It was March 2021 when Laura’s son Alfie suffered a serious brain injury after being knocked off his bike cycling through his home town of Wisbech. Like so many teenagers, the 15-yr-old was not wearing a helmet, and had been talking through his headphones, when he got hit by a car.
The fall led to a bleed to his brain on one side of his head, and a fractured skull on the other side. He was flown to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, which is the regional centre for serious accidents and emergencies. Alfie spent five days in an induced coma in paediatric intensive care. Laura remembers the agonising wait alongside her son on life support, not knowing if Alfie was going to make it or not.
It was the worst moment of my life, every minute felt like hours.
Thankfully Alfie recovered enough to move onto one of the general children’s wards, but he had completely lost the use of his left-hand side. His eventual recovery would require many months with a multi-skilled team of professionals including neurologists, nursing staff, speech and language therapists, psychologists, physios, occupational therapists, teachers, play therapists and mental health teams, all working together to support Alfie’s unique psychological and physical needs and promote recovery.
A Whole Child Approach
Consultant paediatric neurologist Dr Anna Maw said: “A brain injury often affects all aspects of a child’s life – from their mobility, speech and learning right through to their emotional state and ability to join in, have fun and keep up with friends. Young people also need to continue their education, learn new skills and move on into adulthood and independence, which is all much harder to do following a brain injury."
We have a fantastic and unique team here in the East of England who come together in cases like this to provide a single service which moves with the child and their family, from those very traumatic early days on intensive care, to the ward, outpatients and then into their life at home in the community. We do this by bringing all the expertise and experience of our team together to get to know the patient as a whole person, and looking at mental and physical health together.
Dr Anna Maw
Doctor Maw said: "Traditionally, patients with complex needs have to spend time seeing different specialists in different places at different times which really gets in the way of recovery. We work to take the pressure away from the family and to wrap our service around the young person. Where professionals are working as a single team, for someone like Alfie, the outcomes are much better – not just in the short term, but going forward into adulthood.
"We know that really good rehabilitation in these early years makes for a much better life for the patient and their families over many years. Not only is this better for the patients, it’s better for the NHS too – it saves considerable time and money. This is so important when our services are in such demand.”
Teaching assistant Laura recalls how it felt to spend nine weeks in hospital with her son Alfie, away from family.
“The staff on the children’s ward at Addenbrooke’s were fantastic and did everything they could to help, but it was really hard being stuck there for so long and they weren’t family. The wards are really old and run down, and there is no private space, or any separate space for teenagers and their parents.
“We were often kept awake by babies crying, often felt quite overwhelmed when wards were full sometimes with much younger children. It was also quite isolating at times when nurses were busy and not around on the ward.”
But most of all, Alfie and Laura – who has spent all her life living in two streets of Wisbech, where she has a huge family, 15 aunts and uncles and around 70 cousins - desperately missed home and family. “It was the longest I have ever been away from my mum in 40 years,” said Laura. “Myself and Alfie have only been away from her for a week at most before.”
It was this drive to be back home amongst family, with all the support networks that it brings, that led Alfie and Laura turning down a residential rehabilitation bed in Tadworth, Surrey – the closest option for children with brain injuries in the East of England. Instead they chose to return home, and get as much support from community health services - such as physio and occupational therapy - as possible.
Nearly two years on, Alfie is 17 and has made great progress getting his life back to normal. He sat his GCSEs and is studying to become a plumber. Laura is so proud of his progress. His College course is going great and he’s working at a level expected or above the College's expectations.
Laura is very supportive of plans being drawn up for a specialist children’s hospital in Cambridge, which would offer rehabilitation beds for brain injury patients like Alfie where they could get home at weekends, whilst also building stronger networks of care closer to home for patients across the region.
Cambridge Children's Hospital
Doctor Maw added: “The East of England is the only region in the UK without a specialist children’s hospital, which means that some of our sickest youngsters currently have to travel hundreds of miles to get the help they need.
“Our vision for Cambridge Children’s Hospital is to have joined up services that treat the whole child – not just their illness – with multi-skilled teams to create bespoke solutions for every patient. We are building up these teams around the region, so that we can provide this care as close to home as possible, so that children only come to the hospital itself when they absolutely need it.”
