Imagining Home

Tianze Ni has been detained in ATUs since May 2014. Here is his mother’s story of that time:

My 18 year old son Tianze has autism, a learning disability and sometimes behaviour issues.

We used to live happily in Fife, Scotland with Tianze, but in May 2014 when Tianze was 16 years old he was moved to a hospital in Middlesbrough North Yorkshire, over 200 miles away from home, to have an assessment. It was only supposed to be for maximum 6 week assessment.

The professionals told us that in order to carry out this short term assessment, Tianze needs to be sectioned. However, two years later, Tianze is still there and we still don’t have his discharge plan yet.  We have followed Tianze to  Middlesbrough by selling our house in Scotland. Tianze has developed self harming behaviour in hospital. Tianze has developed bedsores in hospital ,Tianze has been subject to prone restraint regularly in hospital. Since May 2014, Tianze has been transferred from Scotland to Middlesbrough, from Middlesbrough to Prudhoe and from Prudhoe to Morpeth. Tianze has lots of injury marks during his two years in in-patient services which never happened at home. He has lost weight in his two years hospital.

Tianze attended a residential school before hospital. The school was 1 hour away from our home and he came back home every weekend and for the school holidays . After breaks in his routine, he had a meltdown in his residential school in March 2014 and he was transferred to a day pupil at the school. His routine quickly broke down. We didn’t have any support workers at home to support us after the school placement broke down.

During the Easter holidays in 2014, Tianze had no respite in place. Tianze feels sometimes he needs to go somewhere for respite and often ended up in A&E. The hospital referred him to a mental health hospital in Fife in April 2014, but he was allowed to return home on leave. On 29th April 2014, a mental health tribunal gave our son  a  CTO (Compulsory Treatment Order). Then he was formally detained in the hospital in Fife. The hospital didn’t have the capacity to assess Tianze, so they decided to move him to England. I thought the CTO was part of a plan to help him get better and for us to receive better support, but what I didn’t expect was that he would actually become worse. The only strategies in Fife were to lock him up and detain him without any treatment. It is inhuman treatment .

Tianze was detained in the mental health hospital in Fife Scotland from 29^th April till 6^th of May of 2014 and then they transferred him into a general low secure mental health hospital in Middlesbrough on 6^th of May 2014.

In August 2014 the  doctor in the Middlesbrough hospital declared that Tianze’s assessment had finished and said he needs a placement so that my son can be discharged . but there was no residential placement in Scotland ready for him at that time. Tianze‘s old residential school was rejected by LA as unsuitable, even though the school were prepared to take Tianze back. So, after finishing the assessment in August 2014, he remained stuck in the mental health hospital in Middlesbrough as there was nowhere for him to be discharged to. The hospital is not geared towards autism, so problems just got worse. In first instance, he should never have gone there.

Every week we had to travel  400 miles round trip to see Tianze. It is 12-14 hours total journey for a two hour supervised visit. Sometimes if he had been slightly agitated we would arrive to find our visit had been cancelled.

Tianze is highly homesick and misses home so much. He has written a song called “Back Home” that he sings everyday to me.

Tianze wakes up each day at 4 AM and crosses one day off from his calendar and is counting the days back home daily. He draws lots of pictures of his home but doesn’t like his personal belongings left at the hospital. That is not easy for a child to do daily for a year now !! What inhuman treatment we receive in this so called civilized country!

Since he has been away from home he has started self harming behaviour. Currently he has injury marks on both arms while before hospital there was no injury marks on his body. We discovered some bedsores in March- April 2015 due to him sleeping on the hospital floor for long periods of time! What a shock, this happened to a young boy full of energy!

Tianze also has been discovered with injury marks caused by restraint actions. We called in the Safeguarding team in 2015.

Since Tianze is in England, we aren’t entitled to any legal aid to receive any legal help in Scotland. We have contacted both Mencap and the Care Minister who both said they can’t help us because we lived in Scotland . In order to be closer to Tianze and reduce the legal confusion we made the decision to move house to Middlesbrough from Scotland. We sold our house and temporarily rented a house in Middlesbrough for six months. We have now purchased a house there.

