Sarah Brown, Polly Tommey and Autism
Today’s Observer profiles Sarah Brown, the wife of British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. It focuses on her voluntary work which includes an interest in autism.
Nonetheless as her charitable interests expand, so do the risks, as the campaign she will front this autumn shows. Polly Tommey is the mother of an autistic child, who last year launched an eye-catching bid to publicise the plight of families by plastering her mobile number on London billboards and asking Gordon Brown to ring her. When she secured a meeting with the prime minister, health minister Phil Hope and Downing Street policy adviser Greg Beales, to her surprise Sarah Brown came too.
“Sarah said: ‘I really wanted to come to this, because I really want to get more involved with autism’. She genuinely wants to help, and that’s what I like about her,” Tommey recalls.
Mrs Brown, she says, commented on the number of small autism charities all fighting to be heard and suggested that they form a joint lobbying coalition. Her husband then asked Sarah to work with Tommey on setting up a campaign likely to concentrate on the needs of autistic adults, a decision reflecting what is increasingly a working partnership.
Either Sarah Brown was badly briefed or Polly Tommey is applying her formidable PR skills on her own account. While she was busy pushing herself into the limelight a number of autism charities had already got together and were making themselves heard. Here is the list of organizations working together with the National Autistic Society to support the Autism Bill in Parliament.
AIM
Autism Anglia
Autism Education Trust
Autism Initiatives UK
Autism Research Centre (ARC)
Autism Speaks
Autism West Midlands
The Children’s Society
Hampshire Autistic Society
Research Autism
Staffordshire Adults Autistic Society
Sussex Autistic Community Trust
TreeHouse
The Wessex Autistic Society
Wirral Autistic Society
Many of them were represented on the External Reference Group set up to report to government on its adult strategy for autism. Its chair is Mark Lever, CEO of the NAS. The Vice-chair is Anya Ustaszewski, member of the Autism Rights Movement and an adult with Asperger syndrome. The full list of members is appended to this report of its activities. Yet according to Polly Tommey, the prime minister no less, has asked his wife to work with Polly to bring the autism charities together to campaign for the needs of autistic adults. I wonder what Phil Hope made of all this. As Health Minister he has been involved in face to face talks with autism charities and their supporters in the All Party Parliamentary Group on Autism all year on the subject of adult needs. The government has adopted the private members bill on adults with autism and it is now a government bill.The I exist campaign has given a direct voice to the needs and aspirations of autistic adults. Where was Polly Tommey throughout all this? The Observer provides a clue.
However, there are risks in her new venture. Tommey’s belief in nutritional therapies and past comments on MMR vaccinations are controversial among some in the autism community: and Sarah Brown’s interest in autism has already led to sensitive ground.
The Observer is too kind. These are not Polly Tommey’s past views. They are bang up to date as even a cursory perusal of her magazine, Autism File, reveals. Polly Tommey is a fully paid up member of the club that believes vaccines cause autism and biomedical treaments can cure it. Her husband, Jonathon is a DAN practitioner who runs the Autism Clinic, offering a full range of quackery.
Effective protocols offering multiple treatments may involve:
Dietary Modifications
Nutritional Supplementation
Immunological Regulation/ Modulation
Anti-viral Medication
Homoeopathy
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
Gastrointestinal Treatments
Liver Support & Enhanced Detoxification (methylation and transulfation)
Glandular Support (adrenals, thyroid and pancreas)
Heavy Metal Chelaton Therapy
Physical Therapies - exercise, massage, reflexology, kinesiology, lymphatic drainage, yoga, breathing and relaxation techniques, etc.
All this comes at a price: £300 for an initial consultation and £90 an hour thereafter. But if your household income is less than £45,000 a year help is at hand. The Autism Clinic has arranged a deal with a charitable foundation Caudwell Children to provide grants up to £3000 per annum for treatment. Caudwell is a bone fide organization that helps lots of children. Do they know they are funding quackery when parents apply for grants to pay for visits to the Autism Clinic?
Earlier this year my friend Mike Fitzpatrick published an open letter to Gordon Brown warning him against any involvement with the Tommeys. I also discussed this and looked at the way the Tommeys propose to help autistic adults
Centres of Excellence
The Centres of Excellence proposed by the Autism Trust seek to provide residential communities in rural locations that provide a “safe haven” for autistic adults. They hope that such centres will provide support for autistic adults in the community, setting up in business or becoming self employed. But most people live in urban settings so it hard to envisage how they will benefit. And despite Mr Jones’ protests it is clear that the Autism Trust is as committed as Ms Tommey is to nonsense cures and treatments. Each centre of excellence will feature a wellness centre offering all manner of quackery including homeopathy, chelation and hyperbaric oxygen therapy, as well as training centre and a conference centre promoting these “biomedical interventions.”
I think that Mr Jones’ complaints against Dr Fitzpatrick are disingenuous. If anything Dr Fitzpatrick should be taken to task for failing to mention the Autism Trust in his open letter. At a time when service providers are moving away from the model of self contained autism communities in favour of closer integration of services within everyday society the Autism Trust proposes to build a worldwide network of such communities.
They expect local authorities to fund places in their residential homes while they are free to develop profitable spin offs promoting quackery. Or, as they describe it in their financial model:
The capital development and business operating model will depend on the facility mix and local partners – as well as the engagement and support available from local and national government. A mix of charitable status and commercially self-standing models will be explored in each location.
I believe that Polly Tommey engineered her Downing Street meeting in order to promote this new business venture. She claims to be concerned for the needs of autistic adults but has ignored all the initiatives in which adults are themselves involved. She has not consulted with any of the self advocacy groups for autistic adults. She has avoided any participation in the joint initiatives from the other autism groups in the UK. The Autism Bill does not even rate a mention in her Autism File. This is the woman who complained to the Daily Telegraph last year about Autism Speaks:
“Autism Speaks likes to work on its own,” says Polly Tommey who runs the British magazine Autism File. “Many charities and autism organisations won’t have anything to do with Autism Speaks for this reason.”
This is all a bit rich when you consider how Polly Tommey has sidestepped all the campaigns in the autism community to pursue her own agenda. As I said in my earlier blog post, I think she is unlikely to succeed, even with Sarah Brown, temporarily at least, hitched to her wagon. But she could make things awkward for those of us promoting genuine initiatives with a real likelihood of success.
Next week she is speaking at a seminar in Leeds, HOW DO WE BEST ENABLE CHILDREN AND ADULTS WITH AUTISM TO LEAD FULL LIVES ? I have no doubt that her much publicized meeting at Number Ten helped to secure her invitation. I hope that the assembled speakers who all seem far more qualified than her to speak to this question are not derailed by another bout of self aggrandizement from the women who describes herself in her autobiographical sketch for the seminar as
one of the leading figures in autism in the UK as a campaigning and influential journalist and is featured regularly as a sector expert in the media.
She may be a leading figure to the dwindling band of people who believe that vaccines cause autism and pills and potions can cure it. But she is wrong. And all the business skills and acumen in the world are not going to change that.
