Lack of Support For Vulnerable People.

The case of Gemma Hayter highlights a lack of social service care that I'm all too aware of, having battled and failed to get social services to accept some small responsibility to provide ongoing help for my son.

I sympathise with her bereaved family at the lack of care for vulnerable adults. Higher functioning autistics, amongst other disability groups are amongst the most vulnerable and most easily abused in society.

The problem is, the support system has a huge support gap that allows adults that appear to be self-supporting but naive and vulnerable to fall through. This reminds me very much of my dealings with social srvices over the years.

If the adult doesn't have a learning disability, they don't qualify for support. I was told by Oxford social Services that their limit was an IQ of 75. Below that they would provide LD support, above that they wouldn't.

The only resort then is to try  the mental health support team. But again in my case Oxford would only support people with a recognised mental health problem. So you get support if you were okay and then contracted some for of psychosis, but if you were born with your condition, you were exempt from support.

Even when I moved to the South Coast, things didn't change as the policy was the same here.

There is a huge number of adults that need support from social services but don't receive it. In the bad old days they may have been locked up in institutions, which was obviously wrong. But so is leaving them to be predated upon by the less scrupulous in society.

In line with my previous post about the state providing less, this is one instance where the state has gone too far in cutting services. In the past they would have paid for staff to run institutions to look after the vulnerable. These days "Care in the Community" means councils absolve themselves of responsibility and they receive no care at all.

I would hope that the vulnerable are a more deserving case for funding than Latvian Nose Flute Players. Maybe local authorities should sort out their priorities.