The Problem with Young People Today Is....

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 6^th 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.

 

Jolly Japes with an Autistic Teenager

Image courtesy of Simon Drew, Dartmouth

http://www.simondrew.co.uk/

A trip into Manchester this morning, as I needed to buy a cheap white T shirt for younger daughter and pay two (very rare) cheques into my bank account. OH has also suggested that it might be a good idea to take the half dozen CDs M wants to sell into Vinyl Exchange, so we bag them up. M announces she wants to go the the building society to take some money out to buy paints and canvases for her art work. Not convinced this is the best use of her limited savings, but as a) I don't have the money to buy them for her and b) she's still not getting any work from school, I agreed she could.

"Oh," she said, "and they wanted to see my birth certificate next time I go in, so I can update my signature." Cue unexpected hunt for her birth certificate just before we should be going to catch the train....

We get into town and catch the shuttle bus with no problem, although her insistence on me always walking ahead of her can cause some logistical problems getting on and off the bus. I, being well brought up, always hold back for her to go ahead of me, forgetting she can't cope with going through a door first. Catches me out every time - you'd think I'd be used to it by now. We look a little like Laurel & Hardy negotiating a swing door!

First stop is her building society. Once she's taken her money out she wants to head to the shops, but I tell her that I have to deposit the cheques into my bank account. She refuses to come in, choosing to hover near the doorway. Instead of staff, the bank now has lovely shiny foyer filled with self-serve machines and piped music playing "My Boy Lollipop" (can't help feeling that this lacks gravitas - not that I'm advocating a return to the fusty old, pre-Mr Banks-in-Mary-Poppins-style bank, but still....)

After two failed attempts to deposit my cheques, the machine tells me to seek assistance from a human being. Said human being comes over with a lad she describes as her "colleague", who looks about 12 and is probably only there on workfare; she also makes two attempts to deposit the cheques before taking them into the inner sanctum to process them manually. "We don't get many cheques these days," she says, "and if they aren't a standard size the machine can't read them." Ah, progress.

By this time I have a rather grumpy M waiting outside. We head off to the Arndale Centre first, where she marvels at how many people are there on a work day (I was just thinking how dead it seemed) and why weren't they in work? Explained about retirement, unemployment, annual leave, etc, but she is unimpressed by these lame excuses. Sounds just like a Tory.

We spend £3.99 on some canvases and paints in The Works (a godsend for cheap art materials!) and she then wants to go to Affleck's to look for some Hallowe'en gear with her remaining money. I suggest Vinyl Exchange first, as it might mean she has more money to spend in Affleck's. She doesn't like this idea (even though the entrances are within sight of each other) and says she will murder me if we're not offered any money for them.

Unsurprisingly, nothing in her CD collection is of any interest to them and we leave empty-handed; she is grumpy but thankfully doesn't follow through with her threat to murder me!

In Affleck's, she buys some red stripy tights which use up all but £1 of her money. As we head back to the station, she notices that it is approaching 12 noon and, therefore, her lunchtime (Lunch HAS to be at 12pm, even if we would be home by 12.15pm), so she wants to get something from the Greggs at the station. Much as I loathe Greggs, they do have a cheap baguette for £1.30 so I pick that up and give her £1 towards her £1.80 sub she has her eye on.  By this time, the largely empty shop we walked into has a long queue, at which we are to the side. Not wanting to appear to be queue-jumping I try to get her to turn round and go to the end of the queue, but she cannot/will not* turn round, so we stand there for several seconds, both unable to move anywhere. She then says, "it doesn't make any sense paying separately, why don't you pay for both together?" And this is where it starts getting really difficult.....

"OK," I say, give me your baguette and the money, then."

She hands me the £1 I gave her earlier.

"And the other £1" I say, "or there won't be enough to pay for it."

"But that's my £1. I don't want you stealing it."

"But I'm not stealing it. I'm using it to pay for your sandwich."

"But it's not yours."

"I know, but I am buying your sandwich with my sandwich, so you need to give me the all money for your sandwich."

"But it's mine!"

There really is no way around this very literal sense of money that she has (we had the same thing last year, when she left her £10 holiday spends at home and would not accept a £10 note from anyone else, because then she would lose 'her ' £10 when she had to pay someone back. In the end we had to mail the actual £10 note to her rather than me lending it to her and OH bring the original down when he came to join us!) she understands the concept of money, and of 'change', but just not the transferability of coins/notes. 

