I read Gaby Hinsliff’s article regarding the culpability of Axel Rudakubana’s parents with a sinking heart (Are Axel Rudakubana’s parents responsible for his terrible crime? It’s a question many families will fear to answer, 17 April).

I’m no apologist for the parents, but I’m a lawyer working in the field of mental health and frequently appear before the court of protection in complex cases where we try to balance the need to protect and respect people with complex mental health needs and balance their rights against the rights of the public. It’s not an easy task and the reality is that there isn’t much scope, nor appetite, for taking people into custody who have not yet, and may never, commit a crime.

The narrative that the parents should have done more to let the authorities know about their son and that the authorities could then have done something is purely magical thinking.

You can certainly section patients who pose a risk to themselves or others if there is a bed available (there often isn’t), and in the case of very high-risk or violent patients the capacity is even more restricted in terms of beds in specialist units.

Once there, you can basically tranquillise patients into being manageable. But that is not a long-term solution. Once that patient is calm, they are very likely to be discharged, so that the space is available for someone else who is not calm. Where do they go next? Back into the community. Do they usually comply with their medication regime once out? Nope. So the revolving door keeps turning and the patient and their family and the public have just kicked the can down the road.

We need to start having some much more honest conversations about how this issue is to be dealt with, what options the taxpayer can and will fund, how much capacity we want to have in the system, and what we’re going to pay the staff who care for these patients. That’s before we tackle the knotty question of where we’re going to draw the line between quite rightly anticipating and preventing harm and the rights of patients with complex mental health needs. A question that can never be answered correctly every time.

To blame the parents is to take the easy and lazy solution, and that will do nothing to keep children like Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe safe. So, let’s have a conversation about this. We need to. But please let’s look at solutions and acknowledge the complexity of the problems these cases represent.
Name and address supplied

Gaby Hinsliff’s thoughtful and compassionate article points out the seldom discussed subject of parents intimidated and threatened by their own children, who often have either mental health issues or rare neurodivergent tendencies making them dangerous. It is all too human to try to turn a blind eye when faced with either surrendering your child to the criminal justice system or seeing them fester and probably become more violent in our underfunded mental health facilities, where they would be unlikely to get any meaningful help. Yes, ideally the parents should have done more, but there but for the grace of God go many parents.
Jane Ghosh
Bristol

What’s missing in the discussion of parental culpability is the concept of support. Rudakubana’s parents, like many others, seem to have believed that the only role of social workers is to remove children. If we had a system, fully funded and with appropriate training, that aimed to support parents through all the complex decisions they have to make, parents might find it easier to raise concerns and consider the consequences. In some countries, that’s what social work is.
Ruth Valentine
London