Support for brain injury children

Oct 15 2007 by Audrey Barton, The Journal

THE mother of a North teenager who suffered a brain haemorrhage that left him in a wheelchair for two years has welcomed a new project aimed at offering support to young people who have suffered brain injuries.

Michael Daley was 13 when he collapsed while playing football at school and suffered a brain haemorrhage.

The former Newcastle Football Academy player underwent an eight-hour operation to stop the bleeding as surgeons removed part of his skull to save his life.

Six weeks in a drug induced coma and a total of 11 weeks in hospital followed before his long road of rehabilitation to learn to walk again.

During this time his mother Julie, 45, of Park Road in Wallsend, said the family received no advice or support and were left with nowhere to turn.

She said: “I was so glad to have him alive we just got on with it. I didn’t know what was right and wrong.

“We weren’t even given any leaflets. There was nothing.

“We weren’t advised to take Michael anywhere or what to do. We were encouraged to forget about what happened to him and to get on with our lives.”

Michael’s recovery is a testament to his determination to regain a normal life.

His haemorrhage was caused by a birth mark on the brain, which occurs in only one in three million people and is usually fatal. Having suffered stroke symptoms, his left side was paralysed and he had to learn to walk and use his arm again.

Now 18, he has passed 11 GCSEs and attends sixth form at Beacon Hill School in North Shields where he is studying Health and Social Care.

He hopes to help people who are disabled in the future and even manages to squeeze in a game of football every week.

But his family including father Peter, 51, and older brother, Steven, 22, want more support for others in their position and are backing a new service being launched by The Child Brain Injury Trust (CBIT) on Tyneside aimed at providing a better support network for the hundreds of children who suffer brain injuries throughout the region each year.

The Child and Family Support Project North East, which is based at the Percy Hedley School, is the first of its kind in the UK and will be launched officially at an event at Newcastle’s Centre for Life on October 24th, sponsored by personal injury law firm Irwin Mitchell.

If the Child and Family Support Project proves to be a success it will be extended beyond its initial 12 month period and also replicated around the rest of the UK.

Julie Young, project manager from CBIT, said: “This is an incredibly exciting project and we really have the chance to make a huge difference to people’s lives. Brain injuries are often referred to as being ‘unseen’ because the sufferer can frequently be perfectly able-bodied.

“However, even if they don’t need further medical help they can still require a huge amount of care and support.

“Until we arrived, there was simply nothing in place like this, so we are hoping to plug a rather large gap to offer a support network to children.”