to all GN's living in France 4 year old boy missing

I am still at a loss to understand what people think the hospital should have done differently when the child went missing. A five year old, within a week of major brain surgery, disappears without the hospital knowing where they have gone and whether the parents have the necessary equipment to look after him. Surely they had no alternative but to call the police? Surely the police had no alternative but to try and find the family, within the legal means at their disposal?
If he had come to any harm then I have no doubt the hospital and the police would be under attack for not having done anything.
However desperate the family felt, I cannot see how a 1000 mile drive with a very sick child to go and sell a property can be construed as the right thing to do.

Irrespective of the rights or wrongs of what the parents have been accused of this poor boy should not be denied contact with his family and neither should the parents be denied contact with their son. He must feel so frightened and alone without them. Commonsense must prevail to let them be together. The treatment and other issues can still be dealt with.

There was a social worker on TV this morning (not connected to the case) who said that the authorities would not keep the parents away from the child without good reason. She agreed that it seems to have been handled terribly badly and that the child should be with his parents. She also said that, from experience, when the whole truth comes out there will be more to this than meets the eye - that they would not imprison the parents for no reason. We will see. It is a sad and sorry story.

Thank you penguin that just about sums it up. I have come across this type of arrogance myself from a minority of hospital staff.

I had my oldest son at 17, a terrible pergnancy, sick all the time and sedated on valium for 4 months.
When he was born, 9 pounds 5 ounces, i was 6 stone!!!!!!!
he seemed fine but was just sleepy, and grew up that way, just quiet and biddable and happy.
At the age of 7 he was assessed by a doctor from the school authorities. we were told he had major brain damage, no eye and hand coordination and should be put in an institution, 1978.
His then headmaster and I brought out jigsaws which he loved to do, drawing, and showed he could already write his own name(not usual then) the alphabet and numbers to 100.
We sent him to a private school and although he has his problems, he lives in a sheltered environment working full time in a job he loves and with a full social life.
If that doctor had, had his way he would have been consigned to the dustbin, as i said in a previous post, doctors are just people who have made a different choice in the way of education, and are not gods.
Apologies for my writing and spelling, after a bad fall, my right arm is broken in 2 places and the little finger of my left hand is held together by pins,,,,, yucky.

Mamie, the hospital - and the police - were right to want to find the child asap to check he was being properly cared for. The point is, once that had been verfied, they should have backed off. Not continued with extradition and prison for the parents. They are not criminals.

Please do not tar all doctors with the same brush. There is the odd arrogant twit but the majority are just as human as you or me.I think they did the right thing in this case, but that does not make me arrogant.

jingl, the decision to initiate court proceedings was made by the CPS, not by the hospital or the police.

I think perhaps the police would have had to put it in front of the CPS.

#iwatchedthebill

I did say 'minority' Galen I'm sure you've come across a few of these types yourself in your career.
However to threaten a protection order does seem extreme in this instance and I imagine it had to do with the parent's religion. A case of knowing you know best.

I do not mean to do that Galen, jus to point out that both then and now, some,,, doctors seem to think they are the only ones who know what is best, when my mother was admitted to hospital after a fall and it was obvious she finally needed to go into a care home. I went over to the UK with DD, for 2 weeks, we tried to see the doctor at the hospital and were told to come back next week,, ok busy, eventually i did a strop and finally saw a doctor, he spent the entire interview looking at notes on other patients, and asked me to 'pop' in another time, I told him it was a long way to 'pop', and he revealed he thought i was there to talk about my Husband who had suffered a stroke. Duh. went private,, again!!
I still feel sorry for the poor man who had the stroke, that was just 5 years ago.

Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead of Hampshire Constabulary said Hampshire Constabulary makes "no apology" for the police's strong actions in the search operation for Ashya, adding: "We had medical experts telling us that Ashya was in grave danger.

"Medical experts were saying to us that if he didn't get the care that he needed, there was a potential threat to his life. Faced with those circumstances, I make no apology for the police being as proactive as we possibly can to actually find Ashya and ensure he gets all the help he needed."

Maybe the whole patient/doctor relationship broke down once doctors informed the parents that they would place an emergency protection order on Ashya:

[Mr King] claimed that doctors had threatened to put an "emergency protection order" in place after he questioned the strength of the chemotherapy and radiation that doctors suggested as treatment for Ashya, following his surgery.

