Organised by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, thescheme aimed to coax paediatricians back into court work following thecontroversial Cannings case, in which the expert testimony of ProfessorSir Roy Meadow was called into question.
Meadow was struck off the medical register in July following thecase.
The college says it has redoubled efforts in recent months to getpaediatricians onto the scheme, but admitted that it has not been easyto attract participants.
College vice president for training Dr Pat Hamilton said: "There istremendous reluctance to become an expert witness because people haveseen colleagues getting into trouble and because of the hostile viewthat the public has had.
"We have a very adversarial judicial system and paediatricians arefairly benign people - it can be a shock to find yourself in thisposition."
She added that shift patterns worked by clinicians made it hard to cleartime for the mini-pupillages. "We did put out some legal contacts forpaediatricians to get in touch with, but realised we needed to put morethought into it. People needed more guidance to get the best out of thescheme," Hamilton said.
Nonetheless, the college is pressing ahead with plans to establishsupport schemes in Wales and each region of England, wherepaediatricians can undertake mini-pupillages in family law.
