My seven year battle to free my autistic son
A MOTHER of an autistic man has won a seven-year battle for him to be released after he was locked up in a mental health unit.
Leo Andrade handed a petition signed by 50,000 supporters to Downing Street in a bid to free 24-year-old Stephen.
He was kept in four different units and sometimes held in isolation and injected with powerful antipsychotic drugs.
Mrs Andrade, a mother-of-three, had been preparing to spend another Christmas without Stephen when he was released with little warning last month.
She said: “They called me on a Friday night and told me to come and collect him on Monday. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“There have been so many times when I thought he would be out and they were dashed.”
Mrs Andrade, 54, from Islington, north London, plans to discuss the prospect of legal action against the NHS for false imprisonment and a breach of human rights with her lawyers.
She said: “He has been brutalised, punished and given antipsychotic drugs for years and it is clear that he is suffering from post-traumatic shock disorder.”
While one mother’s prayers have been answered, hundreds of parents are still suffering the loss of children locked away, often hundreds of miles from home.
Last week former Lib Dem health minister Norman Lamb wrote to Health Secretary Matt Hancock to demand urgent action. The call comes after NHS digital figures revealed that 2,065 adults and 260 children with learning difficulties and autism are locked up.
But the Government pledged in 2012 to review all cases and “support everyone inappropriately placed... to communitybased support as quickly as possible and no later than 1 June 2014”.
Last month the Sunday Express revealed the scandal in which thousands of people are being kept in prison-style cells because of challenging behaviour in a system described by Mr Lamb as “an intolerable abuse of human rights”. He said: “Keeping these people locked up in cells is an intolerable, fundamental breach of human rights and costs the public purse a fortune.” The annual bill is estimated to be about £500million with the vast majority going to seven private providers.
Shadow health secretary Barbara Keeley said: “These institutions are more akin to Victorian asylums than modern day hospitals.” She described the units as Bedlam-like institutions housing “vulnerable, frightened and anxious people”.
A Department of Health spokesman said: “We’re committed to ensuring all care delivered in England is of high quality, safe and compassionate.”