Stacie Lewis

By Stacey Lewis, Guardian.co.uk – A year and a half ago, my daughter, May, was born severely brain damaged. After a healthy pregnancy, her injuries sent me into a paralysis of fear.

Staff at the hospital reassured us. When we left the special care ward, there would be a team of professionals, equipment, funding and respite care. We would not be alone.

A few months later, our local council, Lambeth, quietly prepared for the announcement that its budgets were about to be slashed. They began by cutting a programme that had paid for my daughter to receive one-on-one care 15 hours a week. It also paid for a special chair for her so that she can eat and play safely.

When I learned that Riven Vincent had lost her fight for additional support from social services, I felt sick with the familiarity of it. I want to say I can’t imagine the horror she has been through, but I can. Even more nightmarishly, I’m ashamed to admit that her decision – to give up a beloved child to care – is one that has crossed my mind.

Despite his own intimate knowledge of the tragedy of disability, David Cameron has pushed through budget cuts that will devastate families across the country. The Conservative-led coalition government vowed not to cut funding to the NHS, but it did not ring-fence money to the disabled. My daughter’s care relies heavily on services outside the NHS; without them, we will be destitute. 

The new political climate is going to hurt families like mine deeply. The recession is an easy excuse for the government to cut funding for the most vulnerable children in the country while pretending, as Nick Clegg did when he announced the budget, that the government would seek to “protect children and everything that benefits children”.

When a spokeswoman for Cameron called Vincent’s story a “local issue” I found it deeply offensive. Such a statement is deceptive in the extreme. The government’s budget cuts will mean the end of services for vulnerable families across the country, in every council.

But the government has no fears that we will mobilise like students did recently. We could bang on 10 Downing Street’s door, but our children cannot eat or sit without support, and I’m afraid my immediate duty is with my daughter. If only we were a mobilised forced of young people with the time and means to march on parliament, perhaps we would receive the same attention.

The more the government brushes this aside as a “local” issue, the less the media and the country will consider it “their” issue as well.

One day, my husband and I will no longer be alive. With our teacher’s pensions, we will not leave May independently wealthy. The so-called “local” services we use may seem insignificant now but, in the long-term, they may provide our daughter with the skills to live independently. If she is able to live independently, those insignificant services may save her from becoming a financial burden to the country for the rest of her life.

Do not be fooled. Not all cuts will benefit society. Cut funding today and it will cost tomorrow.

Today, in hospitals across the country, children will be born with the same devastating injuries as my daughter. What kind of reassurances will the hospital staff be able to offer their grieving parents?

Stacie Lewis is a writer and teacher who lives in London. She writes about her daughter on her blog Mama Lewis and the Amazing Adventures of the Half-Brained Baby