“The Role of Government Edicts in False Accusations of Child Abuse”.

Blue paragraphs and extracts may be cut through shortage of time.
Red italic items are reference materials not intended to be read out.

Yes, of course, some disabled children SHOULD have a right to be integrated in mainstream schools, if that is their choice, but equally Asperger’s children who can’t face crowded social situations such as public transport, shopping malls, theatre foyers or football stadia should not be forced to face the daily terror of 1500 or more children changing classrooms simultaneously or fighting for a place in a seemingly endless lunch queue in an impossibly noisy dining hall or be expected to undertake physical education in large echoey sports halls that hurt their hyper-sensitive ears. Integration works well for some disabled children, especially those with obvious physical difficulties, but it is often impossible for those with neurophysiological disorders. The ones that Lady Linklater has so aptly termed “Educationally Fragile” and Mark Haddon has described as needing to constantly reboot their overloaded internal hard drives.

If we had more time I would love to give illustrations of other families and the failure of the SEN Assessment system but I must move on to the even more important issue of the Department of Health Guidelines on Fictitious and Induced Illness in Children. Once again I am going to intertwine this with my own, hopefully illustrative, personal account of events.

BBC R4 “Woman’s Hour” have recently been asking for suggestions of life changing novels. Mine has to be Margaret Atwood’s “Surfacing”. The final chapter begins “This above all, to refuse to be a victim.”

When our son was born I thought that I had retired from National Voluntary Organisations, politics and pressure groups to become a suburban mother; but with two educationally fragile children I had inadvertently assumed victim status and mentality. Charles Pragnell told me that the way out of depression was to fight back.

In the early hours of Monday May 8 2000 I decided it was time for action. As Margaret Atwood puts it in “Surfacing” you reach a point where “withdrawing is no longer possible”. She speaks of “dressing clumsily” to re-enter a world left behind.

I knew exactly what she meant as I got up and faced the computer. I found the e mail addresses of every BBC News and current affairs programme and drew their attention to that day’s release of the report by Professor Rod Griffiths into alleged malpractice in the North Staffordshire NHS Trust. I believed and hoped that Professor Griffiths would also report on Professor David Southall’s work as an expert witness in the diagnosis and prosecution of parents he believed were suffering from “Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy”.

I caught the train to Birmingham and headed for the Department of Health. I was profoundly disappointed by the paucity of the MSBP section of the Griffith’s report. I knew he had collected sufficient evidence for something much more comprehensive. However he did suggest that the Government should undertake a multi disciplinary review of the MSBP issue. That night, on the BBC’s "Newsnight", Kirsty Wark reported a Government undertaking to instigate this proposed review and this was optimistically repeated in several National Newspapers on the following day. The expectation was of an inquiry to determine whether or not the MSBP diagnosis was valid.

Whilst I was in Birmingham the BBC’s “Home Truths” rang me on the mobile and a few days later my husband and I found ourselves at Broadcasting House, interviewed about our story by the celebrated children’s author Michael Rosen as the now sadly deceased John Peel was on holiday. It was transmitted on 13th and 15th May 2000.

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© Jan Loxley Blount 05 11 04 London

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