So we put the baguettes back and caught the train. She scowled at me for the whole journey and deliberately put her feet on the seats (one of my pet hates).

If anyone tries to tell you that someone with high functioning autism is 'easier' to manage, please pass them in my direction. We get versions of this kind of episode every day, along with the door-slamming (her door frame is fast disintegrating), the outright denial of things we've seen her do, the pilfering of any food which is not actually locked away, etc. Imagine every awful moment you've had with your teenager and then amplify it by about 5 times!

True, she does not need 24 hour care in the sense that the government class it. Continence doesn't always translate into being able to manage one's own hygiene, though, and just because someone doesn't need 24 hour physical support doesn't mean that we're ever off duty.  In some ways she is very competent and self-reliant, but we can never guarantee that she won't suddenly panic, and we have to be on hand if/when she does. Five months stuck at home hasn't helped, either; the social/coping skills she had acquired are atrophying

She is currently sleeping in her day clothes and is refusing to change her clothes until *I* find her a school (followers of my Twitter account will know how much I've been trying to do this). It's been five months now since she left her mainstream school and although the Amended Statement of SEN is due today, we know already that it will name the one autism-specialist school in the city which is currently over capacity and with no idea when a place will become available.

[As I type this, she is currently slamming my bedroom door, having thrown all the towels and a can of fly spray on the floor and and jumping on my bed 'until [I] go with [her] to Sainsbury's to buy Hallowe'en stuff']

I have been wondering lately how I can get back into the workplace, to get  IDS and his anti-scrounger chums off our back, but even once she is in school again, it's going to be difficult getting something that will help us keep family life together as well. How will it benefit us if we end up never seeing one another because of work? These outbursts can crop up at any time of day or night and the effect on the whole family can be immense. Unfortunately, autism isn't a 9 to 5 condition. The lack of recognition of the role of the full-time carer is dispiriting. £58 a week is a derisory amount for the work we do and the money we save the state. I'm really not sitting at home baking bloody cupcakes all day - it's damned hard work with little thanks and - seemingly - derided by  those who govern us**!

Oh, and amid all the kerfuffle about CDs/sandwiches, etc I forgot to buy the T shirt, which was my main reason for going into town!

*these two terms are pretty much interchangeable - sometimes it's defiance, but most often it's simply an inability to comply, even if she feels bad afterwards

** Her Majesty's Opposition have a way to go on this, too. Not exactly challenging the 'scrounger' rhetoric themselves....

Why I Won't be Joining You for a Drink...

Dear Dad


I know you and mum have always voted Conservative (I don't think I ever met a Labour voter while I was growing up), and that we have, over the years, had our disagreements about politics. I also suspect you wonder where you went wrong with me - and no, it wasn't 


a) taking Sociology O level 
b) moving to Manchester; 
c) falling in love with a socialist 


that made me reject your politics. It was: 


a) working for 6 years for a Tory council (including during the Miners' Strike) 
b) getting away from the Home Counties and seeing how the rest of Britain fared under them
c) working for an inner city local authority


You may not have noticed it, but I had moved to the left before I left Maidstone. I was one of only 4 people of my acquaintance who admitted to voting Labour or Alliance (for tactical voting purposes) in '87. Presumably everyone else thought Anne Widdicombe was a better bet?


Despite our differences (and despite our family discussions sometimes resembling Til Death Us Do Part) we've always managed to agree to disagree. I know you're not comfortable in the north and don't really understand the culture (you think I don't notice that you get twitchy once you hit the M6?), but it's my spiritual home. I came here nearly 25 years ago, and it has felt like 'home' from Day 1. I guess we'll just chalk that up to us being different as well. You brought us up to take an interest in politics and the world around us, and to think for ourselves. Mum always reminded us that women fought and died to get us the vote and that simpering about "not understanding politics" was simply not on. That we eventually came to different conclusion proves that you both did your job as parents, and produced free-thinking individuals who took their politics seriously.


Of course, I should have been ripe New Labour fodder - left-leaning offspring of Tory parents (just like Tony Blair!), but the New Labour project didn't do much for me. Too relaxed about the filthy rich, too keen on bringing the private sector in (has it ever produced a better, cheaper public service? No.). But the nation became, for 13 years at least, a little less nasty, a little less judgemental, a little less selfish. 


Which brings me to the Coalition


And the Welfare Reform Bill.


