A specialist team in Bristol says more research is needed into flat head syndrome, a condition which is thought to affect up to 40% of babies.
Southmead Hospital runs the only NHS clinic offering helmet therapy for infants with flattened heads.
The advice to lie babies on their backs to prevent cot deaths is one of the most successful public health interventions, but can cause babies to develop a flat head.
Image: 3D software is used to help create bespoke helmets with a 3D printer
Most cases are mild and self-correct over time, but babies with moderate to severe cases can be referred to experts in Bristol for cosmetic treatment.
The reconstructive science team takes photos of babies’ heads which are run through 3D software, to help create bespoke helmets with a 3D printer.
Babies usually from the age of six months are advised to wear the helmets for 23 hours a day.
The helmet corrects the condition by relieving pressure on the flat side.
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It is a unique clinic; the only NHS trust in the country offering helmet therapy for babies with flat heads, known as plagiocephaly or brachycephaly.
Elsewhere, parents have to go privately, and at a cost of £2,500, it can be prohibitively expensive.
Image: Mum Becky Darby and baby Leo
‘There’s not a lot of information out there’
We met mum Becky Darby and her one-year-old son Leo at the Bristol clinic.
Becky says she became worried about the shape of his head when he was four months old. “One side of his head was flat and the rest was perfectly round, but where he was constantly lying on it, it was getting flatter,” she said.
Becky was frustrated by the lack of guidance.
“I didn’t know what I was doing, and there’s not a lot of information out there,” she said.
Leo has been wearing his helmet for five months, and his progress is regularly monitored.
Disputed evidence
Data around flat head syndrome is scarce, and scientists at the clinic are carrying out research to investigate further.
Image: Becky Darby said getting the helmet treatment was the ‘best decision’ she has made
The NHS has said the evidence that the helmets work is “not clear”, and that they can cause other problems like skin irritation and rashes.
“These helmets and headbands generally are not recommended,” according to the NHS.
Senior reconstructive scientist Amy Davey wants to increase awareness and is creating a tool to assess babies, which will help find the “right treatment pathway” for infants.
“There certainly needs to be more research into providing understanding behind when and where we can go and help with helmet therapy, and where there are alternatives,” she said.
Clinicians agree that more research is needed but warn parents should not be put off lying sleeping babies on their backs.
Parents still advised to lie babies on their backs
Dr Joanna Garstang is a community paediatrician and adviser for the cot death charity the Lullaby Trust.
She told us that while flat head syndrome is common, “in nearly all cases it just resolves spontaneously as the baby grows and begins to sit up and crawl”.
Lying babies on their backs is a public health success story, reducing the number of sudden infant deaths by 90% since the late 1980s.
“Even if parents are worried about flat head, putting the baby on the back to sleep is by far the safest way for the baby to sleep. If they’re worried about flat head they should talk to their GP or health visitor,” Dr Garstang said.
Becky Darby says choosing helmet therapy is “the best decision” that she took.
As for Leo, his helmet is working and should be off soon.
Merseyside Police knows – better than any force, perhaps – that in a social media age, an information vacuum can become a misinformation cauldron.
They have learnt from the aftermath of the Southport stabbing attack, where the force was criticised for being too slow to release information that could have calmed the riots that followed.
So, it feels like things have been done differently this time.
Image: Police tents surrounded by debris at the scene in Water Street. Pic: PA
The incident happened just after 6pm on Monday.
Videos – captured by fans on their phones – were online within moments. Shared and speculated upon, with guesses as to the attacker’s identity and motive.
But alongside the huge and immediate police investigation, the communication machine moved equally fast.
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Within a few hours, police released a description of the man they had arrested – a 53-year-old white British man from the Liverpool area.
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Moment car drives into crowds in Liverpool
A few hours after that, we had an extensive press conference during which police ruled out terrorism as a motive.
Again, they appealed for videos not to be shared online and for people not to speculate.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram said Merseyside Police “handled the situation fantastically” given how quickly footage of the incident was shared online.
He told Sky News that online misinformation can set “a lot of false narrative”.
The mayor added: “And we all know that speculation and social media are a wildfire of different vantages, and some of it is for nefarious reasons.
“So, it was right, of course, that the police reacted as quickly as they did to dampen down some of the types of posts that we were witnessing, you know, saying that there were other things happening throughout the city.”
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Police commentator Graham Wettone also told Sky News the force had done well to quickly combat misinformation spreading online.
He said: “That’s always a problem in today’s day and age, social media taking over so much news reporting, with so many people as well present at the scene where that awful incident took place, mobile phones out, people recording it, and then posting it almost straight away.”
