`He knew I was his mum from day one'

The authorities said her baby would be better off in care. One look at this picture shows that they were wrong. Paraplegic Penny Roberts tells HESTER LACEY about the battle to keep Peter

Most new mothers feel a pang of anxiety when they bring their baby home for the first time. Penny Roberts had more reason to feel anxious than most. Penny was terribly injured in a sky-diving accident four years ago; her parachute failed to open and her spine was badly damaged when she hit the ground. She has some movement left in her arms but is paralysed from the chest down. And, as if coping with her pregnancy itself was not enough, she also had to go through a gruelling battle with her local social services department to win the right to keep her baby. Bradford Social Services argued that life with a severely disabled single mother would not be in the baby's best interests and that the help that Penny, now 36, would need would be too expensive.

Peter Roberts is now five-and-a-half months old. He is bonny, smiling, blue-eyed and fair-haired. "He knew I was his mum from day one," says Penny. "There are times when, no matter what's happening, he just wants his mum, and that's a lovely feeling." It is obvious that Peter adores her and she adores him. She is able to cuddle him and breast-feed him. But for tasks like bathing and dressing, she relies on her team of five carers. This, she says, hurts. "I've got all these motherly urges to care for him and somebody else is caring for him inches away and I can't," she says. "As he grows and he's supporting himself more, I can do some things, but there will be a stage where he gets too heavy."

She and Peter, she says, are learning together. "At first I was really scared to do anything with him because I couldn't grip him. If he needed to be moved I'd ask my carer. But I was feeding him one day and he needed to sit up and there was nobody around, so I just pushed him with my wrist and I thought `Oh, I can do that'."

Peter, she says, shows an uncanny knowledge of how to help her care for him. "It's as if he instinctively knows the limits of my abilities. Breast- feeding he sorts himself out and, getting comfortable on my lap, he leans and wiggles and he knows how far to go."

After seeing Penny and Peter together, it seems preposterous that anyone could have thought it would be "in the best interests of the child" to be brought up away from his mother. But if Penny had not been prepared to fight hard, things could have been very different.

She split from Peter's father early in her pregnancy. "I was alone against the Establishment," she says. "It started off really early when I was 16 weeks pregnant." Because she was pregnant, Penny had to stop taking the drugs she needs for pain control. Social services moved her to a nursing home, supposedly for a "short stay", because she would need extra care. Then they said she would have to stay because it was not cost-effective to support her in her own cottage in Steeton, Yorkshire. "Had I stayed in the nursing home, there would have been no question of me keeping Peter," says Penny.

Her local television company came to the rescue with a "Free Penny" campaign. "That set the scene, the battle lines were drawn. By the time my story appeared in the national press, social services considered me a stroppy cripple. `Who does she think she is?' - that was the attitude."

Penny's battle to keep her baby attracted national coverage. At the time, she came across in the media as extremely tough, but, she says, it was a veneer born of desperation. "To take him away, they would have literally had to tear him from my arms," she says. "But it's a very insecure feeling to be paralysed and have that threat over you. They literally could take him away from me and there wouldn't be a thing I could do about it. I couldn't grab him back or stop them opening the door."

The final meeting with social services to decide Peter's fate took place just four days before he was born by Caesarean section. Penny couldn't eat or sleep, and couldn't even bring herself to shop for her unborn child. "I had three romper suits and a pack of nappies when he was born. I didn't want to tempt fate - to buy lots of things and then have them say `We're going to take this baby away'. The social workers totally ignored me as a person and as the baby's mother, I felt I was just some sort of incubator. I was treated as this lump in a wheelchair. But I am the same person as I was before I had my accident."

The treatment she received made her shocked, depressed and angry - and determined to make her story public. "I was a nurse for 18 years before my accident and if you'd said to me that this sort of thing goes on with the disabled, I wouldn't have believed it. My reaction was that people should know." She believes that public pressure helped to keep Peter with her. "I don't think they would attempt to take him away now, partly because of the public interest - there was such an overwhelming response. But I think at every opportunity they will try and economise. The other danger is that when he gets older he will be seen as a carer. I won't ever let anyone say to him he should be making my tea rather than being out playing football."

But although she derives so much joy from her child, things can never be perfect. Before her accident she was independent and loved sports and travel; now she can never be alone, never cook for herself, never head out for the day on a whim. In her house, which has been adapted and has a lift, there is a hefty folder entitled "Looking After Penny". She wrote it for her carers, and it goes into minute detail about how the washing- up should be done, when the dishcloths are to be sterilised, that the loo seat must be left down. Her house is littered with notes, reminders to all-comers not to put anything on top of the stereo, to wash their hands. At first this seems pernickety. But imagine how it must feel to have a stream of strangers passing through your home, all doing their own thing.

She has had a new electric wheelchair for the past three weeks. "It's helped a lot. It sounds really stupid but last week I collected stuff that was drying on the radiator and took it upstairs and put it on the bed and came back downstairs alone. I hadn't done that for four years. I actually went out on my own - I hadn't done that for four years either."

There is, she says, no hope now that she will be compensated for her accident, which happened during a trip to the US. Forensic scientists spent over three years going over her parachute, and identified a design fault which has since been modified - but the manufacturer was uninsured so she cannot make a claim. "Nothing can compensate for the accident, and I feel bitter for being his unofficial test pilot. But I never let myself expect any money. I was more upset that somebody could make something that would have such devastating effects, not be insured, and it be legal."

Penny is hoping to move to a bungalow before Peter becomes mobile enough to tackle the stairs. She gives lectures on medical care of the disabled, and she is going on a legal training course soon. And she intends to get a specially modified van. "I'll be able to go out without having to book public transport, which is a nightmare. I don't want to live on benefits but I'm forced to by the present situation. I hope that will change and I can make a living."

And, she says, there are even advantages to her situation. "I can spend endless time playing with Peter, reading him stories, helping him to learn to write and use the computer, because I don't have to do things like housework." She is determined to give her son every advantage she can. "I'm aware that this isn't a normal family environment. He sees his relatives as much as possible and I'm going to take him to the playgroup so he'll be a sociable little boy. I'm determined that he won't miss out. I may not be able to play football but I can take him and watch. Take every day as it comes and do your best, that's all you can do."

With her new electric chair, she can take Peter out and about. "We've been to the shops twice. People know me in town, it's a small place - I'm aware that there must be people who think I shouldn't have kept him but nobody has ever said anything bad to me. People come up all the time and ask me how I'm doing. That's really nice. The fact that he's sitting in my lap and he's happy makes me so proud."

A documentary on Penny Roberts, `Penny's Baby', will be shown as part of Channel 4's `Access All Areas' series on 6 March at 7.30pm.