, and she’s complained and complained and has had to talk to a different person on the telephone every time.

She simply feels like she’s struggling for survival with benefits that she shouldn’t be fighting for right now because she’s already got enough problems having cancer, and following spending weeks waiting to find out if she could get the important extra LCWRA payments, Gillian chose to apply for what is known as a Universal Credit budgeting loan, used to help those who are struggling.

So, she phoned them because that month was especially difficult and was informed by someone that nothing was accessible to her because all the buttons were greyed out and they didn’t know why. Then another time someone else told her nothing was accessible to her because she made at least £2,600 in the last six months, well, of course, she did, she was a teacher, and was working full time with her agency up until the Christmas, so now she’s actually been penalised for working, no surprise people don’t want to work now!

What she does get from Universal Credit, she’s paying the mortgage with, and she has two children and didn’t expect this to happen to her, but she’s suffered from depression for several years, which has been hugely under control and she’s been able to work, and now this is what’s happening on a daily basis, when she has to find out the next step and the next fight, makes you actually understand why people on benefits get discouraged.

But even though they’ve apologised to Gillian Sykes for the suffering caused by the delay and paying her back in full surely doesn’t include the stress that she had to go through whilst battling cancer, she should have further been given compensation as well.

She might have now been put in the long-term health condition group, meaning she gets a high level of support, and will not be expected to seek employment, but what about the support she should have been getting before? Gillian didn’t choose to get cancer, cancer chose her, but the DWP decided that they would keep her waiting for her money and take money away from her while she was battling this horrible disease.

The Department of Work and Pensions would immediately have sent a letter in the post if a claimant owed them money or if the DWP had overcompensated the claimant, they would have been on that like a pack of hyenas, but if they owe you money they drag their feet in the hope that the suffering claimant won’t bother because they’re too frail and defenceless to do so, which literally makes the DWP the rodents of society.

The DWP tell everyone that they ensure that anyone with a health condition gets the help they require, but the problem is, they don’t because the DWP hopes that the claimant might die before they sort their money out that they were actually entitled to in the first place.

It’s unquestionably repulsive treatment for such a severely sick woman with such a tremendous burden before of her, and if the government are going to roll out this whole new Universal Credit, they should at least have the respectability to contract people who know what they’re doing and who realise that suffering people don’t choose to claim welfare, and it wasn’t a lifestyle choice, and Universal Credit is demeaning and ruthless in the way they handle people.

When is this idiot government going to wake up and smell the carnage they’re creating, and now local charities are having to support them with food, electricity, and other basic essentials, and the state of these defenceless people, essentially families come to the charities, and it’s pitiful.

In numerous instances, the parents haven’t slept for weeks with the endless worry of when they’ll be able to feed their children, let alone pay the bills. The problem is the government are completely vigilant and knowledgeable and embrace the scent of their destruction and funeral pyres of the poor unemployed, and the sick, as they open their morning newspaper with their morning cuppa and a smirk on their faces!

But of course, we have to be submissive citizens. Just be happy, and remember that Prince Harry and his new wife just got to restore their new home from taxpayers hard earned cash, and his granny got 369 million pounds to begin improvements on Buckingham Palace, so that she can live there with her Greek sweetheart rent free because the brain fogged old Queen knows how to freeload off her subordinate subjects, and so does Harry and his family, so don’t you think it’s time for the government to quit calling 56 million hardworking citizens subordinate subjects?

No wonder there are people out there attempting to deceive the government, let’s face it, you have to be an MP or possibly a billionaire tax dodger because some of those wealthy people didn’t get rich through hard work, they got rich on the backs of hard working, low paid serfs.

And the government should actually hang their heads in disgrace. They won’t donate for cancer treatments, but it’s okay for us to house immigrant killers, rapists, and subversives who are presently in our prisons at the taxpayer’s expense, but they’ll begrudge cancer treatments.

The Tory chains are there to shackle us to poverty, we don’t actually have much of a voice, and the Tories are running on borrowed time, and back in the day the government would attempt to erase all the evidence before it was put in front of a court of law, the only redemption today is that everything is done and leaves an electronic footprint, and these vile far right wing Tories give out their orders to punish those in need of help, so whatever you do, don’t become ill under this wicked immoral Tory government, because you’ll be penalised by them.

Theresa May Should Quit

Theresa May should stand down as Prime Minister next month, that’s what former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has stated. This comes after the Prime Minister’s fragmented authority suffered a further setback as a major study revealed that Jeremy Corbyn was heading for No 10.

