2012 London Paralympics (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
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This is the fourth in a series of articles looking at people, places, institutions or subject areas that the news media does not serve well. Once the series is complete, we’ll be polling UnHerd subscribers – asking which UnHerd author they most agree with.
Twenty five years ago, I entered the twilight world of parents with children with special needs. My beautiful daughter was born with a rare genetic condition, CDKL5, that leaves her unable to communicate with words, see, walk or live independently. She needs 24-hour care to help support her complex epilepsy.
I thought I was on my own before the advent of the internet, with no support network. I did not realise that I was among the hundreds of thousands of parents in the UK who have a child with special needs, as almost all were out of sight and out of mind. Shockingly, I was told by some well-meaning people it would be better to put her in a home and forget about her.
This is changing but progress is slow. People with disabilities are appearing in adverts such as the latest McCains ad or in television programmes like Call the Midwife, but these are the exceptions rather than the rule. In news, the narrative is closely focused in three ways.
There are the extreme stories. The shock at the abuse at Winterbourne View; or the despair when a young man dies in a bath in an NHS Treatment and Assessment Unit, in Oxford; or the horror when a mother takes her life and that of her autistic child after she jumps off a suspension bridge. Once the initial furore is over, the fight for justice and change is often a battle left again to families.
Then there are the stories of heroics. This week, the media celebrates the work of Stephen Hawking, that brilliant scientist, and focuses on how this was achieved despite his ‘desperate disability’, while almost every other person living in Britain with ‘desperate disability’ goes unnoticed.
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