14/12/2017 London News

with the tragedy six months on?

Joins me now

Good evening.

I'm Claudia-Liza Armah.

We start tonight with more

on today's memorial service marking

six months to the day that a fire

ripped through Grenfell Tower,

claiming 71 lives,

including 18 children.

It was one of the worst tragedies

to hit the capital in London's

modern peacetime history.

This morning, at St Paul's

Cathedral, survivors

and those who've lost loved

ones came together.

Many here grieved for loved ones,

precious people who perished

on that dreadful night.

Mothers, fathers, sisters,

brothers, aunts and uncles,

cousins, sons and daughters.

Today would have been the first

birthday of one of the youngest

victims of the fire.

STEEL DRUMS PLAYING "HALLELUJAH".

In years to come, our

hope is that the name

of Grenfell will not

just be known as a symbol of sorrow,

of grief, or injustice.

But a symbol of the time we learned

a new and better way

to listen and to love.

# I see is light and

darkness all around.

# You feel so helpless,

you can't see which way to go #.

I'm glad I was there,

it means something to all of us

and I loved the parts of the service

that talked about this

being a change in the way

we approach the way we look

after each other.

The windows broke, things

were falling to the floor, and then

in the space of six minutes,

the fire had already reached

six floors above it.

You could see the smoke.

It felt as if it wasn't real.

I was just horrified by what I saw

and I just wanted to help.

Deeply emotional.

You feel pulled together in the same

way that we've pulled together

in the initial aftermath

of the fire.

I think there's a need for us

to share today and to be together.

The two standout points for me,

that made me feel tearful,

were when the Muslim choir,

the Muslim girls sang.

Those words were very

poignant and the moment

when the schoolchildren

from the various primary schools

in the area scattered green hearts

around to the song of 'Somewhere'

from West Side Story.

Those were really, really

moving moments for me.

We trust that this service today

is an assurance that the families

most deeply affected by this

tragedy are also not

forgotten by our nation,

by those here in this cathedral,

and by those who watch and listen

around the country today.

Since the tragedy, the community

in North Kensington

has come together in many ways,

but that night lives were fractured.

Many people lost more than one

member of their family, and some

of those affected were children.

Katharine Carpenter has been to find

out how they've been coping,

and about the help that's

available to them.

There's plenty of pre-Christmas

excitement at the Harrow youth

club's party, but children

like 11-year-old Charlie sometimes

struggle to celebrate.

He had two friends

in Grenfell Tower.

One escaped, the other didn't.

I just think about the people

who were lost in the fire and how

they didn't really deserve it.

Because some people were quite

young, they had their whole lives

ahead of them and they all

of a sudden are not there any more.

Just gone.

Foremost in his mind, Fatima,

who he sat next to in maths.

She died with her two sisters,

her parents and grandmother.

Like other children,

he finds seeing the tower a constant

reminder of what happened.

In school, all children just

watching it and everyone was crying,

because most people,

a whole family

from our school, died.

I just talk to my friends and they

are very supportive about it.

Of course, the young people enjoying

the party inside have got very

different ways of dealing

with what's happened.

I spoke to one mum who told me

she initially turned down the offer

of counselling for her son

because she didn't

think he needed it.

It's only now, six months on,

that she's trying to find him

someone to speak to.

But like many others,

she wishes the signposts

as to where to find that help

were much clearer.

For us who are on a face-to-face

basis with the young people that

access our services,

and I know they need more support

and help in what they are

actually going through.

It seems the focus is only

on the parents, survivors,

or if you haven't come

from a certain part of Grenfell,

then you are deemed as maybe second

in line to any services

and stuff like that.

But helping this community has been

a huge task for the local NHS Trust.

It's already seen more than 1800

people since the fire.

936 adults have been identified

as being in urgent need of treatment

for post-traumatic stress disorder.

And 191 children and young

people have been referred

for mental health treatment.

More psychologists are

still needed to help.

