Authors Electric

  Plaid Cymru leader Liz Saville Roberts struggled  to hold back her tears at Prime Ministers Questions 5.1.2022 when she spoke of her fear that her mother's dementia diagnosis  would also mean separation from her family when she was moved into a care home. Now Liz is one of four MPs ready to introduce legislation  to ensure we all have the right to maintain contact with a family carer wherever we are in the health and care system Today, Monday May 8 th is National Help-Out day -- which may well mean that by tomorrow, when this blogpost is published (March 9th 2023), everyone’s impulses to benevolence will be as exhausted as the final damp squib from a village playing-field party. So maybe I’ll pitch this request as enlightened self-interest... If you have a stroke today, or a traumatic brain injury, if you develop a cognitive disability (such as a dementia) or any one of the array of incurable illnesses which will make you progressively less and less able to fe...

In the Thatcher room at Portcullis House, Westminster at a cross party meeting of MPs lobbying for a new right. This lovely young woman is 27  yet her disabilities are such that she is  at the level of a toddler. Should she be restricted to interaction  with her mother behind a perspex screen?   In fact, it’s such an old and basic human need that it’s astounding that it must be lobbied for. We are asking for the legal right for patients, residents or service users in the health and care system to maintain their closest personal relationships and be supported, in time of need, by someone who loves them.  And it's not 'them' - it could just as easily be me, or you. Imagine that you're living with some disability, impairment or trauma which means you can’t manage the system for yourself. You need your cognitive guide-dog, your back-up brain - your spouse, partner, dearest friend, child, parent, sibling. The person who you have chosen and you trust. The perso...