An April trip to Scarborough. Time to put on the Simon and Garfunkel cover of the old English Folk Song.

Are you going to Scarborough Fair…

Well I hope they got wrapped up as it was seriously COLD, AGAIN. Beautiful but COLD.

The Scarborough song is about asking too much of others, asking impossible tasks, love fracturing. Well it would mess up if one lover was expecting a Caribbean beach holiday and they ended up on a long weekend in not so tropical Yorkshire.

We had been over here for an appointment, the last bit of formal support Hawklad gets these days. One 45 minute session every 3 weeks or so. From about the age of thirteen the support levels have shrunk rapidly. Get to 18 or 19 and they will have completely disappeared. Not because the need isn’t there, it’s likely to be there more than ever, but because nationally access to services are being restricted. Years of cut backs and efficiency restructurings have led to ‘streamlined’ services being overwhelmed with demand. So we get frustrated and angry with the lack of local support but unless mental health is given the priority it needs nationally, then it’s an IMPOSSIBLE task to support every need, it just can’t happen.

Or is it IMPOSSIBLE, at least could we do better, could we give some more support to those who need it. I guess it comes down to a couple of drivers…

– Maybe those in charge see more votes in focusing on tax cuts and immigration crackdowns,

– There are just not enough profits to be extracted by greedy hands from Mental Health Services.

The UKs so called Prime Minister will give daily speeches solely focusing on how he is being tough and proactive on trying to fly a few desperate refugees to Rwanda at a cost of £500 Million (plus…), yet he never seems to ever raise an eyebrow at the mental health crisis unfolding across the country. But what is clear.

The money is there, the money to fund services is definitely there.

This shouldn’t be impossible.

41 thoughts on “Still cold”

  5. I feel for you, Gary. We have similar problems with healthcare in Canada. The funding for public healthcare keeps gets smaller and xmaller while our populations grows bigger and bigger. Our problem is we let politiciabs decide where the money goes — politicians who csre not one whit for people except to lie to them at election time. In Alberta right now our Conservative government is stashing away $2 billion a year “for a rainy day” while underfunding healthcare, educaton, and social programs. Their only concerns are money, and polluting our atmosphere because climate change is a liberal hoax.

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  7. It’s a sad fact that the money is almost always there, but misused. My daughter is a Commissioner on the mental health team in Nottingham and constantly frustrated by cuts. Lovely, chilly Scarborough, though I remember a hot day when I lost her on the beach there, aged about 4. What a nightmare!

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  9. It was that song ‘Scarborough Fair’ that I loved all those years past; it drove me to ‘have’ to go to Scarborough. We loved it. It was a brilliantly sunny and warm day… Wonderful memories.
    Yes, it’s a sad fact, it seems, worldwide. Mental health funding is limited when the need for it continues to rise.

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  10. The money is there and Derrick Knight is correct in his comment. Your anger, frustration and pain are very real and legitimate. Those people with calloused eyes and calcified hearts don’t see or care.

    Best to you and Hawklad.

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  11. Caribbean beach holidays are overrated! April has been cool here too but the longer the coming heat is put off, the better I like it. I don’t like that whole Rwanda thing. I know it’s a very complicated matter but I don’t see flying unwanted immigrants to Africa as a solution. Of course I have no better one I can think of but the injustice of your situation is appalling.

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  12. Greed is horrible, and the innocent have to suffer because of it!
    So sorry, Gary, at your constant fight over mental healthcare, which you shouldn’t have to fight!

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  13. It is very shocking and dismaying to me that supports practically disappear for our neurodivergent kids and youth once they become a legal adult. As if the needs just magically disappear when they turn 18. This is inhumane and unjust and frankly very cruel. I so wish there was a different way.

    On a more upbeat note, Scarborough looks lovely!

    And I noticed this was the first Sunday that you didn’t do a Swiss Sunday!

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  14. Where can I find the story your blog’s about, or at least a post that has the major elements? You read my poem “The System Failure” and left a like. Thank you. I want to tell you what I’ve done. Trying to go to court was a no go, since I have absolutely no parental rights, despite the fact I’ve been the primary parent for six years. The other thing is I’m a foreigner, and here, I’m seen as a colonialist trying to take a Tamil child from his parents, even though it’s the opposite way around. The other is the red flag of a white man and an Indian boy, although I have good character witnesses with clout that can vouch for me on that. All those things made it impossible for any advocate to even try to take it to court, and I went through 5.

    You’ve seen my experience with taking action in the poem, Green Beret Green Light Team, the art action in Israel and Egypt, and so, I made an email from Protonmail, put the subject Child Sex Video, put the link to the video at the head of the email, then a picture of my child, and then a very easy to read poem describing the situation, putting emphasis on the fact that a Pondicherry police inspector told the parents that there was no problem with the video, which is child porn, or the father masturbating his boys– he can do that–and no problem with Nithish, my 12-year-old boy, being beaten senseless with a wooden board because he was asking to see me. The mother was told that she could beat him, just don’t bust open his head.

    I included a link to Nithish’s YouTube channel (S. Nithish) in the poem where that is mentioned, my name and blog URL, and the addresses and contact details of the parents. I sent that email to major TV news sites in Pondicherry and to every single major child’s rights and child exploitation NGO in India. I didn’t send one to the police or any governmental agency. It’s been since last Friday, and so far no results, but I have no doubt they are coming.

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      1. I am very sorry. What a loss that must’ve been. We don’t know life until it bites us, know that it’s bottom line is not kind that is, and we, or I have, feel so betrayed and violated, especially when your young child is made to suffer too. There’s no returning from this vision of the world. It’s like you’ve been in a war, and all the rules of graces of society have been turned on their head, and you’ve seen what hell must look like to itself and know that hell is always there, behind the kindness of life.

        If that were all, we would indeed be doomed. That is just the appearance, not the reality, because the reality is indeed God, what is behind this world and all that we see, and it’s only when you’ve seen hell open up in your life, when you curse God and lose all faith in him, that, in your sincere suffering, in your honest pain, in your bare bones searching for answers, you can come to see God again and know that hell is just a bad vision that bites life, but it does not destroy life and make it meaningless.

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