The Conservatives would lose 59 seats at a general election, making Labour the largest party in the Commons. Labour would win 34 seats and the Lib Dems 14 according to the analysis from Electoral Calculus for the Sunday Telegraph.

Experts have criticised the unexpected fall in support on Tory voters’ wrath at the Government’s failure to deliver Brexit, and Leave backers have been drawn back to either UKIP or Nigel Farage’s newly launched Brexit party.

Iain Duncan Smith announced the Prime Minister should quit before European Parliament elections scheduled to be held on May 23, even though we know the Prime Minister has previously stated that she’s going, she said she would go as and when the deal was confirmed, which was looking at around May or June.

What the Prime Minister had to do is now direct everything in the direction of a departure before the Euros which would then enable her to walk away having done what she said she would do, getting the United Kingdom out of the European Union one way or the other, and then we can have another leadership vote and choose a different leader.

The Conservative grandee said polling on the party was currently worrying and blamed dawdling Brexit to October 31 for the situation.

It came as Tory big beasts responded party rules could be altered, making it easier to remove the Prime Minister. Under the prevailing policy, a move upon the leader can only be conducted once in a 12-month period, but Theresa May dismissed an attempt to remove her last December and so would not expect to face the prospect of another potential endeavour to overthrow her until the end of the year.

Yet, two former chairmen of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs stated that the rules could be modified, and Cabinet Office Minister, and Theresa May’s de facto deputy, David Lidington, announced discussions between the Government and Labour on Brexit would proceed.

Mr Lidington told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show that they were certainly going to continue next week, and that he had a good, professional meeting with John McDonnell, and that what they’ve agreed is a schedule of meetings on particular subjects with ministers and shadow ministers concerned getting together to discuss things like environmental standards, like worker’s rights, and security relations between the United Kingdom and the EU.

And what they would hope is to take stock of where they are as soon as Parliament gets back following the Easter break, but he doesn’t believe that this issue can be permitted to drag out for much longer, and as government, they have perpetually made it explicit that while they will do their best to seek and strike a settlement with the main opposition party, it would involve give-and-take on both sides.

And if that doesn’t work then what they will want to move towards is to put before Parliament a collection of options with a method for making a decision and Parliament actually having to come to a preferred choice, rather than voting against everything.

Can you believe the unmitigated temerity of these Tories, with a failed leader of the Tories, a failed Department for Work and Pensions minister who’s now swiftly decided he’s got a conscience because maybe he now wants to put his helmet in the ring for leadership?

There are numerous people out there that don’t like Theresa May, I mean, who the hell does she think she is, and at the moment she seems to be carnivorous, and nefarious and holds disdain of people beneath anyone who is wealthy.

Thousands have died or committed suicide under Iain Duncan Smith’s watch with Ester McVey by his side, but if this was a caring and fair society, he along with the rest of his species should have been locked away, with their assets and property being dispersed amongst the needy.

And I’m sure that Iain Duncan Smith is shocked that there’s anymore poor left in Britain, perhaps he thought he’d removed them all, but presently the quiet man is turning up the volume again, yet he’s the most tedious politician that we’ve ever had to listen to, and I wonder if he believes he might be invited to resume the mantle once again.

And haven’t the Tories used Brexit as a Trojan horse for an economic far right and Atlantic bridge takeover, and hasn’t the UK figured this out yet? Although they know that the voters wouldn’t vote for that, therefore all the secrecy.

Yet the Tories are getting away with their social suicide, slashing and privatising everything in site, further enriching themselves while they mislead society with Brexit. Let’s face it, Theresa May doesn’t look that stressed about it all, in fact, she’s looking rather self-satisfied with herself as she stands on her platform sabotaging Brexit.

And what about all those cuts they forced onto those in real need with their Universal Credit and frozen benefits and all the money they withdrew and wasted on Universal Credit, I mean, what was wrong with the old system? And is that why Theresa May doesn’t look like she’s under pressure with that self-satisfied look on her face, that self-satisfaction of having accomplished her mission of becoming Prime Minister, and the newspapers scaremongering us with fear.

However, is it to do with the Tories failure on Brexit or does it have something to do with the fact that the voters have ultimately realised that the Tories are perjurers and cheats? And who does Iain Duncan Smith think would succeed her, Bungling Boris Johnson, or funeral parlour Jacob Rees Mogg?

Honestly, after years of austerity cuts and turmoil on the people, none of them is actually fit for office, and would the people really trust any of them to run their bath, never mind run the country? Because there actually isn’t anyone to replace her that isn’t useless, and they’re all a detestable sociological infliction on society, and it’s sage advice from a well renowned ancient leader which is as relevant as his CV, which is probably notes scrawled on the back of his expenses form that he used to claim his breakfast.