I think we are going round,

knocking on doors.

We are trying to have a presence

in all of the community

centres we can think of.

We have been speaking

with other professionals.

It might be that Tom goes

to their GP and wants access

to help, so the GP knows how to get

them in touch with services.

And it's trying to create a network,

I guess, of different support,

because different people might need

different things at different times.

For Michael, it's this painting

which brings the rawest emotion.

It pictures one of the Harrow club

members who died in Grenfell Tower.

As much as we would like to forget

Grenfell and put a line under it,

it's never going to happen.

So we're going to put it up

and have an opening for it and make

sure his life is celebrated.

Because we love him.

Top boy, he really was.

To other news now, and Boris Johnson

has been called before

the London Assembly to give evidence

on the failed Garden Bridge project.

The Assembly has used legal powers

to demand he attends.

It's the the first time

such measures have been

used on a former mayor,

and comes after the Foreign

Secretary declined to speak

to an earlier inquiry.

A spokesperson for Mr Johnson says

a new hearing would be "pointless".

Now to a family mystery

going back more than 70 years.

In 1943, a two-week-old baby boy

was abandoned in a box on the steps

of the BBC in London.

Now aged 74, Robin King has spent

most of his life wondering

who abandoned him, and why.

He was discovered by a BBC studio

manager, and this week

the two were reunited.

Steve Knibbs was there.

Amazing.

Incredible.

You're that baby!

A reunion 74 years apart,

as Trevor Hill meets the contents

of a box he discovered outside

the BBC in 1943, that today,

is 74-year-old Robin King.

You wouldn't fit

into that little box.

No, not now.

In 1943, BBC Broadcasting House had

been bombed, so be overseas service

was set up in the Peter Robinson

department store on Oxford Street.

And one morning, as Trevor turned up

for work, he found a box outside.

So you were wrapped

in a blanket inside the box.

Did you worry it might be

a bomb or something?

Exactly, we've pretty sure it was.

Particularly when it moved slightly,

we thought it was a timer.

Luckily I wasn't blown up.

Thankfully, it was just Robin

in the box and aged just two weeks,

he became a foundling.

He was named Robin Peters

after the department store

where he was found and eventually

adopted at the age of four.

These are my biological parents.

After decades of searching,

last year, Robin's daughter

traced his biological parents

to Canada with the help

of a DNA expert.

They were Douglas and Agnes Jones.

He was in the Royal Canadian Air

Force, working at a radio training

school in South Kensington.

He met and married Agnes in Glasgow.

It's a bit of a mystery because it

seems very difficult for him

or my mother to actually leave a box

in that position at that

particular time during the war

when there was a lot

of security worries.

So that doesn't make sense to me.

At least today, a few more pieces

of Robin's early life

have been filled in.

It's been completely,

for me, a magical day.

A day that I never thought

would exist and I never,

ever imagined that I would get

to meet the contents of that box.

He's still desperate

to know why he was left

outside the BBC in 1943,

but grateful, of course,

to have been found by Trevor.

That's it from me, but let's see how

the weather's looking

with Tomasz Schafernaker.

with Tomasz Schafernaker.

The cold snap is not quite over yet.

It's still pretty chilly out there,

for example temperatures got up to 6

degrees and to be honest it's not

going to be any colder or warmer

tomorrow, but one thing you will

notice, there's going to be more

cloud and it will be quite damp. On

the face of it it will not feel is

nice. It will feel a bit worse.

Tonight, temperatures dipping close

to freezing and there might be some

icy patches first thing in the

morning.

You can see some showers coming

through. Temperatures around

freezing, a risk of a little bit of

ice enough here and there. A fair

amount of cloud tomorrow. The

temperature is still struggling, 6-4

degrees in High Wycombe. This is

Saturday morning. I really chilly

start to Saturday, but a beautiful

winter's day, around 6 degrees. The

best day of the weekend I think is

going to be