THE IMPORTANCE OF ESSENCE
On the wall in my study, within my line of vision and as a thought provoking reminder of who I am, sits a badge from a Parliamentary Reception at the Scottish Parliament that simply says ‘Sophie Dow – Rare chromosome disorders and Mindroom’.
Who could have predicted such a deviation in life?
20 years ago, I was expecting my second child and knew nothing, really nothing, about the complexities of the brain and indeed the mind, nor about the reality of the damning statistics that permeates the field of Learning Difficulties (an insufficient/misleading term that needs to be discussed).
Today I am acutely aware that my daughter Annie falls outwith the anachronistic norms that restrict our society-ies, (it is a global problem).
With figures such as 55% unemployment amongst the population who are ‘learning disabled’, 72% resp 70% of male and female prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders * Prison Reform Trust, and a ‘one-size-fits-all’ state school system (otherwise called ‘inclusion’) the odds for my daughters future are not encouraging.
It was therefore very encouraging to read Scottish Education Secretary Mike Russell’s piece in The Herald on 25th June titled We must unite for the sake of our children, in which he states that too many children still face a life time of ill-health, poor education, dead end jobs and lives of crime due to underinvestment at the very start of their lives.’ We must do better, he continues, not just for the sake of those children but for the sake of society. We can no longer afford to pay for the consequences of long term and deep seated problems.
In short, Mike Russell stresses the importance of early identification and support, not just for humanitarian reasons but also for budgetary reasons, ‘for every pound spent during a child’s early life, the public purse can save anything from three to seven pounds later on.
He calls for a national consensus to be built around this public health problem of our time, in which learning difficulties play a significant role. Best of all however is that Russell states that the concerted effort should be free of political, social and cross sector differences.
I would like to believe that such a statement comes from the heart, informed by undeniably sorry statistics, and will sign on to such a sensible consensus.
And what does ESSENCE stand for, you ask?Well, it is yet another acronym within the realm of the understanding of the brain, and it is a very important one, as it stands for Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations.
Which means that we now know it is vital to future outcome to act on early signs of differences/difficulties. In other words, the ESSENCE of the acronym is to encourage parents and health professionals to work together as early as from birth. To register worries and then to track and accommodate them as the child grows.
