Imagine for a minute that you are a child born in 2000 to
parents in secure public sector employment, with access to (subsidised)
pre-school childcare. Your primary school benefits from a Building Schools for
the Future renovation.
In 2009 one of those parents is outsourced and subsequently
made redundant, so the household income drops markedly.
In 2010, just as you are about to go to high school, the
Coalition comes to power, and Austerity begins (history notes that we were not,
in fact, "all in it together").
In 2014, you come out as trans and initially face hostility
from one parent (they got better). At about the same time, your other parent is
made redundant, and for a few months, the family is held together by goodwill
and tax credits until one of them gets temporary work.
In 2016, the country holds a referendum on EU membership.
There is talk of allowing 16 yr olds a vote which, even if it hadn't been
knocked back, would still not have allowed you a say because the vote was a
week before your birthday. Thanks to a lazy and lacklustre campaign by the
Remain side, the country inflicts terminal damage on itself. In the same month,
you lose both maternal grandparents within 10 days of each other - in the middle of your
GCSEs.
You are already under CAMHS due to the mental health issues
that have emerged, and which continue to grow over the coming years.
You get into 6th form college, but the EMA which might once have helped you was taken away by Michael Gove a few years ago, as being “too expensive” (ie, Capita were being paid a fortune to administer it instead of local authorities doing it) and "poorly targetted" (a maximum of £30 a week, and only paid on 100% attendance, so hard to claim fraudulently).
In 2017, a snap election is called, so you are still too
young to have a say. However, for the first time in your lifetime there is a
real alternative - and some hope - on offer (sabotaged, you later discover,
from within).
In 2018, you age out of CAMHS support, with no referral to
Adult Services, so your mental health gets worse. You obtain a university
place, but without that support in place, you struggle to maintain it.
At the same time, your remaining grandparent is diagnosed
with dementia and admitted to residential care. Your parents are now dealing
with your sibling's additional needs and visiting the grandparent at the other
end of the country, as well as your physical and mental health. As a result of
which, they miss things...
In 2019, yet another election, in which you now can take
part, but Brexit populism, more internal sabotage (including a future PM and
his People's Vote) put the kybosh on the possibility of a change of government.
You drop out of university in early 2020 due to worsening mental
health, only to find yourself in lockdown for most of the year. You apply for
PIP. You wait. When you enquire, they've lost your application.
In 2021 your mental health hits crisis point. Even after
emergency admissions, it still takes most of the year to get an assessment and a
formal diagnosis.
In 2022 you finally get some proper therapy. In June,
you also get the news that your father has terminal cancer. In November, you
lose him.
You put in another PIP application in 2022. It takes 18
months, a lever arch file full of evidence and a tribunal to get a backdated award,
during which time your physical health had deteriorated, but which can’t be
taken into account at appeal/tribunal. This process takes longer than it took
your father to be investigated, diagnosed, treated and die of cancer.
In 2023 you start to get your education back on track and
get a place on an Access Course at a local college. You ace it, despite chronic
pain and fatigue arising from your diagnosed incurable physical health
conditions
In 2024, another election, with the promise of "change." No-one tells you that this will be change for the worse, but there you go. A Secretary of State for Health & Social Care who thinks mental health conditions are "overdiagnosed", gleefully taunts the Tories about having gone further with cuts than they did and is openly transphobic, enacting the widely-discredited Cass Review in opposition to almost every other government and world experts on gender-affirming care; a Secretary of State for Work and Pensions who thinks the best way to support disabled people is to remove their benefits (and seemingly, doesn't understand the benefits she's cutting). A Chancellor who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing and petulantly sticks to her made-up fiscal rules like Violet Elizabeth Bott rather than consider any alternatives even when the super-rich beg her to tax them more, and a weak Prime Minister who has no vision or political philosophy and is swayed by all the worst people (up to and including Trump).
You also commence a new university course, this time with
excellent DSA support, which makes a real difference (don't let's get on to
travelling while disabled, though, where you can't travel to university from your local
station due to lack of step-free access, and where definitions of a
"dropped kerb" vary crossing by crossing).
And so now, after nearly a quarter of a century on the
planet, you’re surviving despite, rather than because of, the governments in your
lifetime.
Your parents did their best, but with an older sibling with
significant additional needs, they missed the signs of your autism and ADHD,
which is why these are only diagnosed in adulthood.
That’s my son, and he’s not untypical of young people of his generation.
So please... Labour ministers, MPs and random ill-informed middle-aged
men and women on the internet: DON'T YOU FUCKING DARE tell me young people lack
resilience/are lazy/don't want to work/are taking the mickey/are
over-diagnosed. It's a bloody miracle they've made it this far into the 21st
century!
The young people I know are endlessly resilient in the face
of unprecedented attacks from politicians and the Not Yet Disabled general
public. They are a traumatised generation, stunted by austerity, disrupted by
Covid, their futures diminished by Brexit and their survival by climate change.
The one glimmer of hope they had that things could ever be
different was extinguished by the very people who are now in charge. Everything in
their lives is adversarial, and they are constantly criticised for things
beyond their control. No wonder they're suffering from poor mental health.
