A father has said he will be ‘forever grateful’ to his local weekly paper for its part in helping to bring his severely autistic son back home.
The Uxbridge Gazette ran an exclusive story last July about Mark Neary’s fight to bring his son Steven back home from local authority care.

Since then the case has received widespread interest from national media outlets but until Monday they were unable to report details of his battle at the Court of Protection.

But Mr Justice Peter Jackson then agreed to a media application for the case to be open to journalists and for all parties in the case to be identified, in a landmark ruling thought to be the first of its kind involving the secretive court.

Steven initially went into respite care in December 2009 when Mark was ill and this was supposed to be for just three days but the challenging behaviour he displayed meant he was not allowed to return home by the local authority, the London Borough of Hillingdon.

The 20-year-old is now back home living with his father, who has thanked the Gazette for highlighting his struggles in an interview in this week’s paper, which he said had led to him securing the services of a solicitor for his fight.

He said: “If it hadn’t been for the Gazette it would not have led to wider media interest in the story.

“I wouldn’t have got a solicitor as before that I was hitting so many dead ends. I will be forever grateful.”

Dan Coombs, senior multimedia journalist at the Gazette, said: “When we first ran the story we had over 100 comments on our story within two hours, and the total figure of 183 is still a website record for our hyperlocal sites. We knew then this was going to be a huge story which would run and run.

“When Mark contacted us initially we knew he had a story worth telling, it has legal and local authority angles, but it was the emotional human interest angle which made the story, a father willing to fight the system to get his son back.

“To see the story come to a happy conclusion is great, and to be there at the start of it gives us even more satisfaction.”

The media application for the case to be fully reported was made by The Independent, Guardian News and Media, the BBC, the Press Association and Times Newspapers, which were represented by barrister Guy Vassall-Adams.

There will be two further issues considered by the Court of Protection in future – whether the council acted lawfully in refusing to allow him home and welfare arrangements for Steven’s care.