Fighting for Annabelle
Woman’s Own
A mother’s fight to get her daughter the care and support she needed to fulfil her potential
A mother’s instinct is there for a reason, and when Kate Skelton’s little girl failed to hit any of the usual milestones, she knew she had to fight…
Whilst other babies in Annabelle’s sensory play group sat up like sturdy little tanks and reached out for the toys around them, she lay fast asleep for the entire session. Even when she woke, at six months old she still couldn’t hold her head up.
Annabelle couldn’t crawl and the usual first babbles of early speech failed to materialise. Kate battled to see specialists, who all told her to come back months later.
In the end, it was an emergency admission to hospital after a nasty viral infection that resulted in an MRI of Annabelle’s brain. It revealed there was something ‘catastrophically wrong’ with Kate’s little girl - her brain hadn’t developed properly and was missing vital white matter.
After months of genetic testing, a cause was finally found - the very rare FOXP1 mutation. It could mean a myriad of challenges including autism, global developmental delay and cerebral palsy, all of which Annabelle had.
At first, Annabelle’s future looked bleak, and Kate was warned her little girl would never walk or talk. But Kate and husband Philip were determined to help Annabelle fulfil her potential, and took their local authority to tribunal and won all the provisions she had a right to receive, meaning regular and plentiful hours of physiotherapy, speech and language therapy and specialist guided care.
It cost the pair £10,000 in a legal fight, but made the world of difference for Annabelle and her future, as well as to her quality of life and ability to communicate with her loved ones.
At two, she finally took her first steps - down the aisle of her godmother’s wedding, and a week before her fourth birthday, she finally said her first word, the one Kate longed to hear: ‘Mummy.’
Read the family’s journey in Woman’s Own (issue that was on sale 27 September 2021 and still available for digital download) and a beautiful Christmas letter in That’s Life Australia, on sale 15th December 2021.