Of all the ideologically-driven dismantling of the State that this shower are heaping on us, this really is the most venal.


http://networkedblogs.com/ttfa3


This, dad, is a beautifully-written piece by a disability campaigner who has been trying desperately to prevent the atrocity played out in the House of Commons yesterday. 

She and others have put their own health at serious risk to do this on behalf of people like Sally and Megan (Sue Marsh was rushed to hospital last week, when the campaigning made her critically ill).

Corporate and personal tax avoidance/evasion accounts for far more than this legislation will save, so it will have a neglible effect on deficit-reduction. It's just an act of spite by an un-mandated coalition of those who couldn't get elected and those who came a poor third. None of these 'reforms' were in any party's manifesto and some of the provisions were actively voted against by the Liberal Democrats at their conference and yet their MPs meekly followed the Tories through the lobby to condemn thousands of the most vulnerable in our society to poverty, isolation and dependence on crumbs of goodwill. 

This has nothing to do with "fairness" or "ordinary, hard-working families" (many of whom will actually be clobbered by the changes to Housing Benefit in an unregulated private rental market). When they realised they couldn't win by fair means (by, say, getting their facts straight), they resorted to lying and cheating. The BBC, which you frequently tell me is so left wing? Currently running programmes like "Saints and Scroungers" (ooh, look, Dominic has his cross face on! And look - let's see who "deserves" support!), cementing the impression that fraud is rife (the fraud rate for DLA is 0.5% of total budget), and running news items about families with 7 children. The press and TV has been complicit on doing the Coalition's dirty work for it, by drip-feeding the impression that anyone who receives money from the state is a 'scrounger' (MP's expenses, anyone?). And it's working. Most "normal" people (to use IDS's charming phrase to distinguish them from disabled people) think "Look, they've got a telly. I don't have a telly like that. Why should they have a telly?"

The principle of "anyone who's got something I haven't" determining "unfairness" is becoming entrenched in public life. Just as white supremacists in the Southern US convinced poor whites (whose only 'superiority' came from pigmentation) that black people were out to get their jobs/wives, etc, so the Coalition of Millionaires is convincing people on low incomes that the shit wages they get paid by firms making millions and shunting profits offshore, allowing HM Govt to subsidise their low wages with tax credits, are OK, and that somehow those with no work are somehow getting one over on them. It's not that benefits are too high, it's that wages (for most of us) are pathetically low. Persuading the "dumped-on bottom" to vote against their own best interests is a neat piece of sleight of hand.

Here's another blog, from the excellent Sue Marsh (as above) about their tactics:

http://diaryofabenefitscrounger.blogspot.com/2012/02/warning-toxic-government.html?spref=tw

As I seem to remember you telling us as kids, life isn't fair. It's not fair that your granddaughter was born with a lifelong disability, or that your energetic, Morris-dancing, 'running two jobs and a family' daughter should be struck down with a debilitating condition in her mid-40s. But governments should be there to shield the most vulnerable from unfairness where they can, and yet the Coalition are happy to simply asset-strip the Welfare State in preparation for their mates in the US insurance industry to come in and make a killing (how likely do you think it is that Meg will be able to get medical insurance, by the way? Pre-existing and congenital conditions will usually rule you out (or they'll take your premiums and then refuse to pay out on a technicality).

You and mum have had long and productive lives, nurtured and supported by the state (rationing to keep you healthy in wartime, the NHS, secure employment, a long, comfortable retirement). You may not have had to call on unemployment benefits, or much other state support (although the Family Allowance was useful), but the State was there, indirectly, for "ordinary, hard-working families" for the whole of your adult lives.

Contrary to what Osborne (that great economic genius) would have you believe, Labour did NOT trash the economy. Certainly they made mistakes (trusting bankers to act honourably being the big one), and, even if they had, there is no excuse for the kinds of cuts the Coalition are making. No-one but an idiot believes that no cuts are necessary, but it's where you make them, and who you hurt the most, which counts. In this case, it seems to be "those least able to fight back." 

I love you both and wish you both continued health - the NHS may just about survive you, but its future doesn't look promising. Whether my generation, or your granddaughters', will ever know job security, secure healthcare or retirement, is looking distinctly unlikely at the moment. The secret appears now to be "be born wealthy."

I survived the Thatcher years and thought we would never again go through anything as bad again, but how wrong I was. Having seen the depths to which the Tories and their LibDem enablers will stoop, I will (to borrow a phrase) never forget and never forgive. 

