Our Stolen children to Atus  PRIVATE mental health HOSPITALS. UNDER THR MENTAL HEALTH ACT SECTION 3. THEIR CRIME? BEING AUTISTIC AND OR INTELECTUAL DISABILITY’s. PLEASE HELP ME AND  THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES ACROSS THE COUNTRY TO END THIS BARBARIC VIOLENCE AND ATTITUDE TO OUR CHILDREN AND ADULTS WITH AUTISM AND LD. PRISONERS HAVE MORE RIGHTS THEN MY CHILD.

MY CHILD DID NOT COMMIT A CRIME.

YET HE WAS LOCKED UP FOR MANY YEARS WITHOUT AN ENDING SENTENCE.

DO NOT LET THIS  HAPPEN TO ANYONE ELSE. 

THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT IS OLD DATED AND VICTORIAN. WE CALLING ON THE PRIME MINISTER RUSHI SUNAK TO END THE TORTURE OF AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

SET THEM FREE CHANGE  THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT GIVE THEM A HOME AND THEIR FAMILY BACK. #TimeToActNow #Givethemtheirhumanrights. #ArightToFamilyLife #StopTheHumanRigtsAbuseOfAutisticLdPeople 

The government  once again failed to include the Mental Health Bill in this year's King's Speech on 7/11/23 the prime minister had the opportunity to follow through about what ex prime minister Theresa May asked sir Simon wessely  to do a review of the mental Health Act, the background on the MHA is very dated and Victorian, There was a consultation with various charity organisations and campaigners and some members of the public who had an interest on the subject ,I was invited to give my opinion and thoughts as a mother of a survivor of ATUs assessment treatment units , in other words mental health hospitals, the consultation was then determined that MHA was dated and needed changes and so a bill was drafted and 
chaired by Professor 
Sir Simon Wessely Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983, it was emphasised that MHA needed addressing and the numerous numbers  of people   With Autism and intellectual disabilities detained under the Mental Health Act.
The recommendations were made to reform the MHA and improve patient rights as well as family rights, we also touched the human rights of people and their families, and the devastating consequences of autistic and intellectual disabilities being sectioned and locked up like criminals, the torture is unbelievable the draconian system is something out of a dickens book,one o those autistic people was my beautiful son Stephen.
I feel very strongly about this incredibly important subject because I know only to well what’s it like locking a severely autistic person in a mental institution does for them. The devastating consequences and our mental health as well, when you see what’s being done to your child,I was in turmoil with my mental health because what I was seeing happening to my beautiful boy, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. When you don’t recognise your child for what he was and see him covered in head wounds bruises and broken bones it was a case of getting angry and showing at people what have you done to my child or just go home broken hearted. Imagine someone hurting your child when you are the parent looking after him and he goes to school in that state what will the authorities do? To right you need to be accountable for that.
But not if you are under 
The Mental Health Act, it does not protect my son or any other person, from the over medication upwards of 8 different antipsychotic drugs plus Depo injections and restraint with 5/6 big man holding my son face down on a dirty floor. And seclusion as well as locked in a room without even a toilet. 
Making him sleep on the floor. 
But that’s not all the abuse he got.
He was viciously and physically attacked where he sustained severe injuries. 
Broken bones. Shoe prints in he’s private body parts, and a severe broken collarbone. 
So with that said I feel very qualified to campaign against the MHA  As it stands for people with autism and intellectual disabilities. It’s outdated and misleading families when we’re told your child is going for help in to a mental health hostel the ATUs don’t worry it’s just a name it’s actually an assessment (treatment) unit, funny that word treatment right? Treatment that my son and thousands of others don’t need. You can’t treat autism. 
The MHA as it stands gives social services, and health professionals to section an autistic or LD person to be sectioned under the mental health act S3, if that person is in crises or the family are in crises exhausted without any help, you then expect help in form of help with a support worker at home, BUT AS MY EXPERIENCE GOES BY that’s not the help they come up with. It’s so much easier to section a person because as the saying goes

OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND. 

NOT TO MENTION ITS A MUCH CHEAPER OPTION FOR THE LOCAL AUTHORITY. THE MONEY WONT COME FROM THEM. 

