I'm in another situation with a manuscript where I have no idea if I'm being accurate.
One of my characters is a fourteen-year-old boy. He lives with his mother. There's no other family around. The mother has terminal cancer, and is approaching the final stages.
In my first draft, the boy looks after her, while still going to school. The school are aware of the situation, but aside from overlooking tardies and allowing him to leave school at lunch to check on her, don't provide much in the way of support. He spends the majority of mornings, evenings and weekends looking after her. When she passes away, child services take him into care with a view to place him with the parents of one of his friends.
So, am I being vastly inaccurate here? I suspect I could be. Would child services become involved much sooner? Would the school do more? What about outside medical help?
Ideally, I need the mother and son to stay together, with him providing a large percentage of her care, for the story to work.
One of my characters is a fourteen-year-old boy. He lives with his mother. There's no other family around. The mother has terminal cancer, and is approaching the final stages.
In my first draft, the boy looks after her, while still going to school. The school are aware of the situation, but aside from overlooking tardies and allowing him to leave school at lunch to check on her, don't provide much in the way of support. He spends the majority of mornings, evenings and weekends looking after her. When she passes away, child services take him into care with a view to place him with the parents of one of his friends.
So, am I being vastly inaccurate here? I suspect I could be. Would child services become involved much sooner? Would the school do more? What about outside medical help?
Ideally, I need the mother and son to stay together, with him providing a large percentage of her care, for the story to work.