And that is the reason why I won't ever be able to join you at The Conservative Club for a drink...

UPDATE: In the 4 years since this was published, things have moved on. We now have an even more hateful government than the coalition, for a start. I have occasionally had a drink in the Con Club with my folks (as their advancing age limited their desire to go further afield). Dad has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but we have managed to get him back to the Club for a drink before the morphine makes that kind of expedition impossible. It was a lovely session, with the whole family there (and possibly a record for the number of Socialists present - 4!).

Everything else I've said about the Tories remains valid.

#asdmornings: When a Tweet's not long enough....

We had anticipated some problems this morning. We knew that she was not happy about doing Food Tech because she hadn't done last week's class and had therefore not made the puff pastry. The suggestion that she could take in some ready made stuff went down badly. Similarly, she's narky about not being "allowed" to do PE, despite several weeks where despite the best efforts of all concerned she has either refused to take part or has refused to leave the PE building afterwards, to a point where they have arranged alternative provision for this lesson while the school is still a building site (the logistics of getting the girls to PE currently involves leaving the premises by the front gate and walking around 2 sides of the perimeter to get to the PE Dept.).

Still, I heard her alarm go off at 6.45am and when I went in at 7am, she was awake and cheerful. "5 minutes" I said and went off to try and encourage her younger sister to engage with "morning."

By 7.30am, her mood had changed and she was refusing to get up. I warned her sister that she might have to walk up to school (it's cold but dry and not the end of the world not to have a lift), and that she'd need to be ready to leave by 8.00am.

At 7.57am, M complained that she also wanted to walk to school with her sister (despite still being in bed). Younger sister (and this is where it starts kicking off) complains that she didn't know she'd got to walk. This appears to trigger something and M then chases her down the stairs and we end up with YS locking herself in the downstairs toilet for protection, with M barring any exit therefrom. Eventually, YS ventures out and puts her blazer and winter coat on, but realises she can't put her shoes on as they're in the kitchen where M is hovering....

I try to encourage M away from her sister, but as she storms past (throwing stuff on the kitchen floor in the process) she pushes her, full strength, into the coat pegs in the hall. and heads back to her room, slamming the door and knocking more paint off the door frame as she does so.

Tears (YS's and mine) and a hug, and I bundle YS out of the house, and go into the living room to phone school to warn them that M is in meltdown and to request that they don't give YS a late mark, as she has been physically unable to leave the house before 8.15am. As I'm on the phone, I hear the merry ratchet-ing sound of the Chubb key on the outside of the living room door being locked behind me (a security measure we put in years ago when we had four break-ins in as many years, coincidentally the last time the Tories were in charge of law and order).  Can hear the sound of things being thrown around, but no idea what. At this point, YS appears at the living room window. In her earlier panic, she has accidentally picked up her sister's blazer rather than her own. I negotiate, through a locked door, for M to let her sister in and exchange it for the right blazer without causing her sister any physical pain. I think I can gauge her mood from peering through the small crack in the woodwork (this one not of her creation!), but have to hope that I've called it right.

Blazer-exchange seems to go off without major injury and YS scuttles off to school.  I then phone OH who, very sensibly, had left the house for work at 7.10am so he at least knows there is a problem. Offers to come home and let me out, but this seems unwise - the last thing a public sector worker needs at the moment is to be perceived as not being 100% productive. Also phone school, and we agree that it's unlikely I'll get her in, but that I will keep them posted

During the course of these conversations, M disappears upstairs, returning fully dressed for school and announces she's going to go in on foot. She then opens the front door, realises it's only just above freezing and asks for a lift. I try to phone school to warn them of this unexpected development, but can't get through, so I drive her there and phone them from the car park. I walk her to Reception, but her route to her classroom is blocked by a class of girls assembled to make the trek over to the PE building, so we lurk in the foyer until the way is clear. She then goes down to her classroom without a further murmur and appears in a perfectly good mood.

I am acutely aware, as I talk to members of staff and her support team, that I haven't yet had a chance to wash or clean my teeth and my hair is in need of a wash. Still, living with autism means that your sense of social embarrassment diminishes as you do what it takes to get by, and at least I'm not still in pyjamas!

