Story Ninety One - Homecoming

For the first couple of months of Steven being away, I used to go into his bedroom, just to smell the pillows. The smell of Steven. But after a few weeks, the smell started to fade and the bedsheets just smelt musty. After the dreadful DOLs review in April, I came home furious and stripped Steven's bed. I put clean sheets on whenever Ian stopped over after the Balcony Olympics. And in August, the BBC wanted establishing shots of me making Stevens bed for the piece they were running. But for the most part of the year, the bed remained unmade. On 23rd December, I made the bed with tears streaming down my face.

I knew that Steven wouldn't have coped with a welcome home party, so there were no banners or balloons. He'd helped me put up the Christmas decorations the week before and that was enough. I'd got all the things Steven expects of Christmas Day: Cheeselet's, Pringles, Maltesers etc and the presents were wrapped, including the new Take That CD with Robbie back on board.

As I hadn't been part of Steven's life at the Unit, I decided not to go there to pick him up. I would welcome him at the door instead. I didn't fancy having incongruent happy pleasantries with the staff either. The two support workers told me a lovely story. All year long, Stevens signature tune for the Unit manager had been Queen's I Want To Break Free. As all the staff came out the Unit to wish him on his way, Steven went up to the manager, shook his hand and burst into Cliff's Congratulations. I'd have given anything to have seen the reaction.

Steven got home around midday. He checked out all the rooms to make sure everything was in its rightful place. He checked the cupboards to see what crisps I'd laid out for that evening. And then he settled down to watch the DVD of Mr Bean in America. He hasn't had use of a DVD for a year and he had lots of catching up to do. I sat at the dining table, watching Steven watch Mr Bean. It was such a treat.

Story Ninety - Breaking The News

I got home from the High Court about 20 minutes before Steven was due home for his Tuesday night "fake transition plan" visit. Only this time - it wasn't fake - I'd be telling them him that he was coming home for good. I knew the order Justice Mostyn had made that morning was just an interim order but I was also sure that once home, there was no way that Hillingdon would ever get him again. Something would have to go drastically wrong for the two court experts to decide that living at home was not in Steven's best interests.

Because the court order was never published, we fell under the COP's privacy rules and therefore, I had to fend off all the press interest that was generated. I left that to Chris to do and he set up several interviews for February, when the final hearing would take place.

Steven arrived home at 4.15. Francis, his main support worker was with him. And the guy from the Unit, who had been to most home visits and spent them making copious notes in his little black book. I didn't want to tell Steven in front of him. I could see that the guy had already heard the news and he was looking desperately uncomfortable. So, I took Steven and Francis up to his bedroom. I hadn't worked out what to say but blurted out: "Steve - do you want a really big surprise on Friday?" Bear in mind, that Hillingdon had told Steven about their plan to move him to Wales and hadn't reassured him that he could open his Christmas presents in the Uxbridge house. 

"Open Christmas presents in the Uxbridge house on Friday?"

"Yes. Open Christmas presents in the Uxbridge house on Friday and stay in the Uxbridge house with Dad forever and ever".

Steven thought about it for a bit:

"M House is all finished on Friday?"

"Yes. M House is all finished on Friday. Coming back to the Uxbridge house on Friday forever and ever".

It took several repeats before it started to sink in. Me and Francis were crying - Steven was singing "Back For Good".

And then, the normal Tuesday night routine kicked in. I went off for the KFC and we settled down to a mammoth Christmas music DVD session (Cliff, Boney M, Wham etc etc). 

After Steven went back to the Unit, for the first time that year, I didn't get upset or feel empty. I didn't sleep that night. I spent the whole night on the Get Steven Home group, reading people's wonderful messages and thanking everyone for their support.

I must have slept a bit because I woke up at 5am the next day with a stark thought. Because I'd been so scared that Steven would be spending Christmas in Wales, I had put Christmas preparations on hold. I'd better get cracking - I had a proper family Christmas to arrange.

Story Eighty Nine - High Court

356 days after Steven left his home for three days respite, we finally made it to the Royal Courts of Justice. It was 21st December 2010. It had been snowing heavily for three days and the night before, Chris had phoned me to say that he was snowed in down in Cornwall and wouldn't be able to make it. I booked a cab to get me all the way to Holborn as the trains had been seriously disrupted. I arrived very early and explored the splendid gothic building and then sat outside the courtroom waiting for everyone else to arrive. Sophy arrived and introduced me to the OS barrister, Aswene Weeratne and the Hillingdon barrister came over and made himself known. Amanda arrived and took me off to a quiet room for a last minute briefing. She was feeling confident and said that she would test the temperature of the Judge and then really go for it - lift the DOL and an immediate return home. That seemed too good to be true to me.

