A mother wrongly convicted of killing two of her babies is helping a Scot seeking to overturn a conviction of assault against a child.

Angela Cannings, originally from Salisbury, Wiltshire, who spent 18 months in prison before her life sentence was quashed, launched a foundation yesterday to support other families who have suffered miscarriages of justice.

The Angela Cannings Foundation was launched by the Justice for Families lobby group, which is calling on the government to reform the way medical experts are used in court and for greater openness in family court proceedings.

The foundation will back Susan Hamilton, 42, the Edinburgh mother who was acquitted of attempting to poison an eight-year-old girl with salt, but found guilty of assault to the endangerment of life by a majority verdict in 2003 and jailed for four years.

The jury heard that from May 1995, the girl was fed using a feeding tube into her stomach. The Crown said Hamilton used this to administer large doses of salt. The girl suffered permanent brain damage.

Hamilton is seeking to show that Domperidone, a drug which she says was prescribed to the child, could have caused the high salt levels.

Penny Mellor, who co-founded the foundation, said the group had found the appropriate experts for her and her appeal.

The foundation inauguration began with a minute's silence for Sally Clark, who was cleared by the Court of Appeal in 2003 of killing her two sons after spending three years in prison, but who died less than two weeks ago.