Archie Battersbee: Baroness calls for inquiry into how sensitive cases handled
She wants to stop cases being rushed into court
Last updated 2nd Aug 2022
There should be an independent inquiry into how difficult brain injury cases, such as Archie Battersbee's, are handled, a palliative care professor has said.
Baroness Ilora Finlay of Llandaff, a Crossbench member of the House of Lords has told us independent mediation to prevent cases from going to court so quickly should be introduced: "Nobody wants to go to court. The parents don't want to go to court. The doctors don't want to be in court. Hospital management doesn't want to be paying out legal fees and being in court.
"We have to find a better way of managing the really difficult communication when there is a difference of view over how things are going with the child.
"When there are pressures from different directions on the parents, they can feel cornered and feel that they have to resort to going to law, which makes it more adversarial and really nobody benefits."
This comes after news that Archie Battersbee's life-support treatment will be withdrawn today after a Court of Appeal ruling yesterday.
Baroness Finlay believes independent mediation may help avoid this: "We should try to look at having mediation coming in early when communication seems to be going wrong.
"It has to be independent because the parents will not necessarily trust a mediator who's come from the hospital and the hospital may feel distrustful of a mediator that's been brought in by the parents, who they feel might belong, perhaps, to a pressure group or campaign group."
The professor also said the parents of a brain-damaged child must be treated with sensitivity in such a tough situation, and care must be taken to explain every stage of what's happening with their child: "When parents are desperately worried and terribly traumatised, they pick up on every little cue, verbal or nonverbal, everything said by any member of staff.
"Things they hear may cause them to be completely thrown and and they may actually end up misinterpreting things - that misinterpretation could escalate and cause issues.
"The other thing is that if they don't understand what's happening and they don't have things explained to them at a rate, and in a way, they can understand, then they can feel more overwhelmed and frightened by the care providers."
The Baroness is pushing for an inquiry by the end of the summer: "We need to understand, first of all, what has happened when communication has gone well, and what has happened when communication has gone badly.
"An inquiry would enable us to look at that and analyse it properly, because the we want to lessen the trauma the parents will live with for the rest of their lives."