Before Christmas 2014, Tianze was allowed home leave with us every weekend. We would go to the public parks, museums, shopping and beaches. That stopped with the move to the new hospital who now refuse any home leave at all. Tianze misses his home so much. He was so upset to see other patients can have home leave but he can’t despite the fact that we have moved home to within 5 minutes drive from the hospital.

Eventually, all the professionals decided that Tianze needed to move into another hospital in Prudhoe Northumberland which has a learning disabilities input. The professionals said that this would be short term for further more appropriate assessment and then he will be discharged with a community care package. We visited the hospital before. They showed us a music therapy room with piano and drums which we knew our son would enjoy as music is very important to him. We were shown a kitchen to allow patients to practice life skills and a big sports hall and one workshop for patients to do some handicraft. We felt happy about these facilities inside the hospital and saw this as a sign of progress. Although I still felt unhappy that it was another hospital and not a return home, we in the family are given no choice and have to agree to another move.

After transferring to the hospital in Prudhoe, Improving Lives Team came to review Tianze’s treatment and make a plan for the future. After review they recommended Tianze should be discharged back home around his 18^th birthday time . They also recommended that the hospital needs to reduce IM and prone restraints in a few weeks time. I felt happy about this recommendation from the Improving lives Team and feel we had hope.

But soon it turned into nightmare again …

Before the CPA in September 2015 the professionals had a meeting and all agreed that the community care package isn’t ready now and funding is still in dispute with Scotland. Then in the CPA in September 2015 The Responsible Clinician said Tianze needs another adult hospital since he needs IM and prone restraint often and a community placement wouldn’t be appropriate whilst this need was still high. In converse of the recommendation of reducing prone restraint, the hospital has significantly increased prone restraint to him as a regular practice and we constantly view Tianze being held down on floor. Tianze has increased injury marks to his body and these injuries were caused either from prone restraint itself or his increased self harming behaviour.  We also constantly seeing them prone restraint Tianze in front of us during our visit time. After they put Tianze onto the floor they order us to leave like a fire happened and without allowing us to take our personal belongs . We feel both Tianze and us are treated like animals to be driven away and feel bullied

Three times safeguarding alerts have been raised in 7 months stay in this hospital in Prudhoe. Once from the national clinical director of learning disabilities and twice from the charity – Challenging Behaviour Foundation.

After ILT recommended him home with support, we did all our new house adaptations. We have built a sensory room in our home. We have built a quiet house for Tianze when he needs space. We have put TV and lamps all protected .We have built a separate wall between the kitchen and the dinning room. We didn’t receive any funding support from any public organization or charity organization. We relied on our own fundraising.

As I am Tianze’s nearest relative I asked for him to be discharged. The doctor initially said it will give me a black mark in my history, but after advice from their trust solicitor he agreed that I can ask for discharge as nearest relative . But we have failed at the tribunal since the doctor reported there had been too many incidents and he is a risk to himself and to others. Nobody considers why he has increased incidents ? Why he has deteriorated since being in hospital.

After this failed tribunal in early January 2016 the professionals have decided to transfer Tianze to an adult hospital in Morpeth which is 65 miles from our new home in Middlesbrough. The CTR didn’t interview our son but recommended another year before starting a transition back into the community.

On 27^th of January 2016 Tianze was transferred to the 4th adult hospital . The good news is that this hospital has a specialist autism unit and a better understanding of autism. Since Tianze has been at this hospital his incidents have reduced.

The Government promised people with autism would be given the best possible care in their communities. Instead Tianze has been severely let down by the institutions who are supposed to be helping us and he needs to be back with his family where he belongs.

We are a Chinese family, our culture is a very family oriented culture. Tianze likes to eat home cooked Chinese dinner, but suddenly he was given western hospital food which made him lose significant weight. Due to being highly homesick and not being allowed any home leave he has developed self harming behaviour significantly and enhanced biting behaviour.

Tianze has written that he only can imagine his freedom. He has said that he can only imagine his home. So sad! What crime has he committed?

Please sign and share Tianze’s petition to bring him home. Thank you.