Category Archives: autism

Please join us for Silly Sock Day 2011!

Carers and everyone please join us for Silly Sock Day 2011!

On Friday 1st April we are asking for people to wear their brightest, craziest socks to work or school in return for a small donation to Autism Anglia!

World Autism Awareness Day takes place the following day, when people all over the world will unite to raise awareness of autism.

To join in the fun, simply wear your silliest socks on 1st April, donate as little as £1 and help your local autism charity continue providing essential services across the region.

This is Alex. He used to find it difficult going to the shops, because busy places with lots of people would cause him distress.

Autism Anglia’s Family Support team helped Alex by providing his family with advice and practical solutions. As a result, Alex can now cope better with busy places and is able to enjoy going out with his family.

Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids

Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact _ and now she hugs everyone.

“She’s a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace,” said Claire Sawczenko, Eden’s mother.
The girl attends a pre-school for autistic children in Stevenage, north of London, where researchers bring in a human-looking, child-sized robot once a week for a supervised session. The children, whose autism ranges from mild to severe, play with the robot for up to 10 minutes alongside a scientist who controls the robot with a remote control.

For our disabled daughter, a way out of the labyrinth

 

Gove promises some relief for the parents of severely disabled children. But others may have reason to worry

 

 

Michael Gove at the Scottish Conservatives’ Conference in Perth last year. His green paper on disability services reform was launched a few months later.

Nothing prepares you for the birth of a child with profound and multiple disabilities. There is the shock, the depression, the grieving for the child you thought you had given birth to alongside the crushing realisation that all the old certainties in your life are no more.

Gradually you adjust, driven forward by love for your offspring. Then comes the awful discovery that the most traumatic part of your new life is not caring for your child but the battle to find a way through the maze of services supposedly set up to help them. Ask any parent of a disabled child – this is what makes daily life such a despairing trial.