Today was a fairly major version of the pre-school meltdown, but they're far from uncommon. I can never be sure what reception I will get when I go in at 7am, and it can often take 50 minutes to persuade her to get up (while trying to get the 11 year old sorted at the same time), to not wear the same shirt 3 days in a row, to have to judge how serious she is when she says, "if you make me go in I'll misbehave." Mixed in with the autism are the teenage hormones which would make life difficult anyway, but unlike the teenage hormones, there is every likelihood that a measure of this behaviour will remain into adulthood. Part of it is pure manipulation (she behaved better yesterday and was rewarded by being allowed to make peppermint creams and coconut ice for the end of term party), but once the manipulation has started, she doesn't always have the ability to stop it.

Autism is an unfairly invisible disability. Those who know her slightly, and have never encountered her in full meltdown see - quite rightly - what a lovely child she can be, but have no concept of what it's like trying to cope with the mercurial changes in temperament. They see that she is resourceful and resilient, but not that she can only do it sometimes - and there'e no predicting when she won't be able to.

Her sister, as many 11 year olds do, tends to overreact to perceived slights and unfairness. She hasn't yet learned the coping strategy of quietly ignoring the extreme provocation in the interests of self-preservation. That will come with maturity, but it's a lot to ask of her.

It's days like this where I wonder how I am ever going to find work that will enable me to combine caring with gainful employment. I'm reasonably intelligent, a good administrator, even ran a team of 30+ people at one time. At the moment, though, there is no prospect of me being able to go out to work on a full time basis. Childcare for secondary-aged children is patchy, so realistically, I'd be looking at term time only and, with the issues we face on a regular basis, it could really do with being something home-based and flexible.  You're no use to an employer if you are constantly having to rush off and sort out a crisis (with my former management hat on, I know that's the case) and with employee's rights being stripped away, I don't think I'd last long in the conventional work environment, do you?

Which is why, on days like these, I so appreciate politicians and unelected 'representatives' voting to reduce the support I receive through tax credits by 50%. Makes me feel truly valued.

Incandescent

I don't know where to start, really.


Woke this morning to the news headline that Manchester City Council is having to lose 2000 jobs this year, due to the additional £60m savings it has to find thanks to the coalition government's disproportionately swingeing, "that'll teach you to elect a Labour council", cuts to government grants.


Therefore sent my other half off to work in the knowledge that our single household income could be about to disappear just as the last of my severance money runs out.


We are (or were) both career public servants. We're not motivated by high salaries, have no interest in being entrepreneurs and are profoundly disinterested in profit. Both of us, though, are committed to giving something back to the community and our adopted city. At some point in our local government careers, have been responsible for monitoring income and expenditure and ensuring that council tax payers were getting value for money. And we were both good at it.


I got clobbered by New Labour's ill-conceived adoption of the Tory, free-market mantra that the private sector can always provide "it" cheaper and better. My entire team was TUPE'd out to a private BPO on a multi-million pound contract which had previously been delivered (under contract) by Manchester City Council. The council lost 200+ years' accumulated experience, and we (despite the 'protection' of TUPE) lost our local government pension rights and our careers.


We were told that our experience and knowledge of the schemes we had run (at cost) under local authority control were invaluable to the success of the contract and yet less than 3 years later, we had pretty much all been paid off. It seems that the private sector couldn't provide, as first one contractor was ditched and the second realised the job was effectively un-deliverable. I was one of the first out, and had thought that I would be something of an exception. One by one, the more senior staff were offered packages to go away and shortly thereafter an announcement was made that the Manchester operation was being closed down. A few doughty souls decided to relocate, only to have the Coalition ditch the biggest component of the contract, having assured the electorate that they would not do so, putting their jobs at risk.


So far, so similar to a great many other conscientious and hard-working local authority workers who don't (contrary to propaganda from the media) earn vast salaries, retire at 60, get 'free' pensions (we pay into them, just as private sector employees do), sit around town halls drinking tea, etc, etc. (Even last night's 'Midsomer Murders' had the Planning Chief as the murderer!)


In our case, there are additional issues, though. Our eldest daughter has a rare neurological condition and is on the autistic spectrum. During her years at primary school, we somehow managed to maintain both of us working full time, although this was frequently disrupted by emergency calls to school to deal with a behavioural problem which could erupt at a moment's notice. She's high-functioning, though, and has no learning difficulties, so we were keen that she remain in mainstream schooling. My severence co-incided with her transition to high school and allowed us to manage that transition in a positive way. And it's been great being merely a phone call away in a crisis and not having to go cap in hand to an employer to beg for time off to deal with it.


