"Good skin care at the Sheffield Children's Hospital"

My youngest son (7 years old) has had quite bad alopecia, so he had large areas on his head where no hair would grow. He's had it, getting gradually worse, for about 5 years I guess.

We took him to the skin clinic at the Children's Hospital. They've been very good. They found he was iron deficient so that was the first thing to correct (apparently you need lots of iron to make hair, or something).

Then they tried out various lotions and scalp things. The one we are on now seems to be working quite well and most of the top of his head has hair again, which is a great relief (to me - he doesn't seem to notice).

He's has about 5 blood tests so far and the thing to ask for with a child is "magic cream" which is a local anaesthetic which means they don't feel the needle. It takes about 30 mins to work so you have to go off and have a cup of tea and come back for the blood test later. But it's worth it.