Mother refused extra social care: ‘I want to die’

A mother who claims she asked social services to put her disabled child into care after being refused extra support posted an Internet message reading: “I want to die,” Channel 4 News has learned.

Desperate Riven Vincent, whose six-year-old daughter Celyn is blind and suffers from severe quadriplegic cerebral palsy and epilepsy, posted the message on the popular Mumsnet forum yesterday and was soon deluged with thousands of messages of concern and support.

Justine Roberts, co-founder and CEO of Mumsnet said she has spoken to Mrs Vincent today, and told Channel 4 News: “She’s fine – it was very emotional time yesterday, obviously. But OK today.”

Earlier, Mrs Vincent, from Bristol, wrote: “Have asked social services to take dear daughter into care…They have refused extra respite. I can’t cope.”
Mother refused extra social care: ‘I want to die’

Mrs Vincent, who has three other children, cares full-time for her daughter but feels that she can no longer manage with six hours of respite care per week.

She then approached South Gloucestershire social services asking for more hours, but her request was turned down yesterday.

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the family’s Bristol home in March last year, just before the General Election, and promised Mrs Vincent to write to the her local primary care trust to ask that incontinence nappies should be distributed according to need, and not rationed to four a day.

Today, a Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister is very concerned at what he’s heard. He’s writing to Riven Vincent and in conjunction he’s also asked her local MP for all the details of the case urgently.

“He’s also asking the MP to speak to the local council to make sure that she’s receiving all that she’s entitled to.”

Channel 4 News has also learned that Mrs Vincent from Bristol has cystic fibrosis.

She told the Guardian newspaper last night: “It will be devastating for me as a mother. I want her here, with her family,” she said.

“I never imagined I would get to this point. I don’t want her in a residential care home – it would destroy me. But without extra help, I find it hard to see how we can meet her needs at home.”

A spokesman for Scope, the UK’s leading cerebral palsy charity, said “This is obviously very concerning. We are asking that the Government do not make decisions on respite care in isolation and rather looks at the bigger, longer term picture. If Mrs Vincent’s child is taken into care, it would cost the Government a lot more than it would to provide extra respite hours.”

In the Guardian article, Mrs Vincent said that it would cost the local authority between £2,000 and £3,000 a week to look after Celyn in a home, compared to £15 a hour for a carer to help at their own home.