'This Is My Child': our long-planned campaign on children with additional needs

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

As some of you will remember, we started this thread a few months back to get your input about a possible campaign around children with additional needs.

The thread was hugely informative - thanks very much to everyone who gave their views. Many of you were asking for a broadly-focused campaign encompassing visible and non-visible disabilities among children, teenagers and adults, and across many platforms (poster advertisements, television campaigns and so on). Much as we'd like to do this sort of thing in an ideal world, realistically we're bound by the resources that are available to us. We've also found, over the years, that campaigns with a very specific focus can do much better than those with more general messages. In addition, we're mindful that many of the big campaigning organisations in this space have already undertaken more general awareness-raising campaigns to do with capacities and needs of people with disabilities, and we try not to re-invent the wheel (although we're always happy to add our voice to such campaigns when asked).

So we've decided to go with an awareness-raising campaign focused on the ways in which caring for a child with additional needs can change a family's life, and the myths about disability that can have negative impacts on such children and their carers. We're going to call it This Is My Child (again, thanks for all the input) as we think it's simple, arresting and suits the aims of the campaign best.

We're going to be addressing myths like:

MYTH: children with behavioural disabilities are just naughty and need a firm hand
MYTH: people in receipt of disability-related payments are likely to be 'scroungers'
MYTH: children with additional needs in mainstream schooling are drawing resources and attention away from other children
MYTH: it's easy to get a Blue Badge and mobility vehicles
MYTH: a non-expert can accurately judge the capacities and potential of a child with additional needs

We're going to be putting up a myth-busting page (similar to our We Believe You myth-buster here) which will be heavily featured across the site and promoted from our social media accounts, hopefully with some mainstream press coverage. We're also going to be featuring guest blogs on the topic and holding an event on Twitter using the hashtag #thisismychild; watch this space for details.

There are a few things we'd really like your help with:

1. Do let us have suggestions for myths you'd like busted (there's a limit to how many we can do, but it would be great to hear your thoughts).
2. Do you have any Top Tips for how to deal with situations in which you - particularly as a parent or carer - have been subject to ignorant or hostile responses from members of the public when out and about with your child? We'd love to put together a list of ninja ways to defuse, inform or simply get rid.
3. To go with the 'This Is My Child' theme, we're asking for MNers who are parents of or carers for children with additional needs to send in pictures of their child, which we will use for a photo gallery on the site. These can be completely anonymous and needn't be linked to your RL or MN name if you'd rather not; the idea is to personalise the issue for members of the public. If you'd be up for doing this, do please send in a digital photo (a roughly 500-pixel-sized image in a jpg, gif or png format) along with a caption (which can be pretty much anything you please: 'This is my child. He's eight and he loves Star Wars' - that sort of thing) to [email protected], with the subject heading 'This Is My Child, FAO Campaigns Team'.

Thanks for reading this far - as ever, do please let us know what you think.

This is one of the reasons I rarely venture of this board - usually on to education for a specific education question.

It might be a good idea to explore that before starting any campaign. Why do MNSN posters only really feel 'safe' here? Would MNHQ if posters who are gay only ever felt safe on their own board or those who are from an ethnic minority background?

I think the last thing we need to is articulate a campaign as an appeal to disablist views to be more tolerant: 'here's me and little Jimmy, he likes Star Wars and can't help flapping, please me nice to him'

Personalising it like this is like an appeal for sympathy, like a Children in Need appeal for tolerance. Cue 'whose going to drive you home tonight' music.

How about 'here's Jimmy, his needs constitute disabilities under the Equality Act. This is the law which prohibits discrimination and imposes duties on public sector bodies to promote equality. Non discrimination laws were borne out of the horror of WW2. Jimmy has rights - GET OVER IT!'

That should be : Would MNHQ feel it acceptable if posters who are gay only ever felt safe on their own board or those who are from an ethnic minority background?

One thing I must point out though. .exoticfruits is mentioning thread derailing over and over..anyone would think she was trying to stir up trouble

Or at least close down our arguments.

We should be allowed to discuss our children too.

I have reported her but expect nothing to happen.

I'm finding it piss poor that on a forum running this kind of campaign posts are being allowed to stand stating that families with disabled children should stay home so they don't inconvenience others.

Appalling and not in the spirit of the campaign.

But I'm not surprised. It's always been like this. We parents have always been low priority to MNHQ. In the past we were expected to educate. Fanjo feels she has to leave, I know of at least three others who have left here because of attitudes to their children on here and I've had to repeatedly NC due to the way my non sn issue threads were being picked upon.

Parents of kids with SN need the social contact forums like this being more than anyone. Often we're very isolated from the community around us. Yet we're repeatedly sneered at, our kids criticised... and nothing is done!

It shouldn't be a matter for 'debate' when these comments are made, it should be pointed out that they are wrong and not acceptable end of, much in the way that racist posts ate wrong and not tolerated.

