Benjamin doesn’t tick boxes

An open letter to the Head of Education at East Lothian Council

Dear Ms Robertson,

Not having a tracheostomy is a good thing, isn’t it? Not being on TPN, not needing daily IVs, that’s good, isn’t it? Not if it means you can’t access the support you need.

I am sending you an open letter, because your response to my previous, urgent email about my son’s education was met – more than a week later – with a dismissive, incorrectly addressed, response from a ‘service administrator’ advising that it had been forwarded to ‘appropriate personnel who will respond in due course.’

If this administrator had actually read my letter, she would have seen that I am not ‘Mr Davey’ but Dr Davey, Benjamin’s mother (even ‘Mrs’ would have done), and that this matter requires a response not ‘in due course’ but urgently, and not by ‘appropriate personnel’ but by someone at the very highest level who has the ability and resources to make things happen, and make things happen fast.

This is Benjamin. Benjamin is undiagnosed. He has multiple, complex, interrelating conditions affecting many organs and systems of his body, but we don’t know why. When something is wrong, it is difficult to tell which part went wrong first. Chest or stomach? Breathing issues or muscle tone or a seizure?

Benjamin is intractable. Benjamin smiles when he is happy or with people that he loves. Benjamin also smiles when he is in pain. Benjamin tenses up when he is trying to reach for something, and also when he is trying to pull away, and when he is distressed.

When Benjamin is well, he’s very well. On a good day he only needs his regular medications, four times a day, his inhaler and a saline nebuliser once a day, chest physio and suctioning twice a day, a few checks of his gastrostomy and his temperature and you’re done! When he’s poorly, he can be very poorly. He may, within a couple of hours, become so dehydrated he needs IV fluids. He may produce so many thick secretions that he cannot breathe. He may have a tonic-clonic seizure that is resistant to rescue medication and lasts up to four hours. His temperature may drop so low it cannot be recorded with a regular thermometer. His heart rate can drop to 30 or rise to 180 beats per minute. His muscles can become so tense it is impossible to bend him into a sitting position. He can vomit fluorescent green slime out of his nose (Britain’s Got Talent, are you reading?). Benjamin can go downhill very rapidly and recover almost equally rapidly. Sometimes it is impossible to tell whether he is deteriorating or improving. Benjamin needs someone on hand, 24/7, who is able to respond to all these medical eventualities.

Benjamin doesn’t tick boxes. Benjamin doesn’t meet criteria. Especially when we don’t know what criteria he is being measured against. Especially when the ‘professional’ opinion is that he doesn’t even justify being tested against the criteria. Benjamin confuses panels and confounds ‘decision making tools.’

Benjamin, like all three year olds in Scotland, is entitled to 600 hours of funded early learning and childcare per year. Benjamin has a place at a fantastic special needs nursery, attached to the special needs school provision where he will hopefully eventually receive full-time education.

Benjamin loves nursery. He loves his teachers. He loves painting and baking, soft play and ‘body awareness’. He loves the sensory area and he loves when he gets a foot massage.

I love Benjamin’s nursery. But I don’t want to be there the entire time that he is there. Like other mums of three year olds in Scotland, I am entitled to 600 hours early learning and childcare for Benjamin per year to allow me to care for and spend time with my other children, to catch up on paperwork (oh, the paperwork), to catch up on laundry (oh, the laundry), to have a coffee, go for a pee, read a magazine, get my haircut. God forbid, I could even do my job.

But, since Benjamin started his three year provision in early January, I have had to accompany him to nursery because there is no-one there who can meet his medical needs. This was intended to be a temporary arrangement until either his nursery staff could be trained to meet his needs (voluntarily, because they are wonderful, caring people who will go beyond the requirements of their role as long as it is safe to do so), or until provision could be put in place for a medical professional to be with him at nursery. This would be a ‘reasonable adjustment’ as required under the Equalities Act to ensure that Benjamin can safely attend the education to which he is entitled.

