UK Adoptive Parent Fights for his Autistic Son

This is an amazing story of the lengths that this adoptive parent went to save his son from the overreaching UK child welfare system.

“Mark, who works as a counsellor at his own West London practice, helping people with depression, adopted Steven with his ex-wife Julie in 1995 when the little boy was five and had spent much of his early years in foster care.

The couple had already endured the death of a newborn baby in 1988, followed by many painful years of unsuccessful IVF treatment, before they decided to offer a home to a child who desperately needed it.

‘Steven was presented to us as a boy with severe learning difficulties, with no speech whatsoever,’ recalls Mark.

‘But then we were shown a video of him at a birthday party, in which he was being offered a plate of sausages on sticks. On the video, we heard him quite distinctly say the word “sausage”, which no one else had noticed.

‘I think that decided it for us. We wanted him. He moved in with us on July 4, and we spent a blissful summer getting to know this little lad.’

Steven’s odd little ways quickly became apparent, and it was not long before the word ‘autism’ was mentioned to the Nearys for the first time.”

“Mark says the support the family received was excellent, with five hours a week help from a support worker, and fortnightly overnight respite care in a specialist unit to give Mark and Julie a well-deserved night off.

As a little boy, Steven’s tantrums were manageable. As a strapping adolescent, however, they became more of a handful, requiring 24-hour care.

Mark recalls an incident during a day trip with carers to Heathrow Terminal 5 in 2008, when Steven was startled by the scream of a small child, and he kicked him.

The family didn’t press charges and the child wasn’t hurt, but it led to a suspension of his “care package”, confining Steven to the unit during the day for a few months while he was assessed,’ says Mark.

‘I’ve always said he is not dangerous if he is properly supervised. The day of the Heathrow incident, he’d been left with an inexperienced, single carer. He’s supposed to have two carers with him at all times, but the other one had gone off somewhere. Thank goodness, the child wasn’t hurt.’

As Christmas 2009 approached, Steven was going through a particularly bad patch. Mark and Julie had split earlier in the year. Mark wants to keep the details private, but he admits the years of stress definitely took their toll.

Julie moved out, and Mark continued to look after Steven single-handedly in their two-bedroom flat.

‘Christmas is always a tough time of year for us,’ says Mark. ‘Steven’s beloved swimming sessions are cancelled, and his routine disrupted.

“‘Then, on December 29, I started to come down with flu. When his social worker offered to arrange for Steven to be looked after for a few days at the local Positive Behavioural Unit (an assessment and treatment unit for men with severe learning difficulties) so I could recover, I gratefully accepted.’

But those three days quickly turned into a fortnight, and then a month, as Steven’s behaviour deteriorated and the unit refused to allow him home. ‘The problem was Steven didn’t want to be there,’ says Mark. ‘I knew that the minute he got home, and back into his old routine, he’d be fine, but no one seemed to listen.

‘In three months at the unit, they recorded 302 incidents where Steven was aggressive. In the four months prior to that at home, I’d recorded 14. They were listing him tapping someone on the shoulder as an assault — but I know it is just part of one of the routines he goes through to make him feel safe.’

Despite his upset at their separation, Mark still believed that the centre had Steven’s eventual return home as their goal. Although he visited Steven regularly and had him to stay for the odd weekend, they missed each other terribly.

In fact, a decision had already been made that Steven should not return home — and in April, the authorities got the ‘justification’ they needed.

Anxious and missing his dad, Steven escaped from the unit one evening, got onto the main road, and snatched the glasses off a passer-by.

It was the first of two successful escape attempts, and led to a Deprivation of Liberty Order — a little-known tool which Primary Care Trusts and hospitals can use to detain a person for their own safety, without needing permission from the courts.

‘But I didn’t hear of this until July,’ says Mark. ‘It had been decided that I wasn’t to be informed. My objections were seen as interference.”

The Campaign
“Prompted by his sister, Mark started a Facebook group called ‘Get Steven Home’. It attracted 3,000 people in three hours, one of them a law student in Exeter who recommended a specialist solicitor, Chris Cuddihee.

The page quickly attracted the attention of the media, who, frustrated by the strict secrecy surrounding the reporting of Court of Protection cases, which would ultimately decide Steven’s fate, successfully applied to have reporting restrictions lifted — the first time this has happened in British legal history.

On December 23, 2010, almost exactly a year since Steven had been taken into care, an interim order was granted to allow him to come home immediately.

That order was made permanent two weeks ago, in a blaze of publicity in which Mr Justice Peter Jackson criticised Hillingdon Social Services for ‘turning a deaf ear’ to the Neary family’s plight, adding that had Mr Neary been a lesser parent, his son ‘would have faced a life in public care that he did not want and does not need’.”
The State stole my son it took me a YEAR to get him back: A father’s battle with sinister and secretive forces to bring his 21-year-old home

[Daily Mail 6/21/11 by Julia Lawrence]

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