We went into Court, before Justice Mostyn and all three barristers gave their opening address. It was so heartening to hear both Amanda and Aswene saying pretty much the same thing. The first bit of business was shocking - Hillingdon dropped their welfare deputy application! I thought - "what does that leave them with? They had put all their eggs in one basket and had now removed the basket". Whilst I was mulling over this thought, I heard my name being called to give evidence.

The Hillingdon barrister went first and persistently asked me whether I was intimidated by Steven and why didn't I accept the level of threat he posed. I could see that it was grandstanding for the judge but is was deeply uncomfortable. After short cross examinations from Amanda and the OS, the judge wanted to ask a few questions. It was nothing like I'd expected, like I'd prepared for. I thought I'd be giving a long account of everything that had happened. Instead, he just focused on the sort of home life Steven might have if he decided to let Steven come home. It was great because I was able to talk about the kind of things that all year long, Hillingdon had never wanted to listen to.

After 20 minutes, I was asked to return to my seat. No Hillingdon witnesses were being called. The Judge announced that he was going to give his judgement. He described my testimony as "genuine, reasonable, articulate and very moving", which set me off. And then, as if he was talking about the weather, he announced that he was terminating the latest DOL and Steven was free to return home immediately. I broke down and missed the rest - it was an interim order. We were to return in February and if all had gone well, it would be made a permanent order. The court would appoint two experts who would visit us and file a report on what they considered to be in Steven's best interests.

It was all over.

You may think I'm stark raving mad but I know how important preparation is for Steven. So, although I could have gone and picked him up from the Unit there and then, I said that we needed to prepare Steven for the homecoming. We agreed that I would tell him later today on his home visit and he would come home three days later on Christmas Eve.

There was one last bit if business. Amanda and I met the Hillingdon managers to discuss the support package. Amanda and Aswene both felt, that to quash Hillingdon's "belief" about risk, we should have support for pretty much the whole day. It will be good evidence come February. And that was what was agreed. I didn't think it was necessary but apart from the night times, there would be support in the home all day and every day until the February hearing.

There was no time for a celebration - I had to get home to break the news to Steven.......

Story Eighty Eight - Statements

Next job to do in December was to travel up to her chambers to meet Amanda, our barrister.

Before that, Chris and I spent ages writing our position statement. This was, of course, all new to me. My naive idea was to include every single thing that had happened throughout the year - rather like all the stories I have included in this blog. I find it difficult in those early days of getting representation to distinguish between the points of law and all the other abuses that had gone on over the year. After hours of discussion, we came up with a very long position statement.

Amanda took one look at it and said that it was too unfocused. So back to the drawing board, we pared it back to the two main declarations we wanted the judge to agree. Firstly that the current DOL was unlawful and should be terminated. And secondly, that it was in Steven's best interests to be living at home. The legal people believed that if we got the first one, the second would automatically follow. So, we ended up with a much shorter position statement that I must admit made me nervous. Had we done enough?

Over the next week, Hillingdon's position statements started to come in. The social worker had gone missing, so it was left to her manager to prepare the one on behalf of the supervisory body. The Unit manager wrote the one for the managing authority. They were dirty pieces of writing. Both of them portrayed Steven as a dangerous young man and me as an uncooperative, belligerent father. It was also at this point that we discovered the content of Hillingdon's application - they hadn't,as they led me to believe since August, made an application for a DOLs review. In fact, their application didn't even mention the DOLs. They were going for a full welfare deputy application which would have given them complete control over all the decisions in Steven's life, cutting me totally out of the picture. It was outrageously audacious and arrogant. Did they not expect a full hearing where the extent of their deceit would be revealed? Did they just assume it would be a rubber stamping exercise? 

A few days later, Chris turned up with boxes full of all the social care records. he wanted me to go through the whole lot and pull out the ones that I thought would be good for the case. He'd already discovered that the head of safeguarding adults who was responsible for DOLs had been adding bits to the authorisations that hadn't been included in the best interests assessments. So much for impartiality. My guess was that on the day each DOL was due to be authorised, he and all the stakeholding managers got together to make sure they were all singing from the same hymn sheet. It was whilst going through these boxes that so many things came to light about how much Steven and I had been lied to during the year. Of course, I was furious but I also had a sense of relief as well - relief that I hadn't been going mad and been imagining things. Amongst the things I found were the minutes of the meeting in April when they decided to send Steven away but not to tell me; the "always something or other with Mr Neary" email, emails from some of the professionals expressing their discomfort with what was happening. There was a lot to take in. I was astonished at the number of private professionals meetings that had been held over the year. And they either achieved nothing or made decisions that they had no right to make. It took three days to go through all the boxes and I was exhausted by the end of it.

The last thing to do was to write response statements to the statements submitted by Hillingdon. Once again, I got caught up in wanting to expose the duplicity and had to be reined in by Amanda who said ti would all come out in court (which of course it did).

And then it was a case of waiting. A long week's wait until the 21st December when all would be decided.