NHS Bed Shortage

Children suffering a mental health crisis are still being sent hundreds of miles from home because of a deficiency of NHS beds, and one defenceless child was sent to a unit more than 300 miles from home, and another child was located 285 miles away from their family by NHS Herts Valley in Hertfordshire.

Around 1,000 youngsters have been located out of the area, most were girls, around 731 compared to about 298 boys, and vulnerable kids are being sent over 300 miles from their families for treatment because of the shortage of beds nearby and it’s nothing short of a national disgrace.

For those struggling with a mental health condition, support from family and friends is essential, and all data reveals that out of area placements endanger the rehabilitation of people with mental health conditions, and it’s tragic that parents that are worried for their children will be miles away because of the government’s negligence, and there should be strategies to reduce these damaging placements to ensure that children and young people are treated closer to home.

Labour promised at the last General Election to invest more of the mental health budget in services for children and young people so that the money reached front line services, but nearly two-thirds of local health bodies reported unsuitable out of area places of children, but patients should be treated in an area which helps them to maintain the contact they want to keep with family, carers and friends, but it appears that the government do not save, they just destroy!

And it shouldn’t matter if you’re a child or an adult, people need family and friends close by to support them when they’re ill. Mental Health at the moment is a third world standard, and a really low priority to the government, whichever party is in power, and the staff who work in the NHS are at the sharp end and deserve a medal.

Unfortunately, we elected a cruel, self-serving government because as British citizens we appear to be rather ignorant, and we now need a new government!

It can be an incredible wrench for children to leave their homes and families, and being sent far away is not going to support a young person in crisis, and the government should be improving mental healthcare for children and young people, which should be an absolute priority.

It was the ninth time in a period of 10 days that Sherry Denness had attempted to kill herself. She felt like it was checkmate, and that there were no open doors or other ways for her life to turn, she simply wanted to die, and at only 18 years old, Sherry Denness had been diagnosed with a number of mental health conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

On seven of her nine suicide attempts, the teenager had landed in A&E, been patched up and considered well enough to be shipped home with no additional help. Another time she’d taken all of her prescribed medication in one go and ended up in critical care for two days. But once the physical manifestations had been dispensed with, to her parent’s desperation, she was just released and shipped home.

Sherry was found by the police on a pathway nearby, train tracks lying just ahead. They’d been alerted by a crisis team Sherry had called in her non-lucid state to ask about a place to live. It was a freezing cold night and Sherry was sitting cross-legged on the floor, there was a lot of blood because she had self-harmed again, and her clothes were scuffed from her efforts to climb the fence that stood between her and the train tracks.

And after checking with mental health professionals at the local hospital the police officer used his police powers to detain Sherry under Section 136 of the Mental Health Act. By sectioning Sherry, the police were able to do what they could to keep her safe and get her the help she clearly required.

At the time, Sherry didn’t want to go with the police and resisted their efforts to help her, and it’s thanks to them for calming her down, and for saving her life.

When Sherry’s mum, Andi, saw the blue lights of an ambulance from her kitchen, a cold tentacle of fear slid around her stomach. She ran out of the house, dreading the worst, and to see her daughter alive, and with the police, was an enormous relief.

When they told her that they’d sectioned her daughter, she felt her legs go from under her and she sobbed because she was so thankful that she was finally going to get into the hospital and get the help she so urgently required.

Sherry is from a really loving family but she wasn’t well so she hurt herself again and again, and each time the hospital sent her home, but the family were saying that she needed to be in the hospital because she wasn’t well. But things didn’t go smoothly even after she was sectioned. Once she’d been accompanied by the police to A&E to treat her physical wounds she should have been transferred to a children’s mental health unit.

But a lack of beds meant Sherry landed in an adult ward at a hospital in Guildford, where her parents say she was propositioned by a male patient in his 50s. So she was then transported to a secure children’s mental health unit in Sheffield, 160 miles away. It was the only place that was available.

She was eventually transported from Sheffield to another hospital in Guildford, near to her home, and there she started to feel more lucid and positive. She was eventually discharged and is now back at home with her family, but Sherry has spent almost a year of her life in mental health facilities.

She was 11 when she was first evaluated by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), were they took her mother to one side, and was informed that her daughter was an attention seeker and they didn’t actually take it too seriously, but finally at 13 years old Sherry was given medication for ADHD, but by then the children at her school had already started to bully her.

At school, Sherry was frequently kicked out of class for disruptive behaviour and spent most of her time in isolation. She couldn’t concentrate and no one listened to what she was saying.

