Aaron's Angels

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Here a little about Aaron’s Angel’s and why we set it up.

We set up Aaron’s Angel’s in 2019 to help an amazing young lad, after waking up and not being able to walk, after a lot of physio and medical appointments it was quite apparent he was going to be wheelchair bound and need a lot of support. After 5 years of being let down by the different services involved, the fundraising began to help with raise vital funds towards equipment and get a wet room built.

Aaron asked if we could keep Aaron’s Angels going to help others as we did him, which was an amazing idea and we loved that even after everything, he was still thinking of others, so if you know of anyone that could do with a little help, please do get in contact with us and we'll see what we can do to assist.

PLEASE SUPPORT US TO RAISE FUNDS TO HELP OTHERS.

This is Aaron's Story

Aaron has become wheelchair bound in the last few years and needs modifications to his house to enable him to be able to shower and move around with ease.

Aaron is a 21 year old young man who has Autism Spectrum Disorder. This means he has many challenges to deal with everyday such as; onset Anorexia, sleep disturbance and mixed complex development disorder, he has speech and language impairment, moderate learning difficulties including issues with attention and memory. He has sensory processing disorder which affects his eating - different foods cannot touch and he won’t eat in front of people. He doesn’t like to be touched and he lashes out if he is or if he doesn’t understand what’s going on. Aaron cannot deal with change, school life was extremely difficult for him to cope with especially changing year groups, teachers, lessons, etc. These things often put him in a complete meltdown which leads to him not leaving his room, not talking to anyone, not eating and generally withdrawing completely from everything. 

Despite dealing with all of this Aaron has participated in and achieved Black Belts in Karate and Kung Fu and also took up Kickboxing. He loves cooking and has talked about wanting to run his own restaurant, then four years ago life for Aaron took a turn that neither him nor his family were expecting.

It started in November 2014 when Aaron woke up complaining of a pain in his knee. Aaron’s autism blocks his pain signals, so for him to complain it has to be severe. When the Special Needs College he attended phoned to say he was limping this led to the start of many GP and hospital visits; having various tests over the next few years. Initially he was prescribed strong pain relief and special needs physiotherapy (as Aaron doesn’t like to be touched) he had X-rays and various scans; then was given crutches and even stronger pain relief. Within 5 months the same thing started to happen to his other leg. This led to a fall downstairs then back to hospital. Several hours later he was sent home and told to get a wheelchair from Red Cross until Occupational Therapy could sort things out for him. Within weeks he was wheelchair bound, spending lots of time at the hospital having more scans, X-rays and other tests. He received intense physiotherapy and psychotherapy to try and find out what was going on. 

Eventually they were told that it was all due to his autism, his wiring was basically just misfiring and there was nothing they could do about it, no drug that could help. A year later Aaron started to lose movement in his upper body to the extent he couldn’t move from the neck down. A medical bed was brought into the house, a hoist was acquired and Adult Social Care supplied a commode. The family were basically told they were unlikely to get any extra help they’d have to make do!

 The family desperately needs to raise funds to get vital adaptations made to the house so that Aaron is able to shower (he’s been strip washed and had hair washes over a bucket for the last 3 years - not great for a young man’s’ self esteem or mental health!). Their home has stairs going into the house, stairs to his bedroom and the bathroom; they can’t get him into the downstairs toilet with his wheelchair as it’s too small. The family have borrowed money and called in favours which enabled then to put in a ramp outside the front door and put up a partition in the living room to give him a downstairs bedroom so he could have some privacy and his own space. 

 Adult Social Care have suggested the possibility of helping, but they won’t fund it, they have put his case on hold in the hope that he will go back to psychotherapy, they do not accept his autism is the cause of his symptoms so do not acknowledge his diagnosis and they have currently closed his case.