Story Eighty Seven - The Balcony Olympics

Yesterday, I wrote that suddenly having people on my side (Cilla, Chris, The OS) was a tremendous boost to my confidence. So much so, that the balcony Olympics were resurrected.

Throughout the year, some of the worst times were Saturday and Sunday evenings. Especially once the fake transition home plan had started. Steven was allowed to come home for a three hour visit on Saturday afternoons and then it was my job (with the support worker on duty) to take him back to the Unit. On the other home visits, he would be taken back by the two support workers that came with him, so the pain wasn't so bad. I used to dread the Saturday visits, purely because I knew that at 5 o'clock, I would have to take Steven back to the hellhole. Sometimes, Steven would kick off when we got back to the Unit. One Saturday, we got back and I went with Steven to his bedroom to dump his back off. Steven had been very tearful, saying "Don't want Dad to go back to the Uxbridge house". As we stood on the landing, Steven hit me round the face. I got upset because I knew the agony he was in to do that. The Unit just recorded it as an example of me being at risk and nor setting appropriate boundaries.

One Saturday night, we'd had another upsetting return and I was feeling so low. My mate Ian came round and we went to the pub at the top of my road. They were serving jugs of cocktails, two for the price of one. By 10 o'clock, we had got through six jugs. We went back to my flat and Ian was starving. I had been neglectful of the housework recently, and Ian kept coming across foods in my cupboards that were a long way and dangerously past their sell by date. To make good use of these items we invented the Balcony Olympics. We had a whole series of events: tossing a ski yoghurt at a 607 bus; pelting young lovers with pickled onions; how far could we get a cube of lime jelly to bounce down the High Street; any car with their stereo too loud got soaked in vegetable lasagne. The jelly one was good. For days afterwards, I kept finding little cubes of lime jelly, refusing to be crushed by the traffic. Ian won most events but he's always been a bigger tosser than me.

That night in early December, we brought the games back to life. We could be a bit bolder as it was darker and we'd be less likely to be seen. I won more events. But then again, I had had a year of practice.

Thank you Hillingdon - you improved my sporting performance no end.

Story Eighty Six - Enter The OS

The court application was accepted and immediately the court appointed the official solicitor to act on Steven's behalf. The first thing she wanted to do was to meet Steven. Chris kept telling me how important first impressions were to the OS, so I became a nervous wreck about the meeting.

I would have liked the meeting to take place at home on one of Steven's home visits. The Unit wanted it at the Unit. They won.

Needless to say they wanted to make the visit as difficult for Steven as possible.  They objected to Stevens two main workers being with him. They said it had to be Unit staff. By now, they knew we would be calling the guys as witnesses for us at the hearing. That led the council to undermine the guys more than ever, saying they couldn't be trusted not to lead Steven during the interview. In the end, we compromised and had one of the guys and a Unit worker present.

I was pacing the flat all day. Late afternoon I got an email from Chris - Sophy Miles (the OS) had sent him a transcript of the meeting within 2 hours. I burst into tears. This will sound like a terrible indictment of all the Hillingdon professionals but it was astonishing how well Sophy had related to Steven. The transcript showed an interest in Steven and an empathy for him that had been absent all year. It was so moving. And Steven played a blinder. He expressed himself clearly and calmly. He could tell Sophy where he wanted to live. He could explain why he liked living at home and why he didn't like living in the Unit. It was the most incredible stark contrast to all the mental capacity assessments and best interest interviews, that were so loaded against Steven.

The best thing of all was that it was clear that the OS would be taking the same position as my legal team and the IMCA - that living at home was overwhelmingly in Stevens best interests.

The relief was immense. Tomorrow, I'll tell the story of how I celebrated that night by reserecting the balcony Olympics.

Story Eighty Five - Holby City

In the week following me instructing Chris the Giant, things moved incredibly fast.

The court application was submitted. Chris asked the fabulous Amanda Weston to be our barrister. Steven was referred to the Official Solicitor to act for him, Hillingdon were instructed to hand over all their records. And a hearing date was listed for 21st December - three weeks time.

That week the social mysteriously went on three weeks leave - to return on 22nd December! Hillingdon obviously felt they darent risk putting her in the witness box, so she was hidden from the court's view.

Time was running out but Hillingdon still had time for one more stunt. One of their cruelest of the year. They told Steven that he might be moving to a hospital in Wales for Christmas.

It had the desired effect - Steven was beside himself. "Steven Neary's not sick". " Doctor's not cutting Steven Neary's belly with a knife like Holby City". "Mark Neary bring Steven Neary's Christmas presents to the hospital". He was in a blind panic. It was heartbreaking.

The intention was obvious. Before the hearing, Steven would be interviewed by several legal people. Hillingdon wanted his anxiety levels so high, he might have kicked off and showed the legal people that Hillingdon were right.

Bastards.