When someone has ADHD it seems like everything is going 10 million times faster than normal and they don’t understand why people around them are so calm, so Sherry struggled to make friends and became increasingly withdrawn.

She started self-harming at 13 years old and was first sectioned by the police at 14, and at that point, Sherry’s parents chose to take her out of school, and the family feel that CAMHS let Sherry down for years.

After she was finally sectioned her parents made a viral video in which her dad, Chris, tells the story of those horrific 10 days by holding up a series of messages drawn on paper.

He then asked people to show they care about her, and about other young people struggling to get treatment for mental health problems by getting involved in a social media campaign under the hashtag#wecaresherry.

They began the campaign to give Sherry hope because she believed that nobody cared, and the family are also calling for changes in the way that CAMHS works. For instance, Sherry’s parents have argued that A&E is no place for a child who is having a mental health episode, even though that is where CAMHS tells people to go, but getting Sherry to A&E when she’s in a heightened state is a nightmare, and usually her parents have to call the police to get her there.

Both parents have been trained in safe restraint but have to take turns because her physical strength when she’s distressed can be overpowering, and at A&E it can be about six-hour waits, with unsympathetic security personnel and receptionists who are simply irritated at seeing Sherry back in A&E again.

Sherry has been in A&E a number of times for self-harm and suicide attempts and parents of small children will look at her in disgust and shuffle their children away because they can see her clutching her arm or her leg, it’s not nice and it makes her feel even worse, and she can sit there for hours and hours until they can get a CAMHS person to come and see her.

In the 10 days that Sherry tried to kill herself nine times, she was seen by 18 different healthcare professionals, ranging from staff from A&E to CAHMS, but none gave the help she required to address the root of her problems, and her family said that the threshold for obtaining this help is too high.

They’re further calling for more investment in CAMHS and better training for the staff young people experiencing a mental health crisis might come into contact with, including teachers, the police, paramedics and A&E doctors and nurses. They’d further like to get the message out that early intervention is essential because a lot of this could have been avoided if Sherry had got the help she required earlier.

In many areas, it’s desperately difficult for young people to get the help they require, and many parents have been waiting months for appointments for their child and have nowhere to turn, and sometimes their children have started to self-harm, have become self-destructive or dropped out of school throughout the wait.

Only one in four children with mental health problems is currently getting help from CAMHS, but there’s a postcode lottery, with services far better in some parts of the country than others, and some children are waiting up to 18 months to be treated.

And this further reverberates Sherry’s family’s concerns that those who work with children and young people, in schools, GP practices and A&E, for example, sometimes lack the abilities to recognise and help children with mental health needs, limiting their access to professional help, and CAMHS turns away almost a quarter of the children referred to them for treatment by concerned parents, GPs and others.

Without a doubt, after years of drought, the NHS’s mental health funding taps have now been turned on, but it’s going to take years of combined working effort to resolve these service gaps, even with new money, given the time it takes to train the extra child psychiatrists, therapists and nurses needed.

It’s been more than three months since Sherry came out of the hospital and, buoyed by the #wecaresherry campaign, she’s started to make recovery boxes for other young people struggling with their mental health. The boxes include home comforts like fluffy socks and chocolate, as well as stress toys and information on coping methods.

Sherry got her own recovery box after coming out of the hospital and her favourite things include “an unsquishable stress ball” and coconut hand cream because it smells like holidays, but when she’s low she finds it very lonely, she denies herself nice things like this because she believes she’s helping herself by punishing herself, so when someone goes out of their way to send a box it’s really nice.

She loves helping people and wants to be a police officer for that reason, and she explained this to PC Coe and his colleague over the course of the hours they spent together waiting in A&E and then waiting for Sherry to be transferred.

It’s great to learn that Sherry has big plans for the future, and she asked PC Coe if a police career would be possible after all her run-ins with the police because she was concerned about being ostracised because of it, but he reassured her that she hadn’t done anything illegal, and being sectioned wasn’t the same as being arrested, it was something that could happen to anyone.

Sherry’s dream to join the police may seem unusual for someone who has had so many traumatic experiences involving them. She’s been resuscitated by the police, she’s been detained and sectioned by the police but they’ve stopped her from doing things that she was determined to do, but even after all of that she thinks that they’re highly underrated and deserve a lot more respect.

For now, Sherry is concentrating on getting better and helping other people in the meantime. She still has her low days and still struggles but it’s more endurable, it’s never going to go away and she’s come to terms with that, and there will be days during her life when she’s not going to want to be alive, but she’s come to terms with that as well.

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