Hello everyone,

I am fundraising for my beautiful daughter, Theodora. Theodora has autism spectrum disorder, severe learning disability, is non verbal and self injurious. Her complexities present many challenges on a daily basis but we are fighting daily to enable our little girl to live life as normally as possible - however that may look.

Most of you who know us, will know of all the challenges we have faced this year from multiple admissions, investigations to endless agencies becoming involved in Teddy’s care which has really highlighted the journey we still have ahead of us.

Teddy requires lots of sensory stimulation, 5 years on I am still trying to educate myself on this and luckily we now have a specialist sensory OT which has been so useful in learning to understand Teddy’s needs more.

One of her main regulation strategies is to go out in the car, she enjoys the motion, the views and as the saying goes “it’s not about the journey, it’s about the destination” that is completely untrue in Teddy’s case, the journey is everything to her… with no real goal of the destination.

It’s not all rainbows and not an easy fix. Teddy still requires specialist equipment, even to travel. As she is completely unaware of danger, she still poses a huge risk when on the road to not only herself by climbing out of her car seat but to the driver too. This often looks like her climbing behind my seat, pulling my hair, arms … whatever she can get her hands on. Or smashing me around the back of my head with her phone when she loses signal on her phone. God help us when she doesn’t have access to Sesame Street on the go.

Due to the risks identified by Teddy’s OT, we were referred to Derbyshire drivability for a thorough assessment of equipment that was needed to make travelling safe.

A voyager car seat with a five point harness, double action chest clip and head support was recommended. Crash tested for 15kg-36kg. So this would last her through the ages.

The total cost of the seat amounts to £1080, lashes charity have very kindly donated £500 to the car company and we are yet to source a further £580. We are hoping with the support of this gofundme we can reach our end goal and obtain the car seat sooner rather than later.

Teddy is a very adored little girl, and any help would be hugely appreciated. Hopefully many car adventures to come! We’re even considering driving to Disney as it would be impossible to travel with her on a plane!

Thank you so much for your support, always.