FIVE-year-old Burnley boy Aaron Slater has already missed a year's schooling - at an age when he should be getting a vital grounding in education.

He is also deprived of a normal lifestyle of learning and playing with other youngsters at school.

That's because he has a health problem - an allergy to nuts that could possibly kill him.

But he is also a victim of red tape and over-caution when, perhaps, a more humane and understanding outlook towards his plight could end his sad seclusion.

In brief, Aaron needs a swift "antidote" injection of adrenaline if he has an allergy attack and that could happen if, innocently, other children gave him anything with a nut content.

In other cases like his, the children's parents are "on call" nearby with the vital medication at the ready.

But this little lad is denied that back-up as his lone-parent mother has no transport and could not get to school quickly enough - and she is not eligible for a mobility allowance.

And teachers at the infant school where he had been granted a place will not help out as they have been warned by their trade union that they could find themselves in a vulnerable legal position if they volunteered to give Aaron the injections and a mishap ensued.

The problem is thorny, we admit.

But, surely, it could be overcome if, instead of it being sustained by strict insistence on the rules and dread of a lawsuit, some common sense and compassion were applied to the equation.

Are the regulations really so inflexible that Aaron's mother cannot be helped with transport?

We would like the officials in charge of this benefit to check again.

But if no help is forthcoming on that front, could not the teachers be empowered to administer injections without the cloud of a potential lawsuit hanging over them - with the boy's mother indemnifying them from legal action for any harm that was not deliberately caused?

Every kiddie deserves a proper education and a normal childhood and little Aaron's unhappy exclusion from both might be ended if the emphasis was on the utmost being done to help him rather than the apologetic no-can-do response his plight has received so far.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.