'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.

here's why, even

I love that R word campaign in the US - started, I think, by a teenage boy with an autistic brother

Sorry no, soeren palumbo - the incredible teenage boy who made a speech at his high school which likened the term retard to the n word, has a sister with an intellectual disability. He started the End the R word campaign and his speech is on you tube, very moving

What a brilliant sounding campaign, thank you.

My myth to bust is "they all get there in the end"

My dd is doing brilliantly and I am so proud of her. But she is not going to magically start talking at 4 and then come up with the next theory of relativity, or run for prime minister. She will always find talking and anything physical really difficult - and have to work much harder than most kids to learn things. It is a big ask, but I'd live to disrupt the culture of platitudes that seems to me to ignore the child completely.

I also loved the term 'rights, not needs' in reference to education. My dd's (mainstream) preschool have in many ways been fabulous - but even they have a tendancy to break her away from the group for lots of one to one rather than supporting her learning in an integrated way with the others. Which is much harder to do effectively.

And also - myth - "babies are babies until they are walking" and "signing is for deaf people". People are always calling dd a baby because she is crawling. She is nearly 3 (though granted, does look younger). She knows she isn't a baby and gets confused.

I am also sometimes asked if she can hear anything. She hears everything and understands nearly all of it. I just sign to help her build her language as that is how she communicates for now. I have no problem explaining that but would love it if people wouldn't assume she is deaf in the way they talk to her.

I also really identified with the poster who gets told @but she's gorgeous". I get this a lot too - and tend to smile and say "yes, she is. She's very caring and she works really hard. I'm very proud of her".

Yes I constantly get told dd2 who has autism is gorgeous as though physical appearance is important and all her issues don't matter . Also mil told me I was lucky as she has a statement a ss place with transport and receives dla . These are things my dd needs and like everyone else here I had to work hard to get them .i resent them being described like a lottery win

oi aarbitary, yoo hoo I am a teacher, and have managed 30 children's behaviour, 310 on the playground in rough areas... it's bloody hard work not always difficult. it is easy to assume that it is the parent's fault that the child is misbehaving, especially if at home time. i have witnessed one child with autism run off from his mum, slap, hit, kick and pull her hair...spit and swear and attempt to attack other children and his sister. of course he calmed down with me eventually after all the other parents bloody left and did not see how good he was

funny that, controlling 310 children, seemingly unable to control one small boy, my boy.

by the way, the hair is growing back and the bruises faded after a week and ds is still absolutely bloody gorgeous and mostly well behaved when school have not wound him up with 3 different supply teachers in a week.

I think sometimes people just don't know what to say, so if they don't get it quite right but clearly mean well, we shouldn't be too hard on them. I was in a situation the other day with parents of children in a hospice, and I didn't know what to say - did they went to talk about the child's condition, or would it be better to pick a different subject? I probably did also comment on how cute someone's child was (it was true) but could it be that I pissed those parents off? Not everyone knows the precise, perfectly-judged thing to say about my autistic, LD boy, and I always actually rather like it when they spot how gorgeous he is!

Mind you, even I was pretty amazed when someone asked me the other day, on learning that my boy is autistic :"so when will you be sending him away to a home?"!! That would definitely be the WRONG thing to say, but then he was clearly a bear of very small brain!

I don't mind at all when people say my DS is gorgeous (he is!), but I don't like it when this is an add-on to saying how terrible it is that he is autistic, as if it is worse because he is so lovely to look at.

I don't like:

'DS is a lovely looking boy with a warm smile' as the first line of his statement.

Feck off!

On the back of what Dudesmummy said I have actually heard and also read somewhere before that children with autism tend to be exceptionally good looking. Is there any truth in this or is it a stupid myth ?

Yes my DS's statement tells me at the very beginning that he is "delightful"!

I got it changed to 'DS is a capable boy'.

I wanted 'highly capable boy' but had to concede 'highly' during the tribunal process.

(All very well being delightful, but when absolutely no provision/funding of any kind is forthcoming so far, despite it being on the statement, how does it help him?)

I have also heard that thing about autistic children being very good looking, but I can't really think of any reason why it should be so (although my stepdaughter calls DS the "fairy child" because of both his looks and his general demeanour). Probably really a myth?

Dudesmummy - quite agree! cant see why it would be so either, but im now starting to remember it was a documentary i saw on tv. Come to think of it, i did a project involving patient referrals once and nearly all the referral letters started with 'this delightful gentleman", some were more honest 'Emma is indeed a very stubborn old lady, but needs reassuring....'

Perhaps its part of medical writing etiquette where they have to put in a description of the person they are writing about that sets them apart from their illness/disability.

I've just seen this beautiful children

Um...my DS is pretty average looking, he was a cute toddler, but they all are then aren't they? He's been through the awkward gangly phase and he's now all spotty and can't be bothered shaving.

I mean I suppose he might be alright looking under that, but it's a bit hard to tell at the moment, lol

laughing out loud at might be alright looking under a hat

'alright looking under that' even...

This is a great campaign but I think we are in danger of forgetting that these beautiful children of ours grow up. If anything the services for adults with disabilities are even worse than for children, except that as adults they might no longer have an adult round to support them or fight for them.

I'd like to see this campaign address the issues faced by all those with disabilities. Including our children in 10, 20 ,30 or more years time. My son is autistic with ADHD and his needs are already a challenge with little support out there. As an adult what is there going to be? The answer is nothing and we need to be highlighting the fact that these children grow up and become the isolated adults and unsupported members of society.

Of course if this lack of support and isolation affects them really badly then they may cause problems...in which case we condemn them to prison often.

I like this campaign, I really do but it is too narrow.

That! that! rofl

Though a hat might help?

I suppose though, Jake, that MN is focusing the campaign on awareness, and attitudes (rather than lack of services and support) and as a forum largely made up of parent's of young children and teens it is bound to centre around that.