You might remember the heartbreaking story of Martha Mills, who died aged 13 after developing sepsis following an injury sustained during a bike ride.

Martha was admitted to hospital with pancreatic injury as a result of the end of her bike’s handlebar hitting into her stomach.

Per the BBC, her family’s concerns over her deterioration in hospital were not listened to, and – following her death – a coroner ruled that had she been referred promptly and appropriately treated, the “likelihood is that she would have survived her injuries”.

Her parents, Merope and Paul, later campaigned for a new rule whereby loved ones could flag concerns and trigger an urgent review if a patient’s condition deteriorated and they were concerned they weren’t being listened to by medical professionals.

This rule, dubbed Martha’s Rule, is now being rolled out across all NHS hospital A&E departments, with a view to complete this between now and March 2028.

Patients, loved ones and even staff in busy emergency departments will be able to call a dedicated Martha’s Rule phone number to trigger an urgent review if a patient’s condition is deteriorating and they are concerned this is not being acted upon.

This is different to a second opinion, where you’d speak to another consultant to discuss a diagnosis or treatment.

As the service is operated separately by each NHS Trust or hospital, the phone number will vary depending on location. This information will be displayed on posters and information around participating hospitals.

Between now and 2028, patients and their families can check with their local hospital or NHS trust website whether Martha’s Rule is available – you can also ask hospital staff on site.

According to the Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust website, you might call the Martha’s Rule number if your loved one is:

• Acting different to usual (/is not being themselves)
• Breathing differently
• Sweating or looking an unusual skin colour
• Experiencing reduced urine output or not passing urine
• More sleepy than usual or confused
• Cold or very hot to touch on their hands
• In pain and looks uncomfortable.

A pilot in seven trusts to test whether the escalation process worked in A&E environments found, over the course of eight months, 69 calls were made to dedicated Martha’s Rule phone numbers.

In some cases, this led to a patient having urgent surgery or being transferred to intensive care.

Discussing the rollout, Professor Aidan Fowler, National Director of Patient Safety at NHS England, said: “Martha’s Rule is already having a transformative effect in making our acute care even safer, and by expanding Martha’s Rule into A&Es, we are giving even more patients, their families and NHS staff a critical new lifeline to help improve care and save more lives.

“Early testing has shown that Martha’s Rule can work well in busy A&Es and builds on the evidence from our adult and children’s wards, where thousands of calls have been made by patients, families and staff to date – with many leading to changes in treatment and potentially life-saving interventions.”

So far, Martha’s Rule has been rolled out to 221 acute adult and paediatric inpatient sites. Hospitals are also expected to extend it to A&E, maternity and neonatal units by March 2028.

A charity which aims to kick racism out of sport could sue Reform UK after a council withdrew support for the organisation.

Chris Eynon, the leader of Sunderland City Council, said the local authority would no longer back “politically charged organisations with an agenda”.

He also accused Ged Grebby, chief executive of Show Racism The Red Card, of “stark political bias” over comments he has made criticising Reform.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, Grebby said he was expressing his own personal opinion rather than the charity’s, which he insisted has cross-party support.

He said any suggestions that Show Racism The Red Card was a political organisation “could cause huge damage” to the organisation.

Grebby said: “It’s a very serious accusation to say a charity is being party political.

“If Reform are making false accusations against us, our lawyer will look into whether it is libel.”

He added: “I’ve got a right to have my own political views, and I stand by comments I’ve made about Nigel Farage and Reform being dangerous. But as a charity we need to be cross-party.”

He said any suggestion that Show Racism The Red Card is linked to the Labour Party was “absolute nonsense”.

“As a charity we’ve got the support of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens,” Grebby said. “We’ve always worked with other political parties.”

Sunderland City Council has supported the charity since it was set up 30 years ago.

In the last year, the funding it received from the authority trained 250 teachers and educated 1,675 young people in the local area about tackling racism.

Grebby said the charity had been planning to re-apply for funding from the council, but now there was “no point”.

“The damage will be that we’re unable to provide those programmes in future,” he said.

Asked about Sunderland City Council’s decision on LBC, Reform home affairs spokesman Robert Jenrick refused to criticise them.

He said he had “not seen the evidence” behind the claim that Show Racism The Red Card is a “politically-charged organisation”.

But in a later post on X, Jenrick accused Grebby of being “a left-wing political activist”.

He said: “Residents would be right to question whether this organisation should be supported financially by their council under Mr Grebby’s leadership.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying the wages of political activists like Mr Grebby. If Show Racism The Red Card wants to command public support, and receive public money and charitable status, I’d suggest they look for a new CEO.”

Listen to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

According to a paper published in JAMA Psychiatry, the types of people who get diagnosed with ADHD or autism have changed in the past decade or so.

Compared to people diagnosed with these forms of neurodivergence a decade or more ago, a Danish study found that children and adolescents with ADHD or autism now have more characteristics in common with the general population.

Until 2012, young people with either diagnosis tended to have been born at lower birth weights, while their parents were more likely than those of undiagnosed kids and teens to have lower education rates and less household income.

But those links seem to have become “weaker” over the years, with more recently-diagnosed young people increasingly presenting similarly to their neurotypical peers.

Here, we asked Professor Laura Crane, a Chair in Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Autism Centre for Education and Research (ACER), to weigh in on these findings.

Let’s start with what researchers don’t think is happening here.

The study authors stressed that these results “do not show that these conditions are being overdiagnosed or that they have become less severe”, though they could help explain why ADHD and autism diagnoses have risen so sharply.

Instead, the study may “indicate that the population receiving these diagnoses has changed over time, and this needs to be taken into account when interpreting current trends”.

One explanation, Prof Crane said, is that we’re simply getting better at spotting autism and ADHD in cases that would have previously been missed.

“Historically, diagnoses were often reserved for people whose differences and support needs were quite specific and quite overt,” she told us.

“Greater awareness of autism – among the general public as well as healthcare professionals – means that many individuals who may previously have gone unrecognised (e.g., autistic women and girls, who have been shown to internalise or mask their autistic characteristics) are now being identified”.

That could mean more people, including those whose “day-to-day experiences appear more similar (at least on the surface) to those of their non-diagnosed peers”, are no longer going under the radar.

The authors of the paper write that differences in who gets diagnosed do not mean the neurodivergent experiences they live with are “less impairing on the individual level”.

Interestingly, Professor Crane says, “researchers are recognising that the difficulties neurodivergent people face arise not simply from characteristics within the individual, but from the interaction between those characteristics and the environment the person is in”.

Therefore, the “severity” of a person’s ADHD or autism might not rely entirely on static conditions within the person diagnosed. The professor pointed to research that argues the world around that person can make their neurodiversity more or less challenging.

For instance, the UCL paper suggests that workplaces and schools are becoming more results-driven and demanding.

“As such, people with less overt autistic characteristics may still experience significant difficulties – across a range of areas of their life – because of the mismatch between their characteristics and what their environment expects of them,” Prof Crane suggested.

“Overall then, I think these findings likely reflect a combination of factors, including broader recognition of autism and ADHD and changes in who receives a diagnosis,” she ended.

“But they don’t necessarily mean that these diagnoses have become less significant or impairing. Often due to the mismatch between the person and the environment, many neurodivergent people continue to face substantial barriers across education, employment, healthcare and everyday life.”