FASD Grows Up Part 3: 449 18-year-olds in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
449 young people. One local year group.
Today is International FASD Awareness Day. 9/9 — a reminder to stay alcohol-free for the nine months of pregnancy.
Around 449 of the 11,216 eighteen-year-olds living in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are likely to have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. That is 4% — the upper bound of the only rigorous UK prevalence study, which looked for FASD in mainstream primary schools. In that study not one of the children it identified had been diagnosed before.
For the 449 local 18-year-olds the reminder about the risks posed by prenatal alcohol exposure has come too late. For all people living in the two local authorities, the message about the risks posed by alcohol is not always effectively communicated. In reality it has the potential to be more harmful to the foetus than smoking, pate, soft cheese, eggs and have lifelong effects. Did you know that?
No Woman drinks to harm their child, many just don’t know the potential risk that is caused by alcohol & pregnancy.
FASD is a lifelong neurodevelopmental condition caused by alcohol exposure in pregnancy. It is more common than autism, and it is preventable. With the right understanding and support, the young people living with it can and do thrive.
Throughout FASD Awareness Month we are setting out what FASD is projected to cost Peterborough and Cambridgeshire — and what could be different.
Read our local fact sheet: https://www.fieldofenterprise.org/blog/the-cost-of-inaction-in-peterborough-cambridgeshire-2026-relating-to-fasd
This is the third posting of information this month. In Posting’s 1 & 2 I looked at the personal and professional implications of living with people with FASD (have a look). In this posting we move on to focusing on how FASD impacts Cambridgeshire & Peterborough.
This posting is particularly relevant as Callum, my son, is one of those 449 young adults making the transition from being regarded as a child to adulthood along side everything that is included with this key right of passage he is challenged by the effects of FASD. What sets Callum aside is that for over 7 years he has had a diagnosis of FASD. For well over 400 of the local 18-year-olds, no one will know, no one will have considered the possibility that they have been impacted by prenatal alcohol exposure, but because the knowledge base about FASD is so poor nothing will have been done to support them properly.
It shouldn’t be like that because unlike many local areas there has been a strong showing of people who have been working to raise awareness.
And yet despite having an EHCP, despite being designated as a care leaver, despite being clever and despite wanting to achieve at the time of writing Callum remains without Education, Employment or Training. He is promised something starting in September, but we are already 9 days in, and we’ve been promised action before. He was promised something last academic year as well.
Its simply not good enough for him and the other 448, 18-year-olds that live here.
These posts across September 2026 are only possible due the support of the National Organisation for FASD. In June 2026, the Charity published an in depth look at the cost of FASD in the UK. professional AI software was used to interrogate available national data so that a detailed report could be written about the impact of FASD to the UK. That report can be found here. https://nationalfasd.org.uk/the-cost-of-inaction-on-fasd/ After a discussion about whether the same software could be used to drill down into locally available data an interesting set of information appeared for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough as well as another set for Hertfordshire where the National Organisation has its office. The following posts reflect the information gathered for Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
Please search my other posts / blogs throughout FASD Awareness month 2026 for a full picture of the current situation and needs in Peterborough & Cambridgeshire UK.
Brian Roberts
September 2026
