Diabetes (Young People)

Siobhain McDonagh Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I can assure you, Mrs Riordan, that I will not speak for that long.

I want to highlight the impact that diabetes, like all chronic conditions, has on not only the individual, but their family, friends and community. That is particularly relevant, given the age at which people are being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and the huge increase in the number of children who are diagnosed with it. About 25,000 children in the UK have type 1 diabetes. Some 98.6% of children and young people with diabetes have type 1. The incidence of type 1 diabetes increases by about 4% each year. The biggest increase is in children under the age of five, among whom there has been a fivefold increase in the past 20 years.

When children are diagnosed with diabetes, it has a profound effect on their families. The parent group, Children with Diabetes, did a survey of parents, in which 85% said that their household income had gone down; 83% said that they had problems with their marriage and family life; 84% said that their child’s treatment was affected by where they lived; 71% said that they were concerned about long-term complications; 60% said that their children were most worried about being seen as different, as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) said; and 50% reported that their children had been bullied at school as a result of suffering from type 1 diabetes.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) asked me to contribute to the debate because of its importance to him as an individual. That made me think about constituents I have seen and the problems that they have had. My hairdresser, who is a very important person in my life, told me that his niece, Sophia, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of five. There was no history of diabetes in the family. The family spent ages completely terrified, wondering what the problem with their young daughter was, only to find that she had type 1 diabetes. Her mother, Nicole, tells me that she came home on the day of diagnosis with a load of equipment, not knowing what to do or understanding the consequences. She knew that she had to give up her employment, because she could not control the diabetes and did not know the consequences for her daughter. Her husband had to accept the fact that, unlike other married couples, they could not leave their daughter with other people, because those others were frightened about knowing how to care for her. Nicole was concerned about just not knowing how the family would approach routine family life, celebrations, festivals and even Christmas.

Nicole told me today that the single thing that was of benefit to her was the recently set up parent group at St. George’s hospital in Tooting. The scales fell from her eyes as the clinical paediatric nurse, Richard Todd, told her how she could cope with Christmas—all the food and treats of the period—and how she could have access as a carer to discount cards, which no one had told her about in the past, although her daughter has had type 1 diabetes for seven years. She could also just meet other families and mums, and discuss the consequences, for them and their family, of their children’s diabetes. If there is anything I would ask the Minister to do, it is to consider the fact that St. George’s will not carry on the parent support service, because it does not feel able to keep Mr Todd’s services. I am sure that there are many demands on the hospital, but that parent group—just from one parent’s perspective—had an enormous impact.

The other time when a problem begins to arise in a family’s life is when children transfer from primary to secondary school. While having a pacemaker, or another condition, might affect a child’s school preference place, despite having type 1 diabetes Sophia did not obtain a school place in the Minister’s constituency, although her mum and dad wanted her to go to school there so that they could be close at hand if anything happened and so that all the burden would not fall on the school. At the school, in turn, there was a fear about having Sophia there. Of course, with the transfer to secondary school the issue of puberty comes into play, with its impact on the treatment of type 1 diabetes, and the need to understand whether mood changes result from the illness or the normal changes that any teenager goes through.

Having a child with type 1 diabetes can also have a financial impact. I know from other families who have been to see me that that can involve simple things such as school uniforms. One mum who came to see me bought the uniform for her daughter who was going to secondary school, only for her to be diagnosed with the condition over the summer holidays; in that period she lost two or three dress sizes. Apart from the sheer fear that that must have created, the financial impact for a single mum on benefit is huge. There are implications for all the things that we would want to happen: getting mums back into work; flexible working; the need to work close to home; and the need for the wider family to understand things. I am sure that that is only a small and perhaps secondary consideration, but in the treatment of this chronic disorder, diagnosed in children so young, it has a huge impact for the wider family. The soft services of parent groups, which might be seen as less important in times of financial restraint, are crucial in enabling parents to understand the difficulties and problems, and in preventing some of the problems that other families have probably been through.