Children with additional needs and their families

My name is Amy, and I am a children’s Occupational Therapist who is passionate about supporting children with additional needs and their families. Much of my work is with children with autism spectrum condition, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and developmental delays. My specialism is assessing and treating difficulties with sensory processing, and I am an Advanced Sensory Integration Practitioner. We don’t really give our senses much thought but the information they provide helps us to understand our bodies, our emotions, the world around us and how these interact with each other. When children have difficulty responding appropriately to their senses this can make simple everyday tasks such as dressing, washing, eating, going to school or the shops extremely challenging and overwhelming for them. It can also have an enormous impact on attention and learning. To work on these difficulties requires a specialist environment and equipment as pictured here.

Over the past 10 years I have worked with hundreds of families who are facing these distressing challenges every day with their child or children. As we all know NHS resources are constantly stretched and sadly families are often given a diagnosis and then left to work out the rest on their own. The NHS offers no access to sensory processing assessment and treatment and as a result, families have to seek support from independent services. My work as an independent Occupational Therapist aims to help these families understand their child’s needs and how to support them.

During the course of working with these families it has become very clear that more support is needed in an accessible and affordable way. In response to this need we are setting up a Community Interest Company (CIC), a not-for profit organisation, to provide affordable access to therapeutic services. These include sensory play space hire, sensory play equipment loans for families, parent workshops including supporting parents of infants, children and adolescents with their child’s eating, sleeping and self-regulation. We currently have only one therapy room which severely limits the number of children and families we can support. Our goal is to move to a purpose-built space with two therapy rooms, access to a community café and space to support the equipment loan service, parent workshops and family work. To achieve this aim, we need a big investment initially to provide the space, specialist resources to equip it and the staffing needed which is, hopefully, where you come in.

We have identified the need, we have identified the space, and the CIC is being formed! We are really excited to begin this adventure! If you are able to partner with us by donating to our fundraiser, I know it will make a huge difference to families in Essex, Suffolk and beyond who face daily challenges and are desperate for support.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read about our project. Whether you decide you are able to donate or not, it would be amazing if you could share this fundraiser with as many of your friends, family and colleagues as possible. Together we can make a difference and bring some hope and relief to children, young people and their families.