We've also been able to economise on childcare as well, as I've had the luxury of being able to spend the holidays with the girls. Instead of having to rush out of the house (earlier than in term time, as most holiday playschemes start early and finish earlier than term-time provision), they get a chance to re-charge their batteries and lie-in if they need to. 


But here's the catch. As they get older, the options for childcare diminish. It's either not available or if it's there at all, they don't want to go to it, seeing it as 'little kid's stuff'. It's also tricky with a teenager with ASD. Normal expectations on behaviour mean that outbursts which might have been tolerated when she was 5, would now find her thrown out of a scheme. Yes, there are holiday playschemes for disabled children and their siblings, but I'm wary of that 'culture of disability' which means she doesn't mix with mainstream society. It's a tricky one, but in the main, I would prefer to be at home to manage the school holidays myself. 


So, in order to provide the best for the family in terms of meeting the needs of my daughter and the mental health of the rest of the family, I would be far better served staying at home (just what the Tories want women to do!). However, even before the threat of partner's possible redundancy, this was never realistic, so I'm having to look for work which is term-time only, where the hours enable me to meet childcare needs and where the employer would be happy for me to be called away at short notice and to take time off for the multiple medical appointments she has. Well, that's looking promising!


We have never claimed any benefits on behalf of our daughter, either. Although many people told us to apply for DLA, we didn't feel that we incurred any additional expense in terms of support or mobility than any other child of her age and as were on good 'moderate' incomes (let's be clear, though, we were in no danger of losing our Child Benefit) we felt it would be wrong to put in a claim. She walks a mile to school, goes into town unaccompanied (albeit closely monitored by us on her mobile), and can cook her own meal if necessary, so we really didn't feel that we were justified in claiming for her. Hers is an unfairly 'invisible' disability - she is capable of managing with most things, and is an intelligent child. 


We're hoping that she will be obtain qualifications (although this is getting less likely by the day, thanks to Michael Gove's obsession with making all pupils something out of Mallory Towers) and will be able to live independently. At the same time, she is subject to the funny looks when her behaviour seems strange and we need always to be 'on alert' for potential flashpoints. She doesn't need full time care in the usual sense, but we are never off duty - no-one in the current climate of "benefits scroungers", though, is going to accept that my time would be better used waiting at home for the times when there's a problem. In small, intangible ways, her ASD fundamentally alters they way we can live our lives and that's not something the state is willing to pick up the bill for. Profound physical disabilities are easier for the legislators (and electorate) to get their heads around - "poor little mite" syndrome, as I call it - but there are thousands of people for whom a disability is a lifelong impediment to success. How, in this new, "small-state" world where we are all expected to be entrepreneurial, will she manage to maintain a work record?


I've read a lot of people who expected that David Cameron, as the parent of a disabled child, would be sympathetic to (or at least appreciate) the difficulties that this can present to family life, and are dismayed that he appears sanguine about the cuts to disability benefits and local authority support. Now, I'm not callous enough to deny him the grief he felt when they lost their son simply because I disagree profoundly with his politics and world-view; no amount of wealth can compensate for the myriad ways in which living with (and losing) a disabled child affects you. To those expecting empathy, though, consider this. He has never been in a position of having to choose a course of action for economic reasons. For most of us, though, such a choice has to be made. I would love to be in a position where the next 5 years were devoted to my children as they move towards adulthood, but it simply isn't practical. Nor do I expect to sit at home letting the state support me. But the sad reality at the moment is that it is becoming more difficult to get a work-life balance. There were improvements to family-friendly employment of the last 13 years, but most of these gains are being undermined. The attack on existing terms and conditions, threats of further legislation to 'curb the power of trades unions' (Hang on, I thought the Tories had done that? That's what they tell us!), mean that working life, for those of us fortunate to have a job, will be meaner, longer and less-family friendly. For a much more erudite discussion of this particular topic, see this:


http://www.labourlist.org/say-goodbye-to-good-work


I know this post will do nothing concrete to change the situation we find ourselves in (and my partner will almost certainly tell me my time would have been better spent looking for jobs), but it has at least cleared my head of the rage I felt this morning when the radio came on....




UPDATE: Have now applied for DLA, despite partner's misgivings. The irony is that the more we try to help her be independent, the more we have to "hover" to keep her safe. We'll just have to see if she is "disabled enough"...