My Basic Biography
Basic Biography of Mike Llywelyn Cox
e mail: meicox@yahoo.com
d.o.b.: 05.06.1938
Background
Background
I was born and grew up in Llandudno, north Wales on a small council estate. From a working class family in the poorest part of town I passed for Grammar School but, although in the A stream throughout, I engineered my departure at age 15, rebelling against the gross class distinction and snobbery there.I served a five year apprenticeship with the Wales Gas Board and practised as a Gas Fitter in Llandudno, London, Shropshire, Denbighshire, Guernsey and back to Llandudno until 1968 when I started pre-professional work as a trainee child care worker.
Married three times, I have lived with my present wife and her large and loving family here in rural Norfolk since 1980.
My first divorce was characterised by my wife’s stated determination to make my children hate me and to make sure I never saw them again. I was working as a trainee child care worker then, helping to care for many children who were casualties of marriage separation stress, falsification and ambiguity. I knew any attempt to contact my children would be blocked - any correspondence even birthday and christmas cards would be shown into the fire without the children knowing. Because of this I vowed, for the sake of the children, not to try to see or contact them - I dearly loved them but couldn’t bring myself to risk harming them. For the same reason, in spite of horrific lies in her divorce statement, I did not contest that statement or the subsequent own child adoption she and her new partner took out.
My first wife's treatment of my children was horrendous and my only recourse to prevent further harm was to sacrifice my continuing relationship with them. Those malicious actions by my wife have now been judged as illegal. See below:
In Psychotherapist, Karen Woodall's blog on 12/10/2020 she reported that: "Inducing alienation in a child is abusive. The Family Courts in the UK are clear about that and case law establishes it. In fact not only does case law establish that alienation in a child is abusive, it establishes that behaviours which may lead to alienation are abusive. Recent Appeal and High Court decisions have made it clear that the Court has a duty to act in such circumstances and to do so before the alienation becomes serious. This makes it clear that alienation of a child is real in law and that it is child abuse."
Brenda, my second wife was a beautiful, caring person. She went with me to Plymouth to support me through social work training at the then Plymouth Polytechnic (now University). She nursed me through my problems there, including a mental breakdown from the loss of my children and being disabled by a trapped in my neck./p>
We were married after I qualified. My first social work job was in North Devon and we were both happy there. However, home sickness took over once again and I grabbed at a job opportunity in Rhyl in Flintshire. I was moved to the Colwyn Bay office with the 'Maud' local authority reorganisation in 1974.
We were separated when Brenda threw me out after I told her I was resigning from Clwyd County Council because of their constant incompetence and breaches of professional ethics. I don’t blame Brenda for that - she had helped and supported me to become a practising professional social worker and didn’t want to see it all go! My resignation though, was vindicated later by the revelations of the North Wales Child Abuse Inquiry.
Main activities summary
30 years as a mental health social work practitioner and MWO/ASW in Devon, N Wales and, from 1978, East Anglia - hospital based for Norfolk to 1985, community based for Suffolk to 1999 (with 2 year spell 1989 to 1991 as a freelance substance misuse counsellor mainly at the Roche Clinic, Southend and NORCAS in Lowestoft).
Special interest in supporting developments of service user and care involvement throughout (I have a long history of serious type II bipolar episodes).
I was an inaugural active member of the re-instituted British Association of Social; Workers’ (BASW) Mental Health Special Interest Group and, as social work representative at the Parliamentary launch, the whistleblowers’ organisation Freedom to Care in the early 1990s.
I Remained active throughout the 1990s and particular national work included: mental incapacity; eating disorders; defeating depression; support for those in difficulty; advice and representation; whistleblowing; and mental health law revision and reform. Shortlisted for the Mental Health Commission in mid 1990s and Parliamentary Officer for BASW in late 1990s.
I took early ill-health retirement in 1999 from full-time work with a local authority (via an Employment Tribunal disability discrimination action). Active in volunteer work since retirement, including mental health, whistleblowing and false allegations (of child abuse) advocacy; social work practice teaching; compiling and writing a small community newspaper (and developing advocacy reporting); researching service user and carer issues and the development of PPI; jazz education projects; and, as a former union steward and member of the Norfolk UNISON Retired Members Section, member representation at private sector disciplinary hearings. Latterly, I’ve been working with Norfolk LINk and have done some advocacy work for Age UK Norfolk.
Currently I spend much time discussing issues and networking on the internet. I wrote a Blog called PPlog (Patient and Public Log) and had a website www.ppeyes.org.uk, both now defunct - I used to work, mainly as a volunteer for the disability rights organisation Equal Lives (see below). but also have done some direct work work for LINKS in a Readers Panel and accepted a role of user representative on the PCT ‘Special Allocations Panel’ which deals with cases of users who have exhibited unreasonable/violent behaviour in an NHS setting. The latter finished with the LINKS demise.
I was involved in the work of the Norfolk Coalition of Disabled People (NCODP), now renamed Equal Lives, and we completed a six session training sequence which was part of a Joint Commissioning Strategy appointment of NCODP to monitor the Norfolk Personalisation Agenda (I questioned the exclusion of mental health from this). Nicely parallel to this was continuing consultation on building the local strategy for Personal Health Budgets with a tied in focus group. In November 2009 I was offered and enthusiastically accepted a place on the National Survivor User Network management committee. Unfortunately I had to quit in June of 2010 because my worsening mobility problem meant it became too difficult to travel to and across London.
Published Work:
- Free Expression of Staff Concerns (whistleblowing) for BASW, 1993;
- articles on whistleblowing issues for Community Care, Care Weekly and Professional Social Work in early/mid 1990s;
- ‘Whistleblowing and training for accountability’ in ‘Whistleblowing in the Social Services’, ed. Geoff Hunt, Arnold 1998.
- BASW Mental Health Special Interest Group’s response to the Reform of the Mental Health Act White Paper;
- individual contribution to the Joint Committee on Human Rights report
- ‘Draft Mental Health Bill’ (their appendix No. 10);
- AAFAA report (presented as a witness) to the Nolan Committee inquiry into Child Abuse in the Catholic Church 2001;
- individual contribution to the Home Affairs Select Committee on false allegations of child abuse;
- various articles for the Beccles Community Newspaper, ‘The Essential Voice”;
- ‘Access all Areas’ (PPI), in Care and Health Magazine 13 - 19 April, 2004.
- ‘PPI = Patient and Public Impediment’ - various outlets April 2004.
I have no commercial or financial interests.
Current Circumstances
I have multiple physical disabilities: degenerate lumbar scoliosis with a trapped nerve; C.O.P.D.; essential tremors (a real curse); type 2 diabetes with peripheral neuropathy in my legs; osteo arthritis; single sided deafness with an open mastoid cavity; flawed eyesight from a growing cataract; lifelong cyclical depression. and a continuing legacy from an anterior colon resection. I am wheelchair bound for any distance other than a few yards and any activities lasting more than a few minutes and for the last couple of years have been an expert recluse in may own home.
Mike Llywelyn Cox. 25.08.2010.
Comments