PARENTS of children living with autism in the Colin area are to set up a support group to help other parents going through the same process.
The group will meet in Sally Gardens community centre from September and will offer a safe space to parents where they can meet with other parents of autistic children and receive support and advice.
Detailing why such a group is needed, Lousie Sadlier, who set up the group alongside Deborah Maguire and Naomi McKenna, said: “As parents of children on the autism spectrum we feel that the system fails us.
“Anyone that we have spoken to has been in the same situation. You go with a two year old child, you are referred to a child development clinic, they tell you that there is something wrong with your child and that is it.
“It is then roughly a year before anybody contacts you to speak about your child and you can feel very isolated and you don’t know what the future holds.
“We all met each other through Facebook while going through the process and we were trying to help and support each other. We realised that that helped us a great deal and decided that we wanted to open it up and help other families within the community.
“There are so many people out there who feel like they are on their own. We have all been through it and we want to help them and let them know that they are normal and that their child is normal.”
We hope that this group helps people in the community realise that they don’t need to hide away. Their life isn’t different to anyone else, we are just limited differently.
Louise said that autism as about more than a diagnosis and that she hopes that by setting up the group that they can bring a sort of normality to the lives of others living in the Colin area.
“Autistic kids will have behaviours that people who don’t have autistic kids wouldn’t understand” she continued.
“This is not something that people feel they can talk about to other people out of embarrassment. It can make parents hide themselves away. They won’t accept invites to parties, they won’t go to other parent groups because their children are different and they feel different. It can feel very isolating.
“We hope that this group helps people in the community realise that they don’t need to hide away. Their life isn’t different to anyone else, we are just limited differently.
“For most parents of children it can be difficult to work as it is a 24/7 job and childcare is more or less impossible. We found it difficult to be pointed in the right direction when it came to finding out what benefits we were entitled to and the forms themselves can be so complex. We want to be able to offer some help on that side of things as well.
“It will be a chance for parents to meet other parents who are going through the same stuff, have a cup of tea and talk.”
For more information, visit the Colin autism advice and support group on Facebook.
