Source: The Sydney Morning Herald [Letters to the Editor]

Sharon Guest and Stuart Neal ("How policy forced a family to desert their child", April 11) are not alone. My brother Andrew is mentally handicapped. After caring for him for 55 years my mother, aged 85, went into an aged-care home at Minto, taking Andrew with her.

Unfortunately the home could not handle him and put him out. My sister and I, both in our 60s, could not care for him. After great psychological pressure, which included us abandoning him at a hospital and a police station, the Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care moved him from respite home to respite home. Over a period of nine months Andrew lost 35 kilograms, stopped talking, would not get out of bed and started bed-wetting, totally traumatised.

Respite was found for him at a home outside North Richmond, where he fell over and broke his hip. Finally, he is now settled in a group home at Bowral. During this period our mother, who was wheelchair-bound, constantly fretted and kept trying to buy a flat so she could go back to caring for him. Andrew has now recovered, he is talking and he is helping in the kitchen at his new home, but it costs his mother $280 for each trip in a wheelchair taxi to visit him. We need more funds for facilities for the handicapped.

Richard Kirby