Are we all going to stand by and do nothing?

(What will my future be like?)
 

 

 

My beautiful student is in prison. I wrote about him before, remember? On 2nd June in the post: 'If something is really broken, it's better to throw it away'.

 

While all over the media people are discussing the problems in youth care, children with serious problems in Rotterdam are put on the street after their eighteenth birthday so that, if they roam around long enough, they will automatically have to deal with the law and will no longer be the problem of expensive care.

 

This child of the Netherlands has no one. When he was not yet 18, the care sector made tons of money off him. But because his parents are unable to fight the system, the municipality can abondon the boy as soon as the opportunity arises. The municipality simply leans back and does nothing.

 

The ombudsman is powerless, of course. We have known that for a long time too. Governments do not need to take any notice of ombudsmen. The ombudsman phenomenon is one of the great deceits of our democracy. Democracy itself is one too, by the way. Big rubbish. The law of the strongest applies. You can fight all you want. If you stand up for the weak, you lose.

 

This beautiful boy was our pupil for two years, a student of Acato. A child with a pure character. A good child, my mother would say. A child with talent. He is now in prison, because he was abandoned by the government. Maybe that is cheaper for the social care budget, but for society it is certainly not. We will have to take care of him for life. Another bucket of money is needed to bring him back into society. With an autism spectrum disorder and all the misery from the past, this will not be easy. But trauma or autism was not considered interesting before, so why should it be if you come out of prison with a criminal record? First be good, says the municipality, then maybe we will look at your problem.

 

Maybe not. That too has already been proven. It is like Russian roulette. What is certain is that expensive institutions are allowed to go to work again. Someone is paid a salary to reintegrate the boy and someone has to provide the boy with an allowance and someone has to check on the boy while he is roaming the streets and then someone comes along and tries to get the boy to work in a job that the boy doesn't really want or that he can't handle, for which he should be grateful, until it goes wrong again because no one really understands what is troubling him and then he will end up in prison or in a drug rehabilitation centre again. And this will repeat itself for the next fifty years, like a merry-go-round at the funfair.

  

My heart bleeds. Not for society. Not because of the tons of tax money that will be wasted over the next fifty years.

 

My heart bleeds for this beautiful boy. This good child. He could have had a wonderful life, if care had really been allowed to focus on the human being and if we had a government that made the same demands on itself as it does on its citizens.

 

Are we going to stand by and do nothing?

Fifty years ago, parents of children with disabilities united. Some parents were wealthy. That helped.

 

Now, there are no real, pure parents' associations any more. Parents have to fight the institutions  that get the money but do not provide the care that our children need all by themselves. Why? Because the demands of the government are decisivenot hte care that is needed.

 

Let us start again. Let's unite a new club of parents just like before and make a good plan for our children. Together. Fighting. Demanding.

 

Appropriate support, education, work, leisure, housing, it is not there for our children. But they are entitled to it.

 

I have been a mother of autistic children for thirty years. I have only seen their chances decrease. I have been working for Acato voluntarily for 8.5 years now. I write, I read, I try, but I will not change anything on my own. Only if a club of people stands up, makes a real fist, can we achieve something.

 

Come on, parents, we can no longer stand idly by while our society is being poisoned and the future of our children is being spoiled.

 

Who wants to think along, help, pull the cart or just support? We must save our children. For all children. They are the future.