30% of child and family support has been lost. Can you help make a new start?

an appeal for direct action with family members and workers in ‘co-production’

Editorial comment: I have in mind children who are vulnerable, disabled or marginalised and I make my estimate of 30% from the workers and support organisations that are gradually disappearing from Interconnections’ TAC B

Principles of international early child and family support – do they fit your situation? How would you modify them?

‘Action plans...are designed to reduce the child and family’s exhaustion and stress as much as possible’

Peter Limbrick writes: I hope that one day soon there will be an early child and family support system in every part of every country for families whose baby or infant has significant challenges

Editorial: Families whose baby or infant has significant challenges to development and learning are a severely oppressed minority group. Part 2: Some reasons why

Parents’ tiredness, low self-esteem and stress might result in them keeping themselves to themselves

In the first part of this editorial I suggested there are two separate worlds:

the smaller one with families whose baby or infant has significant challenges to development and learning and the peopl

Editorial: Cutting pediatric therapy in two to promote inclusion. Part 3: Teaching a child to drink from a cup and other functional skills

'involves the knowledge, understanding and skills of all the people around the child at home or in the nursery'

Drinking from a cup is an early skill and is used here as just one example of what babies and infants might learn in their pre-school years. Drinking is necessary for survival and drinking

Becoming pregnant with cerebral palsy

‘Suddenly, I’d gone from having maybe one or two falls a week to one every day. This was terrifying...’

Deaire Pecora writes: 'That first pregnancy test is nerve-wracking for everyone, so many thoughts pass through your head as you wait for a result. For me, that very first time, I was skeptical. I’

Editorial: Families whose baby or infant has significant challenges to development and learning are a severely oppressed minority group. Part 3: Can local task forces be a way forward?

local task forces will get effective support, inclusion and connectivity built into the local early support system

I have argued so far in this short 3-part series that we cannot rely on government ministers or public service executives creating the conditions to lessen or end this oppression. Good

Editorial: Families whose baby or infant has significant challenges to development and learning are a severely oppressed minority group – this is why there are no effective support systems. Part 1.

It is such a massive struggle because the general public is not aware or concerned

The words I am using:

'Significant challenges to development and learning'.

This avoids the word ‘disability’ which I feel is unjustifiably negative about the new child’s present and future. Another common phrase, pr

Editorial: Cutting pediatric therapy in two to promote inclusion. Part 2: Implications

paediatric therapists have essential skills that parents, nursery staff and teachers do not have

In Part 1 I argued that in my view paediatric therapists typically do two sorts of work: one is essential health treatment; the other is helping a baby or infant acquire new understanding and skills. The

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