Bringing Eddie home
A Bristol mother is separated from her hospitalised 16-year-old son by 600 miles. She’s campaigning for his return – and for better mental health services for children in the south west.
Photo: Adele Hanlon
In the six-second video titled ‘Thank you’ on his change.org petition page, Eddie, wearing glasses and looking younger than his 16 years, looks at the camera and says “Thank you everybody, for everything you’ve done”.
Nearly 63,000 people have signed a petition set up a month ago by his mother Adele Hanlon, asking for Eddie to be brought back to Bristol after being in hospital in Newcastle – 600 miles away from his family – for three and a half years.
“He’s doing really well, the last month since we’ve started the petition has really perked him up,” says Adele. “He’s really enjoying it. Everyday he’ll ask how many people have signed it now, and make sure you thank everybody.”
Eddie has complex needs, a learning disability and mental health issues, including diagnoses of autism, ADHD, epilepsy and sensory problems. There is no hospital provision for children like Eddie in the whole of the south west. The region has the lowest number of mental health beds for children, says Adele.
“If you had a physical illness, people would have to make adaptions and change things straight away for him, but because it is mental health and things you can’t see, no one’s willing to put themselves out there and help.”
Adele travels to visit Eddie once a month, and every other month the whole family – Adele, her husband and Eddie’s four-year-old and baby brothers. They take a flight to Newcastle, spend two hours with Eddie, then make the journey back, an exhausting day of traveling and waiting with two young children. Their last flight home was delayed due to strikes. “We got home at half past two in the morning,” says Adele. “That’s crazy with little children, absolutely crazy.”
The disruption to family life has been deep. Eddie’s brother Alfie, 4, doesn’t understand. “He thinks Eddie lives in a castle”, explains Adele. “He thinks the doctors and nurses are his parents.”
Eddie was admitted to the hospital at 13 under the Mental Health Act after various placements in specialist schools, stints of full time care at home, and then a stay at a hospital in Northampton, didn’t work out.
Adele sees the problem as one of a lack of prevention. “For the intervention when they’re young, there’s just nothing. We went to so many different agencies and didn’t meet their criteria… You’re passed from pillar to post all the time.”
Receiving treatment in hospital under section is also trap that’s hard to leave: “It’s the system. Once their in, they have to tick so many boxes to get out that it just become a vicious circle. If the environment you’re in doesn’t help you get better, and if you’re not better you can’t leave, how does that work?”
“I want Eddie to be able to do the normal everyday things we take from granted.”
The petition, which Adele launched just a month ago after being urged to by friends on an online support forum, has given Eddie and the family new positivity – a way out of the painful rut. After launching it one evening, Adele was called the next day by ITV and the BBC, eventually appearing on the BBC Breakfast programme. Other parents have reached out to her, who have experienced similar problems.
She’s now waiting for the next round of meetings with agencies involved in Eddie’s care and with her MP, Charlotte Leslie. “No one cared before, but we’ve got people listening now, which is the main thing,” she says. Aiming for 100,000 signatures and a visit to parliament to speak to MPs about the south west’s lack of mental health provision to children, Adele is determined that no other family goes through what her’s has.
For Eddie, Adele is hoping that finally a bespoke placement can be arranged where Eddie receives the care he needs outside of hospital.
“[I want for Eddie] to be able to do the normal everyday things we take for granted – going to the shops, the park,” she says. “He likes the cinema, he likes to swim, all those things he hasn’t been able to do for three and a half years. He needs a lot of support, but it can be done.”
Click here to sign the petition.
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Just wicked. I can’t believe someone who has such an illness can’t see his family often.