Shortly after Sally Phillips gave birth to her eldest son Olly 12 years ago, she was taken into a small room in the hospital and asked to sit down.

‘The doctor said “I’m so sorry” and the nurse cried,’ Phillips recalls. ‘And it was really clear that this was breaking bad news.’

She and her husband, Andrew, were told that Olly had Down’s Syndrome. It came as a complete surprise. None of the pre-natal tests had picked up on it. Phillips ‘just sort of compliantly went along with the way the story was presented to me’. Later, they took their newborn son home in a kind of fog.

‘You go home to deal with the “bad news” and you have friends and family who come round and get drunk and talk about the “bad news” and it’s all like something dreadful has happened,’ she says with a tired smile. ‘And something important has happened and you’re going to have to let go of some of the dreams you had, but it’s really not as bad as everyone makes out.’