Mark and Tracey Drake got married in 1998 and recently renewed their marriage vows. Their commitment to each other has had to overcome trials and tribulations that would have caused division between many couples. Yet their relationship and loyalty to each other grew with every challenge. Andrew Holman recounts their heartbreaking story.
Mark and Tracey Drake renewed their wedding vows recently in the Baptist church in Colchester. As I was writing a short speech as best man I thought the story of our friendship warranted retelling. After the ceremony I travelled to Colchester to hear their story again and learn about their lives now.
I first met Tracey in the early 90s when I was supporting a group of people with learning disabilities to start a People First group in the town. Tracey’s energy was catching and I made sure she was asked to be involved in an advocacy development project for Values Into Action. This project had an impact locally when we took the council to judicial review about aspects of their service provision.
Through this involvement she met Mark at a People First meeting in London. Tracey had been going out with a local man. “He didn’t like people with learning disabilities,” she says. “He didn’t let me meet any of his friends in case I showed him up and he was always asking me for money”. She was being horribly used and abused.
Mark had been visiting Colchester more and more frequently but when they decided to move in together people expressed opposition to the idea.
Barriers
At the time Tracey rang me asking for advice and help. “My social worker didn’t like the idea and made threats if Mark didn’t go back to Croydon,” she recalls. Mark’s family were also putting up barriers. He says: “My carers said Tracey would pinch my money and leave me with nothing, even though I didn’t have any because they looked after it all for me”.
We hatched a plan which Tracey describes as ‘kidnapping Mark’ – I prefer to call it ‘helping a friend move house’. We drove down to Croydon one dark night when we knew not many people were around at Mark’s care home. Marks says: “They weren’t very happy about it but it was our right to live together if we wanted to”.
Tracey, Mark and I did more work together on various VIA projects. We made rights videos* and spoke at numerous conferences all over the country. Tracey was the first person with learning disabilities I knew to get a legal Direct Payment after the legislation came into force and I employed Mark to talk to self-advocacy groups to explain Direct Payments and how to benefit from them.
It was the summer of 1998 and I had a problem. Mark and Tracey were getting married in the same week Mark and I had been asked to speak at a large international conference in Holland. Quite rightly, Tracey didn’t want her new husband leaving her alone straight after the wedding. She remembers: “I liked your way around it – you borrowed your friend’s camper van and we all went away together. We made you go for long walks in the forest in the rain so we could have time together!” The conference was a success but I’ve never felt such a gooseberry.
Their thoughts turned to having a family and we talked long and hard about the added dangers parents with learning disabilities face. Lewis was born the following year with no care or support plan and little help from social services. As I feared, child protection did express an interest and a conference was called to put Lewis on the at-risk register. Tracey recalls: “It was all rushed as they were late starting, we weren’t allowed to talk and they didn’t really listen to you Andrew, despite all the work you had done in courts with parents with learning disabilities. We didn’t understand what was happening at all”. Nonetheless, the vote went against the social worker and a support plan was put in place.
My next visit was to discuss the possibility of Tracey going on the Jeremy Kyle show to talk about being a parent. “We wanted to show that it was possible for people with learning disabilities to be good parents”. I was firmly against the idea and instead we got a good documentary producer involved. We discussed the risks but they went ahead and the film, Unfit Parents?, went reasonably well apart from when Mark disappeared for a while. The public and professional reaction to the film was all positive.
Fears
They decided to have a second child. I was anxious and feared they would not be able to cope with two children and get the right support for them. Unfortunately, this time, all our fears came true. Tracey and Francesca, the new baby, were discharged from hospital late at night after Mark had been given a crash course in how to give the baby the medicine she needed. The following morning he had forgotten. Tracey tried to wake him but, as she explained: “He stayed in bed and wouldn’t get up to help. I was scared as I didn’t know what to do”.
When their support did arrive later that morning, Tracey said she thought she might have given the wrong dose. A quick check with the hospital confirmed this would, at worst, give her an upset tummy but asked for her to go down to see them.
After just 14 hours, Francesca was never to return home.
Tracey says: “All hell broke loose. They called me an awful mother and said I didn’t know how to look after her”. The social services spotlight turned again on to Lewis and, to cut a long story short, their every action was spun negatively and he was lost to them as well.
“We should have had proper support to look after them ourselves”, Tracey says.
Francesca has been adopted and they are not allowed to know where she lives, although they have yearly contact and a Christmas card. Lewis is fostered locally and they see him quarterly. He still has the learning and behaviour difficulties that were blamed on their lack of parenting skills several years before.
Mark and Tracey are trail blazers. They have often had to rely on each other rather than services and have been able to help, support and inspire many others, even using their bad experiences to warn people about what could happen; for example, Tracey employed her neighbour as a carer without doing the proper checks. Before long they had been swindled out of £2,300 by people up to their ears in debt. This example made us aware of the problem of Mate Crime. It also showed that we needed to make sure vulnerable people on Direct Payments had better support.
I have always been impressed by Mark and Tracey’s commitment to each other. They have faced trials and tribulations, adversity after adversity that would have caused division between many couples. Yet their relationship and loyalty to each other grew with every challenge, strengthened by their starting to go to church. “We decided to get baptised. The church is very supportive and always there for us”, says Tracey.
I still have regular calls from Mark and Tracey with some new scheme or another. The one I enjoyed most recently was the invite to join them in renewing their vows in church – a great excuse to get the old Rolls out. “It was lovely to have everyone looking at us and waving. I felt very special”, recalls Tracey.
Asked if they would change or do anything differently, Mark says: “No, I’d do it all again” but Tracey admits she couldn’t go through all that heartache, stress and worry of her baby being taken away again.
Horrible label
She says: “We feel let down and angry. People like us have a horrible label put around our necks. I’m not going to take it. If professionals don’t like it, that’s tough.”
I mentioned the many times I felt I had let my friends down when we haven’t got the support or result we wanted. But Tracey kindly said, “I think of you as a father figure – you and Yvonne (my wife) are like family and make us feel safe. I’ve never had that before.”
Andrew Holman is director of Inspired Services.