HQ can you not see that this makes your campaign a farce?

I don't understand why MNHQ aren't using that thread as an opportunity to educate and explain to disablist posters what is and isn't acceptable.
To show that the site is capable of taking a lead, of having a 'character' and a moral stance.
Otherwise, like so many other campaigns and 'Let's get the message out there peeps' it comes across as the rather shallow and tokenistic attempt that I feared it might be when first proposed.
'What's the latest buzz thing that we can do to show that we care?'
What will the flavour of this moment be?
What can we do that will look good, cost nothing and not involve us in a meaningful commitment?

Smoke and mirrors.

Fanjo please don't go, or anyone else prepared to put a supportive/informative pov on this. Today I'm starting to make a real effort to challenge those kinds of opinions and comments, both in RL and on MN - I usually just lurk.

I know DD is my responsibility and no-one else's, btw, but I don't know anyone in RL with SEN. MN is where I go to feel that DD and my life and fears are normal.

Just realised I should explain that DD is very likely to be dx with ASD, and I am awaiting a dx myself.

Are MNHQ listening? Should we report our own posts and get them to have a look at them?

Bingo, eyes. HQ's further silence is asking the campaign seem all the more 'token'.

Thing is what's the point of trying to educate about disability when actually the community at large here feels that behaviours stemming from disability should be hidden and not tolerated? That equality for people with disability shouldn't happen? And they stand uncorrected.

As I've said before it shouldn't even stand as debate. Something of a racial context along the same lines wouldn't.

Ellen I've been doing that since last night. Finding the silence incredibly frustrating.

VL, that's why having the SN boards is the most useful thing MN can do for those of us with children that have SN. Because who else can you talk to?
Very few IRL, and none that can treat you as anonymous.
I used to belong to a site called Raising Kids that had an AS and ASD board, and it was so useful. When the site got bought out and closed down, I looked elsewhere and there was nothing other than MNSN that came close.
This is also where FB comes in handy, I'm still in contact with half a dozen posters from RK SN and that is the closest thing I have to a support network and a place to celebrate as well as share information and worries.

Myth: We'd like you all to join us on our campaign to heighten awareness of SN in the community, to address the exclusion and isolation that many parents feel, to open the eyes of those who don't see, to bring the Good News of support and friendship to the marginalised and to lead the united masses into the Promised Land of a truly Inclusive Society.

Truth: Gods, do you have to be so sodding bolshie and Professionally Offended and touchy?
You're just not grateful, are you?

Eyes,

That's so true, Eyes.

Signed
Another 'professionally offended' arsehole

Morning. Huge apologies for our non-appearance on this thread. That's, frankly, embarrassing: we should have been here yesterday.

Unusually for us, there weren't very many of us around this weekend so we're just catching up with what's happened. It does sound, though, as if we could have handled the situation better.

We'll post again as soon as we've got a handle on stuff.

And I'm in the twunty bollocks brigade!

Thank you Helen. Please look at the café thread. There's at least one truly unpleasant poster.

I agree that the cafe thread is utterly awful. It is a perfect illustration of several damaging myths and how deeply entrenched they are.

Myth: one can tell whether someone has SN or not just by looking.

Myth: behaviour isn't part of disability, so it's not disabilist to judge and exclude on that basis

Myth: if parents aren't doing what you think they should, they're just lazy, bad parents. There can be no other explanation

Myth: parents will always want to volunteer information about their child's SN

Myth: volunteering the above information always helps, and suddenly makes people tolerant and understanding

Myth: parents of SN children are chippy and awkward and should just slope off to the SN ghetto and stop commenting where threads are not about SN at all because, as per the myths above, you can always know when it's an SN issue and if for whatever reason there isn't a SN tattoo on the child's forehead, the parents will always tell you.

I'm sick of being cut down on here because my parenting experiences aren't the norm and perhaps some elements not consider socially acceptable.

i see exoticfruits is STILL mentioning thread derailing in every single post. It is shocking.

she MUST have an agenda, which must be to belittle us and our views.

Yep, we should shut up about our 'defectives', clearly.

The cafe thread is also somewhat illuminating about where caring carrots come from. There have been several posts about being a teacher and managing 30 children's behaviour etc.

It's also interesting how many teachers on there claim to be able to tell if its an SN issue or not. This is certainly not DS1's experience at all. Even with a diagnosis his teachers don't seem to be able to recognise that his problems are SN related. No. He's just lazy, fidgety, unmotivated, easily distracted, disorganised, etc.

This is great Mumsnet!

Would you mind if I shared it with CSI:Carer Support & Information group? We have quite a few parent carer members who would be interested in this I'm sure.

If anyone would like to read more about CSI pleas visit our website at www.csi-wyre.co.uk or email [email protected]

Thank you

Tina
Project Manager