I found out earlier today that LB features in a school psychology course in Benidorm. Rosie’s mate, Molly, working with Oxford summer school students, was asked if she’d heard of ‘Laughing Boy from Oxford’. The class had been focusing on David Rosenhan’s ‘Being Sane in Insane Places‘ and drew on what happened to LB.

Rosenhan’s work was a cracking piece of research conducted over 40 years ago when he and a group of people feigned ‘hearing voices’ to gain admittance to psychiatric hospitals. Once admitted (all 12 of them were admitted to various hospitals in the US) they dropped the pretence of ‘symptoms’ and told staff they were no longer unwell. They were all eventually released (stays lasted between 7-52 days) with the label of schizophrenia ‘in remission’. As Rosenhan describes in the following brief clip, average contact with staff was 6.5 minutes a day, few people visited patients and the experience was one of dehumanisation. Psychiatric hospitals as storehouses for ‘problematic’ people .

Rosenhan could be describing STATT, the now closed unit that LB died in really. Described graphically in a subsequent CQC inspection a couple of months after LB died. Forty odd years after Rosenhan’s study.

[Fill in any words here, I’ve none.]

As a sort of aside, I started to dip into academic grief literature yesterday. After two years. Ignoring the crappy, intrusive, psychobabble nonsense that dictates how parents should feel and act after the death of a child/children, there’s interesting research around sense-making and purpose finding. When a death is sudden and unexpected, bereavement is seen as an assault on meaning making.

I’m not sure how to make sense of the Benidorm story. I find it extraordinary. I almost want to contact the teacher who introduced LB’s story into these young Spanish students lives and thank her/him. I’m shocked that professionals so far away seem to get what happened and understand the wider significance, given the craphole feet dragging, and worse, we continue to experience with the relevant public bodies here.

It also highlights the exceptional learning and teaching resourses #JusticeforLB has randomly generated. A collection of artwork, proposed legislation, film, text, photography, music and other materials, crowdsourced and freely available. This includes David Harling’s powerful and shaming animation about what happened to LB which always deserves another shout out.

I learned about Rosenhan as an undergraduate when LB was a tot. A newly diagnosed tot who bounced around on his toes like Tigger. Before he was prescribed with heavy shoes. To stop him bouncing.

In a week in which the Justice Shed was rocked by the police decision not to put a case to the Crown Prosecution Service, there were some brighter moments. Internationally. Katherine Runswick Cole and Dan Goodley spent a chunk of last week flying the LB flag in Australia. They were at the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Sydney for various activities including a symposium on institutional disablism and workshop about the value of self-advocacy.

Katherine then went on to New Zealand to meet with The Family Network and University of Otago, School of Education, where she shared the platform with Paul Gibson, the New Zealand Disability Rights Commissioner (pictured third from left below). And continued the tradition of LB flag flying brilliantly. Seriously. Did anyone imagine the symbolism, reach and resilience of this wondrous piece of cloth?

The international spread of #JusticeforLB continues next week as Rich and I head for the Society for the Study of Social Problems annual conference in Chicago. A resolution proposed by Mark Sherry about LB’s death was agreed at last years conference. As Mark wrote to me at the time:

Sara, there were hundreds of people involved in motion. It went to a Directors (or Chairs) meeting, before it went to the general assembly. There were some minor ammendments, and people wanted elaboration, but it eventually passed unanimously. I was very moved, I left that session close to tears. There are good people in the world. I will scan it and send the entire resolution to you. But the massive outcome is this: “Be it further resolved that SSSP add a special session at our next conference in honor of Connor Sparrowhawk. The session will ensure that the issue continues to be discussed into the following year, with scholars examining the social problem further”.

And it is. Next Friday morning.

Among the horror, incredulity, uncertainty and and intense relentlessness of trying to gain justice and accountability from publicly accountable bodies in England, so many people, groups and organisations get it so blinking right.

Solidarity. As simple as.

Still a bit baffled by the Tory template [copy below] being pinged out by MPs in response to requests from constituents to support the #LBBill. Some people see this as a sign that the campaign is weighty and demands a response. That it’s referencing the Green Paper, keeping it out there. Yep, I can see that. I also find it pretty offensive to see cut and paste jobbies stating how “deeply saddened” MPs are by LB’s death.

“No you ain’t”, I want to snarl at them. “If you were you wouldn’t blooming well template it…”

Maybe there are bereavement templates in Tory HQ. Who knows. Maybe there’s a whole filing cabinet of templates. One for every occasion. Bit like LB used to say he had a girlfriend for every occasion; camping and funerals.

I’m interested in who produced the template and on whose say. It’s a masterpiece in saying nothing, while saying so much.

I was greatly saddened to learn about the case of Connor Sparrowhawk. I understand that past-mortem findings have shown that that he died as a result of drowning, likely to have been caused by an epileptic seizure.

I am deeply sorry that Connor died whilst in the care of Southern Health NHS Trust who I understand have acknowledged that they failed to undertake the necessary actions required to keep him safe. I think it is quite right that the hospital has now apologised unreservedly to Connor’s family.

I read the proposed Private Member Bill with great interest. I think it is an important contribution to the ongoing debate about how we best improve care for people with learning disabilities. You may be interested to know that during the last Parliament, the Department of Health held a consultation called ‘No voice unheard, no right ignored’ which looked into precisely this issue. In particular it included a section called ‘My right to be independent, to be part of a community and to live in a home I have chosen’.

I hope this is an area that the newly elected Government will choose to examine carefully before deciding how best to support and care for patients.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.

It’s been about 8 months now since the idea for the #LBBill was hatched. Sparked by a tweet by Mark Neary. Acted on with a remarkable combination of expertise, cheek, experience, knowledge, rage, good cheer, humour, collectivity and common sense. What could have been a throwaway comment became something more substantial. Talk turned to action. And gained layers of substance through a chaotically (un)organised campaign of crowd sourced feedback.

Details were thrashed through with meticulous attention by people, disabled people’s organisations, self advocates, carers, professionals and others. This collective focus enabled a remarkable measure of sense to be brought to version 2. Groan dimensions accompanying much legislation/social policy erased by strong statements by those who know.

On June 4th, the ballot will be held to select MPs who will have the opportunity to apply for a Private Members Bill (PMB). We really need to encourage all MPs to get on board with the Bill and, if they’re selected high up in the ballot, lobby the socks off them.

I don’t know much about PMBs. I do know that the #LBBill is the outcome of remarkable endeavour, commitment, love and determination. I can’t imagine there are many better prepared bills in terms of whatever you want to call public involvement/engagement/co-production or just getting on with it, together. Or bills that are such a remarkable expression of joy and celebration of lives too often dismissed and ignored.

I’d champion it if I was an MP. Without hesitation.