Through Parent Lens (#2)
Imagine learning something so horrific about your child that it doesn't bear thinking about, let alone dealing with.
Imagine strangers outside the home & family having control over your child to the point that they are seen as family by your child & you the enemy, the problem.
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Imagine being sleep-deprived night after night for months to a year because your child is reported missing daily or regularly, & you need to continue to go to work as normal & deal with the same repeat loop once you return home.
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Imagine having to function at the highest levels of alert at your most exhausted, physically & mentally.
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Imagine having to deal with your other children whilst the trauma of this madness breaks you every day.
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Imagine nobody seeing what you see, the risks that are increasing, & the injuries being dismissed as nothing.
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Imagine having to deal with the fact that the drugs internally secreted inside your child could burst at any minute & kill, or the fear that tonight will be the night he is fatally assaulted.
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Imagine having to deal with your child’s drug debt yourself because you cannot go to the Police & violent gangs at your front door demanding money ‘or else’.
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Imagine having to deal with safeguarders who only see a child who has made a lifestyle choice towards criminality, rather than a groomed, exploited at-risk child.
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Imagine having to flag Child Trafficking & Modern Slavery legislation to First Responders who have never heard of it or tell you it is not applicable.
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Imagine having to deal with the fact that your child is being sucked into radicalisation & those you report concerns to can't see what you see and deem it a conversion.
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Imagine safeguarders trying to find fault with you because they don't understand County Lines or grooming.
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Imagine nobody listening as you get louder & louder voicing your concerns & then being seen as a problem-parent for doing so.
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Imagine the imminent stabbing of your child which safeguarders don’t see as credible, & then a call to say “stabbed multiple times, on a life support machine, location unknown” & then telling your other children.
Imagine having to deal with planning your child's funeral because nobody listened.
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Imagine the trauma your child suffers from experiencing & witnessing ordeals most adults will never be exposed to, yet their mental state never gets a mention in any response.
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Safeguarders need to look at County Lines’ exploited young people through a human lens before a professional one. If this was your child, how would you want to be responded to?