Justice for Lauren - Autism & mental health - STOP FAILING OUR MOST VULNERABLE #lollyslaw

Justice for Lauren - Autism & mental health - STOP FAILING OUR MOST VULNERABLE #lollyslaw

Started
14 March 2022
Signatures: 224,504Next Goal: 300,000
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Why this petition matters

Started by Lindsey Bridges

My beautiful, brave little Lauren, an autistic young girl, massively failed the mental health system, passed away on Thursday night 24th February after her heart stopped beating for well over an hour.

Right now over 2000 people with a Learning Disability and/or Autism remain locked in inpatient units. Often far from family and at an increased risk of abuse. Lauren was one of these people. Together we have been fighting for the correct care and treatment package so I could bring my daughter back to the community. After being sent to a hospital 6 hours away from our home back in June last year, Laurens mental health declined rapidly. She suffered terribly from separation anxiety and hated being so far away from me. It broke her and our little family. She wasn’t just my daughter, she was my best friend.

Lauren, a straight A student who aspired to be a doctor or a paediatric nurse, has gone to join her baby brother Alfie in Heaven but she leaves behind her other brother Bobby, her Grandparents, her dad, James, uncles and aunties, godparents, special friends, girlfriend and her very special cousins. Her beautiful smile, kind heart and pure courage and strength touched the hearts of everyone who met her. 

In memory of my daughter Lauren, I’m proposing a law that will make a huge difference to a lot of young people and adults that not only remain detained under the mental health act but to those who are also at risk of being hospitalised.

I want to make sure that no family has to go through what we have experienced. The Government must enact Lolly’s Law - a new law to protect vulnerable people from experiencing what happened to Lauren.

Lolly’s Law needs to include the following:

- A mandate to retrain ALL psychiatric professionals and support staff so that there is an understanding and acceptance of girls/women on the spectrum. This will include a rapid reassessment of all those diagnosed with personality disorders to assess whether they were misdiagnosed and are actually Autistic.
 
- Specialist suicide prevention and self harm teams for vulnerable young people and autistics to be available per provider.

- All en-suite doors, within any psychiatric setting, need to be replaced with anti-ligature doors.

Lauren was left alone, far from home, with no therapy and no therapeutic activities, in an environment that was causing more harm than good. I believe if my proposals were already in place, my daughter would still be alive.

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Signatures: 224,504Next Goal: 300,000
Support now
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