Chelmsford School Children Dress Loud and Lairy For Charity

CHILDREN at Westlands Community Primary School banded together last week to dress loud and lairy to raise over £330 for a charity that helps a baby with a rare skin condition.

The grandson of school teacher Kay Holby, Daniel Maples, aged 19 months, was born six weeks prematurely and with lamellar ichthyosis. The condition means excess skin is produced and it comes off in plate-like scales. His skin is also liable to split on his feet when he walks and he has to have at least two baths a day to keep his skin moist, as well as regular moisturising. But the condition is rare, with only one in 600,000 babies becoming affected.

Daniel’s mum, Emma Holby, 23, who lives in South Woodham Ferrers, said: “There was only one doctor who had seen ichthyosis in any form but for the rest of the staff this was their first experience of this condition.

“But then we found the Ichthyosis Support Group. They were fantastic – they sent me through a pack of information and it was about the different treatment options and we got in contact with other people who had the same thing we had.

“Without the group it would have been very isolating not being able to ask questions about the condition.”

The total raised by the pupils, who donned brightly coloured clothes, for the ISG was £332.