The Guardian view on ‘blood on our hands’: the law’s ultimate warning | Editorial

Sir James Munby is right. The purpose of justice is to defend the rights of the most vulnerable individuals in society

Finally, the decade of austerity is being challenged by voices the government simply cannot ignore. First there was the angry and unprecedented lament of the normally helpful Prison Governors Association, whose president, Andrea Albutt, said that her colleagues were “devastated at the complete decline of our service” caused by cuts and capricious reforms. That has proved to be a mere overture to the thunderous denunciation of the catastrophic underfunding of child and adolescent mental health services from Sir James Munby, who is the president of the family division – the senior family judge.

Sir James was hearing a case that will come to stand for all that has failed in the field of child and adolescent mental health services. X is a very vulnerable young woman for whom no appropriate place of treatment can be found: nowhere in all of England has a specialist bed available for a 17-year-old girl who is so ill that every professional opinion agrees that she is at severe risk of taking her own life, and possibly of injuring others. She must be discharged in 11 days’ time. If nowhere is found, then, said the judge, “we, the system, society, the state … will have blood on our hands”.

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from Children | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2u4vp8h