As it transpires, Benjamin is too complex to be cared for by nursery staff. They are, after all, teachers, nursery nurses and classroom assistants. They are not medical professionals. (I am not a medical professional but, since having Benjamin, I might as well be). They cannot be expected to, should not be expected to, take decisions about Benjamin’s highly complex, variable, unpredictable and rapidly-changing health needs.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained to do chest physio but not how to tell when chest physio might make his wheezing worse.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained how to suction him but not how to tell when he needs suction or when it would cause too much trauma.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained to aspirate his gastrostomy but not when that is necessary, how to evaluate the contents of his stomach, when to discard them, when to stop his feed, when to switch him to a different feed regime, when to worry, or when to take him to hospital.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained to administer his feeds but not to evaluate what rate is appropriate for his stomach at any given time.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained to clean up if he vomits but not how to tell if some vomit has got into his lungs, if he is getting dangerously dehydrated, whether he needs to go home on dioralyte or go immediately onto IV fluids.

Benjamin’s teachers can be trained to administer his medications but not to determine when he needs a higher dose than usual.

If Benjamin’s teachers make the wrong decision, because they are not medical professionals, he could end up in A&E wasting everyone’s time, or he could end up gravely ill. It wouldn’t be their fault. It shouldn’t be their responsibility.

And yet, because Benjamin doesn’t have a tracheostomy, because he is not on a ventilator, or on TPN or regular IVs, nobody will assess him for the Lothian Exceptional Needs Service for Children with Exceptional Health Care Needs (LENS) scheme, despite that he fulfils many of its ‘issues relating to need’ including needing ‘sustained medical support … seven days per week,’ requiring ‘professional trained intervention on a regular basis or in response to an acute incident in order to prevent acute hospital admissions,’ demanding ‘a degree of complex problem solving, and revision of the child’s care plan, on an hour by hour or day by day basis,’ and an inability or lack of competence of carers to meet these needs.

Because no-one will even bother to assess Benjamin for the LENS scheme, he has been downgraded to the frankly mythical HESS (Healthcare and Education Support Service). Because no-one will supply us with a copy of the criteria for referral to HESS, we do not know what boxes he needs to tick. Because the member of staff responsible for making the referral has been slowly drip-feeding us the information we need to supply and the evidence that needs to be provided, rather than giving us a clear outline of the application requirements from the start, it has taken far longer than it should have to put all that evidence together, extending the process well beyond the end of last term and into the next. Because parents apparently have no input into this information, only ‘professionals,’ there is no one to complete the documentation: I, his parent, am the one taking care of him at nursery because there is no professional there trained to do that (Anyone else thinking Catch 22 here…?). Because East Lothian has never even signed up to the HESS scheme, there is no guarantee that Benjamin will get the support he needs through it, and in the meantime we are left waiting, hanging, clinging to the concept of a ‘decision making tool’ that we have never seen and know nothing about. From Christmas to Easter, and now into the summer term…

I know this isn’t your fault, Ms Robertson. If anything, it’s mine: fancy agreeing to go to nursery with Benjamin as a temporary measure until something more permanent was organised? How gullible was that? Of course, that removes any incentive for anything permanent to be organised! I know this isn’t your fault, Ms Robertson, but it is your responsibility, so that’s why I’m writing to you (again) now. I’m no longer prepared to give up my time and my family’s time to provide something that should be provided to Benjamin as a right. The buck stops with you and it stops now.

There are many possible solutions. You could answer – and even fast-track – my request for Benjamin to receive a Coordinated Support Plan. You could provide all special school provisions in East Lothian with a full-time school nurse. You could support Benjamin’s immediate referral to the LENS scheme. He cannot be the only child in the county who needs this kind of support? Even if he is the only one without a tracheostomy…

I don’t want to be one of those mothers. The difficult ones. The ones who kick up a fuss. The ones who go to their MP and MSP and write viral posts on Facebook and go to the press. I am nervous. I wonder, is it too early to protest? The HESS application is, after all, still ongoing. The school staff say they are drawing up a ‘timeline’. The nice lady at the council says she has sent some emails. But how long do we have to wait before we start working together on ‘Plan B’? Do I and the nursery actually have to call your bluff, refuse to provide essential medical support for Benjamin, in order for someone to take us seriously? Does it have to wait until my family is at crisis point?

I don’t want to be one of those mothers, but believe me, I will. If Benjamin does not tick your boxes, your boxes are the wrong shape. If Benjamin doesn’t meet your criteria, you need to rethink the criteria. If Benjamin doesn’t fit your ‘decision making tools’ then those tools are not fit for purpose. Maybe together we can make some better tools?

Yours,

Benjamin’s mum