Health chiefs failed my brave girl

Following Mariam Al-Roubi’s article about her disabled brother Omar, who was put into an old people’s home at 26, I have an equally disturbing story regarding my daughter’s final weeks in a hospice.

When she was taken in, she was given only days to live. But to everyone’s amazement she kept going and, after three weeks, the hospice decided she wasn’t dying quickly enough and needed to be moved. I was anxious about where she could be moved to because she needed constant medical care and was in such agony that a journey in an ambulance would have been torture. But there seemed to be nowhere in the area that could take her as there was so little provision for young adults, as Mariam said in her article.

Then I was told that they had found her a place in an old people’s home. I refused to sign any paperwork.

Finally, after a couple more weeks of disagreements and much distress, she was deemed too ill to be moved and died a week later. This was four years ago, yet the horror of it remains with me. So yes, the health chiefs failed me too and certainly failed my beautiful, brave daughter.

Christine Eeley, Drayton, Oxfordshire