Love on the NHS by Matthew Formby Page B

been deleted. Who then can you trust? If a youngster has no one to turn to in a place that is corrupt is it any wonder that they truant from school? For truancy is a very common problem indeed among children in care. So many care leavers, when the legal requirement to keep them there expires, become homeless or end up in prison. Surely that is evidence that there is not so much care in the care system in reality. Luke did not understand why all that money and effort was spent on putting someone in care - when far more easily, someone could pay to train and pay a person to be a live-in support worker in the family home. That way the child could stay with its family. It could maintain its natural connections and with intense one-to-one support for the parents, it could help the family become functional and to learn to handle difficult situations constructively.
    Luke also thought it was a problem that authorities vacillated between two extremes: not interacting with a problem family at all and taking the drastic decision to take away their children. When children go into trouble with the police, why not make the parents attend a police station for twenty four hours? It would soon make them tired of having misbehaving kids. If they could somehow be taught the consequences of bad parenting sooner, it would not lead to so many problems down the line. Once children became accustomed to lax parents, they would push the boundaries to sometimes unacceptable levels.
     
    The first few years after the move to Furchurch his parents, Luke and Bridget had an annual holiday. It was always taken at the lush and windswept Scottish isle of Dunbae. Located a mile-or-so out to sea from the mainland town of Nargs, it was a peaceful island with only one little town. It was during his stays there that Luke gradually realized he could not handle cold weather. He already found the Duldrum climate too adverse (which was cooler than Hardock's and Woecaster's) but in Scotland it was whole another dimension. Summer holidays they may have been but the skies were often black or grey and wild winds would blow from the Kintyre peninsula. In the evenings - and sometimes even the days - sweatshirts and coats were worn. It was quite uncomfortable because the isle had many steep hills and long walks between the caravan site and shops. Despite the biting climate, they all got hot and sweaty in so many layers.
    As well as the summer holidays, Luke visited his sister Bridget in Edinburgh. She had lived in a few apartments in that city since studying at the university. Funnily enough, none of them had a good central heating system. It was a peculiar feature of Scotland! It was the closest to freezing in the United Kingdom yet had so many homes that would not heat up well. The worst part was getting up in the morning, snuggled in a few blankets - Luke would be reluctant to leave his bed. A shower was an ordeal and a half. He would dance and sing to keep his motivation, his body trembling. It made sense to Luke now, why Scotland had a lower life expectancy than other areas of the United Kingdom. It was obvious people in harsh conditions would eat more unhealthily and drink more alcohol - it kept warm. Their high consumption of drugs was their escape. Unless a person is very hardy as was Luke's sister, Bridget, those conditions would take their toll on you.
    Scotland was not without its charms. In Philport, the town on the isle of Dunbae, the local fish-and-chip takeaway sold deep fried pizzas. Luke had tasted them nowhere else - they were breathtaking. In Nargs on the mainland some the locals adorned viking helmets at the weekends and went berserk with joy and drunkenness. Though Luke enjoyed some of the holidays - who would not be thrilled to share a four-seater bike with their family? - it was not the charmed youth he yearned for.
    The journey to Dunbae and back was excruciating. Everyone would be under pressure to be happy, arguments would break out. On roundabouts