Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Perpetua is thirty-nine, she lives in Nottingham, and everybody tells her she is amazing. Her son Barnaby is seven. He has a learning disability and complex physical needs. Here is what she did last Tuesday. Up at half five. Ninety minutes of morning routine. The taxi that took four months and two appeals to arrange. Then two hours on the telephone: the wheelchair waiting list, a benefits office about a form she has submitted twice, the school about an incident. Then an hour on the tribunal bundle, which is four hundred pages, which she assembled herself, because she cannot afford a solicitor. There is a tribunal in April. It is about whether the local authority will provide what an occupational therapist employed by the same local authority has.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
