IT IS every parent's nightmare. Your child is seriously ill or injured - yet no one in authority appears to believe there is anything much wrong.

This is the frightening scenario that Stephen and Karen Fletcher say they faced when they took their six-year-old son James to York Hospital, following a playground fall in which he banged his head on concrete.

James was being frequently sick and crying out in pain. Yet at the hospital, his parents were told by a doctor that their son did not fit the strict hospital guidelines for having a scan and X-ray, while a nurse suggested he was probably only suffering from a stomach bug.

After feeling that nothing was being done for their son, the Fletchers took him home - only for James to be rushed back in an ambulance to the hospital, where the true extent of his injuries was eventually discovered.

James had been suffering from a fractured skull all along, yet initially no one at the hospital appeared to believe he was in any danger.

Medical staff deal with a constant flow of difficult decisions and, occasionally, they make what appears to be a bad call. Lessons must clearly be learned from this incident - something the hospital authorities acknowledged by declaring James's case to be a Serious Untoward Incident.

Yet it is still worth pointing out that such apparent lapses are very rare. York Hospital carries out wonderful work with children, as the inspirational tales being uncovered by our Guardian Angels appeal remind us day after day.

Updated: 09:30 Thursday, October 27, 2005