Labels, Diagnosis and Deceit!

Whilst we're still on the subject of Alan Emond (and we are!) we'll do a little time travelling and leap forward a while to focus on a very strange event.

Being disabled Hari naturally came up against the idiots in the local authority regarding education. Their stance seemed to be that Hari wasn't worth educating, on account of needing a wheelchair, and the issues surrounding this became central in our lives.

Those we dealt with in the NHS made ridiculous pretences at being supportive but in reality did nothing to support Hari's right to education - indeed they mostly caused even more problems on this front.

The post arrived one morning and an unexpected letter announced that Hari had an appointment for 'assessment' at a centre attached to a hospital in London.

We had never heard of this place before and nobody had told us that a referral was being made so we had no idea what the purpose of this appointment was.

So I telephoned the centre to enquire why we had been sent this appointment out of the blue.

The woman I spoke to during this call was very helpful and explained that Hari had been referred by Alan Emond for assessment with regard to education. She kindly read the referral letter to me over the phone (we later acquired a written copy) and the content was extremely worrying.

After no useful support from the NHS with regard to Hari's education, this letter sought to interfere with the appeal process we were following. From the associated copies of correspondence between Alan Emond and the local authority, this was clearly a deceptive attempt to prevent Hari from accessing the education she, like every other child, was entitled to.

The opening paragraph of the letter attributed a string of labels to Hari - each one conferring a diagnosis that was incorrect and detrimental to Hari. It was clear that this supposedly independent centre would never seek to disagree with the stated labels/diagnosis, especially as the letter went on to claim there had been difficulty in getting me to accept the diagnosis.

Maybe we should explore this a little further. The central (incorrect) diagnosis in the list had NEVER been mentioned before! (Or since!) Indeed this particular diagnosis is so incorrect that to attribute it to Hari would clearly be unprofessional in the extreme. However, now it had been written in this letter as a firm diagnosis, there would be no chance of the proposed assessment contradicting it's existence.

If anybody would like to try and re-attribute this diagnosis to Hari now we would happily refer their unprofessional incompetence to the GMC!

My next phone call was to Alan Emond - who naturally wasn't available!

Instead I spoke to his secretary and demanded an explanation for this absurd referral.

Now then - we all know the secretaries are in charge of our health care and this particular one (no doubt having attended the day course in how to make the coffee!) proceeded to lie to me about the purpose of the referral. She insisted that it was purely for medical reasons and had nothing at all to do with education - and apparently she should know as she had typed the letter! When I finally managed to get a word in edge ways I told her that the woman at the centre had read the referral letter out to me over the phone - she went very quiet!

Unsurprisingly the unavailable Alan Emond rapidly became available!

I have to admit that my use of vocabulary during the phone conversation with Alan Emond was far from lady like! I read him the riot act - and he deserved every bit of it!

The only intention of this referral was to conspire and collude with the idiots in the local authority in order to prevent Hari from gaining access to education. This referral was so unprofessional and so low that they were prepared to label Hari with extra disabilities, which she didn't have, in order to support a bureaucratic policy that discriminated against disabled children and labelled them as worthless. There was never any intention that the centre should conduct an accurate assessment - they had been given the required diagnosis and were expected to stick to it - regardless of the truth.

During the phone call Alan Emond told me that if I didn't take Hari for this assessment he would inform the idiots in the local authority (OK - HE didn't call them idiots!) that I was refusing to cooperate and that this would be used against Hari. Well believe me - refusing to be part of this particular little set up was going to be a lot more useful to Hari than allowing this deceitful little charade to continue. Hari did not have the extra disabilities he was trying to attribute to her and to become part of this abusive and manipulative little game would have been totally unacceptable.

My standards were clearly much higher than Alan Emond's!