"When I asked him why the little bit of chemotherapy was needed, I couldn’t really get what he was trying to say, and then straightaway afterwards he said, more or less, if I question him in anyway regarding his treatment, they would get an emergency protection order and take him away from me," he said.

"So after that I realised I can’t speak to the oncologist at all because if I actually asked anything or gave them any doubt I wasn’t in full accord with them they were just going to get a protection order, which meant in his deepest darkest hour, I wouldn’t be there to look after him with my wife, they would prevent us from entering the ward," he added.

We can imagine all we like, but as the hospital is not releasing details of exactly why they took this course, we will not know until either a court case or an enquiry reveals all. By then the wee boy will be either a bit better or a lot worse.

This can't have been the first JW they have come across in their careers. They must have access to the same information as we have - that the objection is to receiving blood, not to getting medical treatment. Any difference of opinion or misunderstanding must be on a personal level, not on a religious one.

Another case, perhaps, of the media and/or public seizing on a "trigger word" so as to pin a label on the parents, instead of seeing the human being behind the label.

Just come back to this and there is a lot to catch up on.

However I would just like to say that I agree with Petallus's view that:

janeainsworth I did not find the article balanced at all

It is an opinion, but hardly balanced.
The medical profession will almost always close ranks and defend their own.
They are not always right.
They are constrained by NHS budgets which means that proton therapy is not yet available in this country, not because it is not effective.

Parents with a very sick child will go to the ends of the earth to try to find a cure for their child. The medical staff will do the best they can with the resources they have available. Therein lies the difference.

The CPS is seeking to withdraw the European Arrest Warrant.

I think the parents will be released shortly if the news reports are correct.

Well that is a step in the right direction, I say.

It is nothing to do with NHS budgets Rosequartz.
It is to do with the fact that at present the NHS has only one machine, which is is suitable only for treating eye tumours.
The NHS has funded other patients to have the proton therapy elsewhere, as others have already written on this thread.

But surely if the NHS had a larger (or better managed) budget then more centres for proton therapy would have been built, as they have in other areas of Europe and the world.

Why fund it elsewhere - if we had our own centres then sick patients would not need to travel abroad?

I think it still comes down to NHS budgets. Doctors are probably eager for the therapy to be more widely available here.

The question was not proton beam availability, it was whether this was the appropriate treatment for this child at this presumably late stage.

I do hope the parents are released soon but I do have to agree with so many points Mishap has raised.

The initial hours of the story breaking were focusing on the feeding tube and the battery life. The police and hospital had to act on the fact Ashya had been removed from the hospital without the hospital being informed. There would have been an outcry from the public if nothing had been done to maximize the need to try and locate them given the concern for his welfare having had an operation for a brain tumour only a few days previously. The Assistant Chief Constable, Chris Shead, gave updates every few hours on both Sky and BBC 24 hour news. He always made the point the concern was for the welfare of Ashya and the need to find the family because of the information given to the police by Ashyas doctors. He had no room to manoeuvre, he did his job and has repeatedly pointed out he would rather be admonished now knowing Ashya is safe than be admonished for doing nothing and the outcome being very different.

The Portsmouth Council also had to act on the information given to them by Ashyas doctors, what could they do otherwise, ignore it and hope it all goes away. Until we know exactly what Ashyas medical reports are it is impossible to say the hospital and the medical team are all arrogant, uncaring people as some have eluded to. They had to report the fact to the police, again only doing their job.

I just wish the family, who are very social media savvy, had put out the fact they had purchased food from the internet and had a car charger that meant the feeding tube battery would not run out. The only time I have seen this question put forward was at an interview with the brother outside Ashyas hospital in Spain who said he couldn't do it because his mobile phone battery wasn't charged.

There are no winners in this sadly.

Breaking news - warrants etc. being withdrawn here and in Spain and parents should be released soon.

www.breakingnews.com/topic/search-for-terminally-ill-uk-boy-ashya-king/

Good.

Agreed Galen. I meant that if this child had been suitable for proton beam therapy, presumably the NHS would have funded it.

Very good news. I'm assuming the parents did not in fact do anything wrong if they are to be released.

That is good news.