'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.

Hear hear hazeyjane .

Myth: You must have done something for your DC to act the way he/she does.

My daughter is currently statemented with behavioural issues and I would love to see the myth that it's somehow my fault she's that way be busted.

It's not my fault. I have, and am, doing everything in my power to help her, to mitigate the effects of her bad behaviour, but she will never be considered within normal behavioural boundaries.

Thank you MN for getting this campaign started!

FancyPuffin what's the horrid thread? I assumed you meant Style and Beauty but can't see anything.

might have been better if I had said professionally offended!

It's just been deleted.

Just because he occasionally does things that show he has considered someone else's feelings, doesn't mean that the diagnosis is wrong, and he 'doesn't have ASD'. It means that the hours and hours spent over the years teaching him to consider others' feelings might just be paying off, and he has been very well taught!

Was it in Style and Beauty? Might go and start a thread there myself.

That mainstream school (even with support) isn't always the best for SEN children and they certainly shouldn't have to go through a process of failure before something is done that really helps them.
That CAMHS will give you an appointment and see you and give you a diagnosis. In my area they reject at least 50% of all referrals without even seeing a child. They are also refusing to diagnose any autistic spectrum disorders - they say it's the responsibility of the paediatricians, who say it's the responsibility of CAMHS and in the meantime nothing happens!

Agree with Lara2 mainstream isn't always the best even with help .my dp and I have made a conscious decision to send dd to ss

And:

Often a child has had to fight for a special school place not because they couldn't be supported in mainstream, but because they wouldn't be.

On Tourettes- I do agree with Gunsnroses- hope I've got that right - but my two DCs with Tourettes do swear & I would like to emphasise the pain and embarrassment this causes them. It's involuntary. Not like normal people swearing.
It's such a complex illness & when the children look normal out with the home people just don't understand how badly they're actually affected by it. Not even A&E staff. My daughter suppressed her tics for 3 hours in a row at Casualty once & even the nurses there thought I was an over anxious mother - because they couldn't see the effort she was putting in to looking normal

So just take my word for it! Don't tell me they don't look too badly affected. Most people will never see the reality of my home life and sometimes it's miserable because of this illness. There isn't support. But I just take it day by day and hour by hour.

Hi,
Dawndonna's dd here.
I would really appreciate somebody busting the myth of having a physical disability means that the person concerned must be intellectually challenged in some way, too. I frequently have people a) asking my mother questions about me, b)ignoring me, c) being incredibly surprised when I challenge their perceptions which in turn results in them questioning me about my physical disability rather than the subject in hand.

We're not being difficult, we're scared.

Yes. Sadly Dawndonna's dd I have seen that myself. Talking over the person in the wheelchair as if they aren't there. I've seen recently a stupid stupid comment 'Does she understand what I am saying?'

My DH butted in (though we didn't know any of the party and dh is usually very quiet) and said 'why don't you try talking to her and see?'.

The trouble is the poor woman in the wheelchair looked even more upset and embarrassed, not relieved.

My all time favourite 2 answers to the alarmingly regular question about my ds' autism: 'Does he have any special talents?'

Are:

a) Yes, he sees thick people!

and

b) Yes, he can fly.

(long time lurker) I wish people would just see my little boy for who he is and not what he has.

Invalid (disabled) does not mean invalid (not valid).

Your inability to understand my dc's SEN doesn't mean she's fine. It just means you're ignorant, arrogant, unprofessional and in the wrong.

(Btw, that's for caring carrots. Ignorant folk who bother to listen are fine)