Dal Babu, a former Metropolitan Police chief superintendent, also highlighted it was “unprecedented” that the force “very quickly” gave the ethnicity and race of the suspect.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, he said: “I think that was to dampen down some of the speculation from the far-right that sort of continues on X even as we speak that this was a Muslim extremist and there’s a conspiracy theory.”
Mr Babu agreed that Merseyside Police appears to have learned lessons from what happened after the Southport stabbings.
He added: “The difficulty we have is in the olden days, when I was policing, you would have a conversation with trusty journalists, print journalists, radio journalists, broadcasting journalists, you’d have a conversation and say look can you please hold fire on sharing this information and people would listen.
“We don’t have that with social media, it’s like the Wild West and anything goes and so puts the police in a very, very difficult position.”
Meanwhile, the police investigation continues.
In central Liverpool, Water Street is cordoned off with police officers and vehicles in place.
Flags, sprays of paint flares and empty bottles still cover the road. Whereas they have been cleared elsewhere along the parade route, here they remain. Chilling symbols of the party, that within moments became a scene of utter horror.
King Charles and Queen Camilla are being urged to use their visit to Canada to seek an apology for the abuse of British children.
Campaigners have called on them to pursue an apology for the “dire circumstances” suffered by so-called “Home Children” over decades.
More than 100,000 were shipped from orphan homes in the UK to Canada between 1869 and 1948 with many used as cheap labour, typically as farm workers and domestic servants. Many were subject to mistreatment and abuse.
Canada has resisted calls to follow the UK and Australia in apologising for its involvement in child migrant schemes.
Image: King Charles and Mark Carney on Monday. Pic: PA
Campaigners for the Home Children say the royal visit presents a “great opportunity” for a change of heart.
“I would ask that King Charles uses his trip to request an apology,” John Jefkins told Sky News.
John’s father Bert was one of 115,000 British Home Children transported to Canada, arriving in 1914 with his brother Reggie.
“It’s really important for the Home Children themselves and for their descendants,” John said.
“It’s something we deserve and it’s really important for the healing process, as well as building awareness of the experience of the Home Children.
“They were treated very, very badly by the Canadian government at the time. A lot of them were abused, they were treated horribly. They were second-class citizens, lepers in a way.”
John added: “I think the King’s visit provides a great opportunity to reinforce our campaign and to pursue an apology because we’re part of the Commonwealth and King Charles is a new Head of the Commonwealth meeting a new Canadian prime minister. It’s a chance, for both, to look at the situation with a fresh eye.
“There’s much about this visit that looks on our sovereignty and who we are as Canadians, rightly so.
“I think it’s also right that in contemplating the country we built, we focus on the people who built it, many in the most trying of circumstances.”
The issue was addressed by the then Prince of Wales during a tour of Canada in May 2022. He said at the time: “We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.”
On Tuesday, the King will deliver the Speech from the Throne to open the 45th session of Canada’s parliament.
Camilla was made Patron of Barnardo’s in 2016. The organisation sent tens of thousands of Home Children to Canada. She took on the role, having served as president since 2007.
Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.
A spokesperson for the Canadian government said: “The government of Canada is committed to keeping the memory of the British Home Children alive.
“Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada deeply regrets this unjust and discriminatory policy, which was in place from 1869 to 1948. Such an approach would have no place in modern Canada, and we must learn from past mistakes.”
The policy means most families cannot claim means-tested benefits for more than their first two children born after April 2017.
Ms Phillipson’s comments are the strongest a minister has made about the policy potentially being scrapped.
Analysis by The Resolution Foundation thinktank over the weekend found 470,000 children would be lifted out of poverty if parents could claim benefits for more than two children.
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However, Ms Phillipson said the government inherited a “really difficult situation” with public finances from the Conservative government.
“These are not easy or straightforward choices in terms of how we stack it up, but we know the damage child poverty causes,” she added.
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Why did Labour delay their child poverty strategy?
The education secretary, who is also head of the government’s child poverty taskforce, said ministers are trying to help in other ways, such as expanding funded childcare hours and opening free breakfast clubs.
She said it is “the moral purpose of Labour governments to ensure that everyone, no matter their background, can get on in life”.
Her “personal mission” is to tackle child poverty, she said.
Sir Keir Starmer is said to have privately backed abolishing the two-child limit and requested the Treasury find the £3.5bn to do so, The Observer reported on Sunday.
The government’s child poverty strategy, which the taskforce is working on, has been delayed from its original publication date in the spring.
Whether to scrap the two-child benefit cap is one of the main issues it is looking at.