
North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust hosted an online child protection event in October, as part of a series of paediatric learning events that have been running since the start of the pandemic.
The Trust welcomed experts from across the country, from across health and social care agencies, police, and education sectors on the topic of Fabricated Illness (FII) Child Protection.
Mr Martin Gray, Director of Children’s Services at Stockton Borough Council, inaugurated the event. Some notable experts, including Professor Danya Glaser, Dr Geoff DeBelle and Dr Kate Ward MBE, presented topics throughout the day.
Dr Shashwat Saran and Dr Mark Aszkenasy, who helped organise and run the e-conference, said: “Fabricated illness is a difficult and complex, but very important subject that affects health and partner agencies nationally. We recognise that it is a massively undiagnosed condition and wanted to raise awareness amongst the medical fraternity and our partner agencies.”
Sessions also included anonymised case discussions with guest speakers Dr Deborah Hilton, Dr Rochelle Wilder and Dr Jo Begent. These discussions provided much-needed peer support and also helped show where learning from past cases can improve outcomes.

Dr Saran continued: “FII is a unique situation where parents or care giver’s reported concerns are not observed by professionals. This can lead to unnecessary investigations and treatments that can cause potential harm to the child’’
“That’s why it was such an important topic to discuss across partner organisations – a better understanding and better partnership working can vastly improve outcomes for the child involved.”
This child protection event saw record registrations of over 750 delegates and, approximately 560 attendees on the day. This massive attendance highlighted the importance of multi-agency working.
Dr Saran said: “We’ve received such an overwhelming response and subscription to attend the conference. I hope peers and colleagues will take the day’s discussions to build upon the knowledge learned’’.
“It’s been a fantastic and very successful day, with some excellent speakers who are experts in their field. We look forward to continuing to build on this success with further important topics in the future.”
Future events
The next paediatric webinar event in our series of events is the Neuro-developmental e-conference on Thursday 10 November 2022.
You can find out more information and book on to this event, please contact [email protected].