BBC Documentaries

Standing Up for Joe (1986x2)

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'Joseph is coming out of a long sleep, like a hedgehog that's been in hibernation'. This time last year, 5-year-old Joseph Horsley had been virtually written-off by his doctors. He was probably blind. He couldn't sit, talk or do anything for himself. Joseph is a spastic quadriplegic. His parents were told to have another baby if they wanted to enjoy the pleasures of parenthood. Now his doctors say he will walk and eventually talk. But they are not the same doctors. This remarkable transformation has taken place not in England, but behind the Iron Curtain - in Hungary - by a method known as Conductive Education. It is a system beyond the reach of Britain's 10,000 cerebral palsied.This documentary film tells the story of the Horsley family's flight to Hungary, and their appeal to the Peto Institute to accept their son for treatment.