The moment a person is sectioned on S3 it can take up to 5 years to get that person free. 
Now there are families and campaigners that do not agree that MHA should be changed, FOR AUTISTIC PEOPLE I am not calling for it to be scrapped, that would be ludicrous, I am calling for the MHA to be changed to suit those that do not fail under the mental illness, my understanding is that there’s a small percentage of autistic people who do have a diagnosis of schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder, and thus they will need that mental health care provider.
if they indeed need mental health care and be sectioned because they may be a danger to themselves or others then they need that help. Do they though need to be locked up for years? No I don’t believe they do. 

Recently together with Mancap and NAS i went to Downing st to bring a petition and a letter from me to the prime minister.

See links and photos. 
The purpose was so that we appealed to the prime minister to make the MHA Bill a priority and to be used in the kings speech on the 7 of November unfortunately, the priory for the prime minister was not the MHA Reform  Bill, and as a mother who has seen the the horrendous maltreatment of my child and friends children, I can’t but feel this was a tremendous slap on my child my friends children,us as parents and charity’s alike who have campaigned for many years to make our children’s and family lives better.
I feel strongly that the government don’t care about our autism and learning disability community. 
It feels that they see them as second class citizens. 
On my letter to the prime minister I appealed to him as a father what would he do if it was him? 
The government and NHS,but really in truth is The British tax payer spending millions of pounds a year paying a cash cow that are private mental health care hospitals for keeping my child and currently 2thousand 45 autistic LD people (in fact the figure might be bigger since I know in last 5 weeks there’s been a few people who were either readmitted or new ones)so 2thousand 45 might just be an estimate, anyway you the tax payer are paying for institutional abuse, and more. Let’s take a look at how an autistic person day goes locked up, first thing in the money they are given a huge cocktail of antipsychotic drugs for a mental illness they do not have, same at lunch time and dinner time, and they do nothing else meaningful no education no walks to the park or an outdoor activity, all that happens is you either sleep all day due to the heavy medication or your anxiety gets worse, and that  so called treatment should be changed to mistreatment, They  go in happy go people who loved the outdoors who couldn’t sit still at home they always needed to be kept occupied to then being locked up and then having the worse meltdown possible to nearly dying of self induced injuries why? meanwhile around the country there are hundreds of people who can’t access dementia drugs.
But wait for it on those godforsaken institutions whose weekly charges various from £3,800 to £14,600, plus the nhs free prescriptions of those antipsychotic drugs that my son who is not mentally ill gets, and the other two thousand people all getting those drugs all at a high cost as well as the emotional high cost.
That cost goes up as they stay locked up for many years. 
take a prison for instance,a person is sent to prison they have a sentence,at the end of that sentence they go home, in fact mostly come out with an overage of 18 months for good behaviour,our children with autism LD meanwhile who don’t understand the meaning of being a criminal or doing anything remotely related to a crime ends up locked up in torture chambers go figure. 
Then there’s the worse cases so many young people who can’t access a mental health facility or care, and those who do go in and then they are discharged when they should not, within hours of that discharge sadly they take their own lives. Why? Because those hospitals deemed that that person did not need to be there, yet they keep the ones who don’t. 

Many of you have heard of the number of young people who were locked up took their lives in those institutions, because they were under section. 
The millions spent on those private MHA hospitals could have been used to help families in crises could have been used in the local community’s. 
When a family are in crises Your child needs help the social services turns you down at all costs, if you are unlike with social services you have no option but to seek legal action, and that’s the last thing parents want to do, but sometimes it’s the only way to get help, so why spend those millions every year if you know it makes more sense and cheaper to keep a family together?
I will end this here with this thoughts to the prime minister, Mr Sunak do you know aside from the financial cost to the British tax payer what other cost there is when your child comes out of those awful institutions?  Pain and trauma. Sadness. Unhappiness. Depression. And all of what my child wants is he’s mother and to go home to he’s mother and family because almost 7 years of institutional care and horrible humans who kept him locked up he wants he’s mothers love.
He’s family nest that he knows it’s he’s protection and he is safe.
Because of those years on institutions, my son still not where he belongs with he’s mother that he begs to go to every day, he wants to go home no one is till this day listening, My son’s trauma is more then what you will never understand because of what this so called mental health act did to my child. 
So I am asking you sir do the right thing, Stop the human rights abuses of autistic and LD people, give them back their freedom and their families. 
Keep people be with their families don’t take them way from us.
Help US  But don’t damage our children under the mental health act. 

With respect. 
Sincerely 
Leo Andrade. 
Mother of Stephen a survivor of the mental health act.