ABSTRACT
When I was 15 I spent a summer working at a children’s camp run and organised by a national charity. The camp was unusual, not least because, although it was held in one of England’s leading public schools, it was not for pupils from that school. The children who joined the camp made an unusual mix. Half were deemed to be ‘at risk’ due to the high level of poverty in their East London homes. They were surprised, if not overawed, by the school with its wood-panelled rooms, oil paintings and half-hidden trunks of exotic clothes. The London children were initially bemused by the other group of children who came to the camp. This latter group all had severe physical disabilities. They tended to arrive with cases full of medical paraphernalia and letters specifying what they should not, for health reasons, be allowed to do.
