PARENTS and families of disabled children in Bow in East London are fighting back against the closure of the Bangladeshi Parents Advice (BPA) Service which they rely on.
Campaign leader Aysha Begum told News Line: ‘We will fight until the end and we will not give up, like I have been saying since the beginning of our struggle.
‘Following our demonstration which was more than 100-strong we have forced the Associate Director of Bart’s Hospital Trust, Fiona Wheeler to meet with us.
‘We demand our BPA service is re-instated! We held a meeting last Wednesday, they said that the transition to closure had begun, but that they are going to now freeze that transition until they go back and sit with Bart’s Health Trust and the Clinical Commission Group (CCG). They promised us that they would give us the outcome of that meeting within days and not weeks.
‘However, this has not happened. Parents have informed me that they are being visited by the Bangladeshi Parents Advice Service staff at their home with a view to closing down their case.
‘Parents are phoning the BPA office to access the service and they are being told that the entire service has to be closed down by February 15.
‘We will never give up, no way, not until our demands our met, we are not going to stay quiet!’
Aleya Farouque added: ‘They must not cut or close our BPA services. This service is beneficial to us parents and it must remain open. All the parents who use the service have children with disabilities. The service is very good for emotional support and counselling.’
Faruk Miah said: ‘When we organised a peaceful demonstration outside Bart’s Hospital Trust executive Fiona Wheeler’s office, the management called the police on us.
‘We had disabled children with us, blind carers and families, they should not have treated us like this.
‘One of the representatives of the Trust came downstairs and said that he could arrange a meeting for us.
‘They left us waiting outside in the cold weather with children for almost two hours. We were just waiting for an answer from him. They thought that we would just go away, but we did not.
‘The police tried to make us stop the demonstration but we refused.
‘They are cutting the NHS at hospitals everywhere. When you go to Accident and Emergency, you have to wait four or five hours to be seen.
‘If they close down more A&Es it is going to get worse. People will die because they are waiting too long. Accident and Emergency means being seen quickly. That is what an emergency is, it is not waiting for five hours!’
