THE BRILLIANT young professor was looking forward to taking on his critics in a high-profile debate.

Steve Baldwin, a tall, lean, driven man with a liking for yellow shirts and red braces, had become internationally known in his field since becoming Teesside University's first professor of psychology, in 1998.

Controversially, the 44-year-old academic had taken a public stand against the increasingly widespread use of the amphetamine-based drug Ritalin to treat children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Official figures show that 114,000 children in the UK were prescribed the drug last year. But Prof Baldwin regarded the treatment of young children with such powerful psycho-stimulants as tantamount to child abuse. He believed he had found a way to wean disturbed and sometimes suicidal children off Ritalin.

Instead of drugs, the pioneering Teesside academic set about proving that such children would respond to a non-drug approach - including special diets, counselling and psychotherapy.

And last November, Prof Baldwin heard the news he had been waiting for, when external funding was found to allow him to set up his Ritalin withdrawal clinic on Teesside and invite referrals from GPs across the UK.

Strongly criticised by some ardent supporters of Ritalin, including parents who say Ritalin is a wonder-drug which has transformed the lives of their children, Prof Baldwin's indiosyncratic views attracted media attention.

He found himself defending his views on BBC TV's flagship news and current affairs programme Panorama and appearing in the feature columns of national newspapers. It was because of his strong views and his pioneering research in this sensitive field that Prof Baldwin was invited to take part in an important seminar at the Institute of Psychiatry in London on Wednesday, February 28.

He agreed to be one of keynote speakers debating whether psychiatrists are too ready to use drugs on children, where one of the behavioural factors are simply the exuberance of youth.

To get to London in time for the important meeting, he rose early and boarded the first train of the day to the capital - the 04.45 Newcastle to London train.

A few hours later Prof Baldwin was dead - one of the ten passengers and rail staff killed when a freak accident near Selby in North Yorkshire led to the derailment of his Inter-City train and its subsequent head-on collision with a coal train.

The shockwaves from Prof Baldwin's sudden and tragic demise have been felt around the world - and instilled fear in parents whose treatment programmes for their children have been left hanging in mid-air.

His stunned colleagues set up a website on the Internet so expressions of condolence could be posted up. So far, more than 50 notices have been posted from academics and former colleagues from as far afield as South Africa, Australia and America.

As the news seeped out, some of the many desperate families Prof Baldwin had been working with were seized with fear that their only hope of treatment without Ritalin had suddenly disappeared. Their strongest hope is that his work should be continued.

Mandy Simpson from Banff in Scotland was due to see Prof Baldwin the weekend after he was killed. The mother-of-five had been put in touch with Prof Baldwin through the Edinburgh-based charity Overload International Network, a group set up to help children with severe behavioural difficulties - which is in touch with around 28,000 families who are looking for an alternative to Ritalin.

Her son, Damien, had been put on a high dose of Ritalin when he was diagnosed as having ADHD, at the age of seven.

"Damien would pick up a table and try to put it through a window, steal food, flood the bathroom. He has even tried to kill himself and me into the bargain," says Mandy. "They put him on Ritalin and within a few months he was a zombie," she says.

After contacing Overload, Mandy was introduced to Prof Baldwin, who immediately began a programme to get her son off Ritalin.

She says: "We had taken him off Ritalin slowly over a few months and I got my child back. He is an unholy terror but I know I am doing the right thing." The next stage was to have a treatment programme drawn up to deal with Damien's food obsession, but everything is on hold until Teesside University decides whether it is possible to contine Prof Baldwin's work with children with ADHD.

Mandy was hugely impressed by the psychologist and is devastated at the prospect that his work could come to an end. "If they abandon his work what are families like ours going to do? He was a really brilliant man, he was fantastic. It would be a disaster because we would have nothing left," she says.

Another parent, Nigel Grayson from Stockport in Cheshire, says Prof Baldwin transformed his 12-year-old son, James, who had been put on Ritalin to combat his extreme behavioural problems. "My boy was suicidal but after four meetings Steve turned all that around. That man is a huge loss to a lot of parents. The people at Teesside University need to be looking at how they can carry on his work."

Janice Hills, director of Overload International Network, worked closely with Prof Baldwin, who was the academic president of the group. They were working on a handbook, with feelance journalist Jean West, for parents of ADHD sufferers, which Janice intends to complete. "If we don't finish this book Steve will come back and haunt us," says Janice, who will be at the memorial meeting at Teesside University on Tuesday, April 3. Most of all, it will be the children who will miss Steve, says Janice.

"Children adored him. What always amazed me is that children who always had problems with psychiatrists loved Steve." Janice remembers one very disturbed eight-year-old who was put on Ritalin - he ended up barking like a dog and writing suicide notes. "But he was back at mainstream school within six months of Steve helping him come off Ritalin," she recalls. Experts are divided on the merits of the drug, which has the backing of the Department of Health providing guidelines are followed, and Steve was very much in a minority - but the debate he has started will run for many years.

For the other side of the Ritalin debate read The Northern Echo's Women's Editor, Arifa Akbar, on Monday. She talks to one mum who praises Ritalin, saying it has changed her son, for the better.