The end of summer always brings a similar feeling – (re)awakening out of the hazy, dilated days of summer – it rolls around rhythmically like the cool shock of the pool after the sweaty sun lounger. This year the first day of September was particularly marked and was foreshadowed by more angst than the usual ‘return to school.’
September 1st was the date of the Safeguarding Adults Review (SAR) into Spencer’s death. This was to be carried out by Hertfordshire County Council, the municipal in which St Elizabeth’s is located. Usually, SARs are not conducted until all criminal investigations are completed, however, on this occasion a decision was taken that given the police had stopped investigating and have submitted their file to the Crown Prosecution Service, it could go ahead.
This was to be the first serious meeting pertaining to the events of 02/11/21 after a period of relative calm. For the last year or so the wheels of justice have been turning slowly in the background, we have had regular contact with the police and our lawyers, but each meeting has often brought the same news: now news yet. The point of a safeguarding adults review is for the local authority to establish what went wrong that morning with a view to establish ‘learning’. It would be the first time that we would meet those in charge of St. Elizabeth’s.
Over the summer the chair of the meeting had drawn up a list of questions for St. Elizabeth’s to answer and had sent them to us for our comments. My mum had forwarded them onto our lawyer who was, and still is, working on a pro bono basis. Despite being constantly inundated with cases she had replied with a comprehensively revised list of questions which were sent back to St. Elizabeth’s. Towards the end of August my mum and I received and email with an attachment titled ‘Spencer Lewallen Safeguarding Section 42 Review’.
My heart skipped a beat as I opened the document and quickly scrolled through the ensuing 21 pages of justifications for the failings which had led to Spencer’s tragic and, potentially preventable, death. In a second the floor fell away from me and all the feelings that had been so neatly folded away washed over me. I closed the document and put my phone down. After a few false starts mum and I pluck up the courage to sit down together and comb through the responses. It was a heart-breaking and infuriating process. We added a plethora of comments and fired it back across to Sophie with a note asking her to draw a thematic document out of our comments. The document Sophie prepared for us was a godsend, something we could wield into battle on the 1st, prepared with all the care and attention to detail we had come to expect from her.
From the first call we had with Sophie I was touched by her care and empathy but also her exemplary intellect and professionalism. It verges on banal, but I just kept thinking, again and again, in disbelief, that this was not something that she was doing as a one off, out of the kindness of her heart, but what she went to work every day to do.
I, like many people I am sure, have considered pursing law as a career, partly because it offers a clearly defined, linear path to follow. Though I had always been resistant to doing so as I felt, and still do to a degree, feel that it is a profession constrained by the letter of the law which is all too often stacked against the ideal of justice; being instead more attracted to (a potentially even more idealised) aspiration to change the system rather than to just sing from its hymn sheet.
We certainly need campaigners pulling in this direction but the importance of having people on your side who are within the system has become painfully clear to me. Advocating for reform is all well and good but such people can do nothing to help you when you really need it.
When your world has fallen apart, help cannot wait. It is true that the law is often not stacked in the favour of victims or the bereaved, but having someone in your corner, fighting with all their expertise, to squeeze out all the law’s potential is invaluable.
With a case like Spencer’s, the devil is in the details, and there is a lot of them. This makes it an incredibly lonely experience. Even those friends who have the most earnest intentions are unaware of many of the details which make what happened so traumatising. Not because they won’t understand, but because when they ask at the pub, ‘how are things with the case going?’ one cannot, and probably should not, embark on a half hour legalistic monologue about the niche acts of neglect, omission and organisational abuse which proceeded your brothers passing.
When I speak to Sophie however, and a handful of other professionals, it is such a relief to know that I don’t need to recount all these details. They are across all the facts, they are as angry as we are and crucially, they know what to do.
mountains of my life 