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F
or the first few years of my life I was unaware that my mum was any
different to any other. She would be there to collect me from school; a
beautiful vision of long dark hair and big brown eyes. I never noticed the
slight wobble on her heels or slurred speech – these things meant little
to a seven-year-old. She would be there every day to take us to school and
waiting to walk us home. She would be there to cheer us on during sports day or
see our nativity plays.
I was about 11 the first time she went ‘away’ to hospital for a rest. My little
brother and I went to stay with nan – her warm comforting home was our place of
sanctuary. Nan took care of everything and we thrived there.
I was a model pupil at the time and it didn’t seem to matter too much that mum
stopped showing up to watch performances, games or go to parents evening. My
bubble burst when mum didn’t collect my younger brother from school one day and
the local vicar took him home to find she had overdosed on Valium and alcohol.
She claimed it was accidental, but that was the moment my childhood ended.
An ambulance took mum away and she was sectioned to the dreaded D block
– a place whispered about in hushed tones. Only dad could visit her and on
Sundays she would come out and we would go to country parks. The vibrant
woman that I adored so much as a little girl was gone; she was just a shadow.
Her sadness was palpable even then and I would count the hours till it was time
for her to return to her sanctuary and we could return to ours.
I could list the awful, embarrassing and sometimes violent moments that
followed in the years after. There was the day I came in from horse riding and she
went to slap me because I had muddy boots. In her drunken state she missed,
but I was faster and full of anger and one slap from me sent her flying to the floor.
She didn’t get up. My brother and I stood over her. I thought I’d killed her – and for
one tiny moment I hoped I had, stopping that feeling of unending dread of the
increasing times she would turn into a drunken mess and seek attention through
declarations of terminal illness, or attack us mentally, verbally or physically.
I hadn’t killed her; she had just passed out drunk. We dragged her into her
chair and left her to sleep it off. When she woke up she had wet herself, such
12 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| December 2014
Conference |
Adfam – Families First
www.drinkanddrugsnews.com
Bringing a busy day of
presentations, debate and
networking to a close, Emma
reminded the recent
Families First
conference why family support is
worth fighting for. Here’s an
extract of her story
Close t
PUTTING
FAMILIES FIRST
The third
Families First
conference heard
how the will for family support was there
– even if the money was hard to come by
THE LABOUR PARTY
is totally committed to the families agenda, said Luciana
Berger, shadow minister for public health. Addressing the Adfam/DDN Families
First conference, she said her party was looking at how it could work with
families further.
‘We don’t just see through the lens of the Troubled Families programme,’ she
said. ‘We don’t just see them as problems to solve.’
Megan Jones from Public Health England (PHE) said that while
commissioning increasingly focused on delivery, outcomes and value for money,
‘we can make a case for solid value for money for family services.’ The needs of
families were now being taken seriously, she said, and statutory requirements
and treatment providers would play a key role in leading the drug and alcohol
field into this brave new world.
‘Why do commissioners always give the money to the big organisations,
when we do all the work?’ asked Maddy Vaz of the charity Sanctuary Family
Support. Berger responded that clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) needed to
be held to account. ‘There’s nothing to stop anyone in this room turning up at
their health and wellbeing board,’ she said.
Alex Boyt, service user coordinator in Camden, spoke of the ‘really harsh
environment out there’, with just one family worker in his London borough, while
Dr Martyn Hull said general practice was the ideal place to support families.
‘Don’t dismember shared care,’ he said. Investment needed to take place in
primary care, so that GPs knew how to help families deal with harder-to-spot
problems such as dependency on new psychoactive substances.
Lisa Sturrock of WDP’s children and families service pointed out that for many
children school was a safe place – ‘so exclusion’s an issue’. Support also needed
to be holistic, she said, and there was discussion about how families could draw
strength from the recovery movement.