Get to know us better

We are always looking for new members to join us, please feel free to come along or contact us for more details.

In 2008, Michelle Boyd, a family outreach support advisor and parent of an autistic son, and Elizabeth Ainge, parent of an autistic child, felt that there was a huge gap in the support field for parents of special needs children and decided to start an informal meet up once a week. Locally there weren′t any support groups for parents where they could meet and discuss the events of their lives and share information and advice with regard to applying for benefits and statements of education.

In 2009 Rachel Moran took over the running of the group with Michelle′s support when she went on maternity leave and we made some changes to the group. We decided that we needed to advertise the group more as we knew there were parents that wanted the support; we just needed to reach them to tell them about us. We had the support of the local Children′s Centre at Willingdon Trees who had allowed us to use the premises to hold the group and they put us in touch with other organisations to advertise the group and spread the word. In July 2009 we received our first grant for £150 from SNAPPS, this was a huge boost and allowed us to purchase equipment and materials to promote and advertise, we also received a lot of advice from them about setting up our group. We were now in a position where we had to set up a committee so that financial matters could be handled efficiently, initially this consisted of myself as Chair, David Moran as Secretary and Dannii Courtier-Taylor as Treasurer.

We have now had to enlarge our committee to meet the demands of the group and have been joined by Marie Baker, who has set up her own charity; Dravet Syndrome UK and is a parent to a child with Dravet Syndrome, Nicole Sewell and Carolyn Francis, parents to children with additional needs, and Samantha Tuppen who runs a local business. The committee now meets at regular intervals and minutes from these meetings are produced and available for members to view on request.

We are always looking for new members to join us, please feel free to come along or contact us for more details.