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"Our key worker does all the things I wish I had time for"

The mother of a girl with cerebral palsy explains she'd supported by her Early Support key worker. It meant she could continue to work and still enjoy time with her family:

"My family has received a fantastic service from the Early Support scheme since my daughter's diagnosis with dystonic quadriplegia, also known as cerebral palsy. We were assigned a keyworker at that time.

As a working mother raising a child with special needs, my time is precious. I have to fit in four working days, endless appointments, daily physiotherapy as well as find time to enjoy my child and family.

Before our key worker came into our lives I was struggling to achieve this and was considering giving up another day of work. Thankfully that is not now necessary.

Our key worker manages to do all the things I wish I had time and energy to do but realistically do not. I wish I had time to co-ordinate all the professionals and organise a family service plan to allow all the therapists to understand our objectives. Or spend hours on the phone getting definitive answers to questions about our child's needs. Our key worker does all these things for us.

We have total confidence in her abilities and she has never let us down, with appointments or information. She's been a great comfort to me when life seems really unfair and you can't see light at the end of the tunnel. For that I am hugely grateful to her and the service."

"Early Support has given me confidence"

The mother of a daughter with spina bifida and hydrocephalus talks about the help she received from her Early Support key worker. How it built up her confidence and enabled her to play an active part in her daughter's education:

"I was pregnant when I was told that she had spina bifida and hydrocephalus, and that she might never walk. I was worried, scared even, when she was born.

It was someone who was helping us that put me on to Early Support. I wouldn't be where I am now if it hadn't been for having my Early Support key worker. It's really helpful to have a key worker, they do lots of different things for you. She's written all the letters for all the different people involved, and she helps you make phone calls.

She was very supportive when my daughter was in and out of hospital for surgery.

She also persuaded me to look round different schools. We've chosen one where the kids come over and play with the little children that have got other problems. It seems a really nice school for my girl to be at. She needs to be interacting with other children.

I've dipped into the booklets, like the one on statutory assessment. That helped me to understand why I've got to do Statements to get my daughter into school.

I wouldn't have even thought of putting her into school before. Because I would have said "I'm keeping her at home with me, I don't want her getting bullied". Now it has all been explained to me that kids with disabilities get on well at school and it's changed my mind completely.

Early Support helps you to understand what is going on with your child and it helps you as well. It's given me a lot of confidence in myself because I didn't have any confidence at all when my girl was born. Two years ago I wouldn't even have a new person in my house, I wouldn't have gone to meet any new people.

Early Support is absolutely wonderful."

"Early Support helped us to laugh again"

A mother talks about how the Early Support Family Service Plan helped her family. She was supported through a difficult time following the diagnosis of her youngest son with autism:

"Our youngest son, A, is almost three and is profoundly autistic, a diagnosis that he was given at 21 months old.

The few months after the diagnosis were a complete roller-coaster of emotion for us all. I forget quite how many people we met and how many times we had to repeat our family history.

I spent most of the time crying or chasing up appointments on the phone. My husband didn't want to talk about it. Our older son, who was six at the time, thought that A was dying because we were spending so much time at the hospital.

I heard about the Early Support programme - and what a huge difference having C as our key worker has made to our lives!

C explained the scheme to me and introduced the Family Pack. The booklet on autism alone was worth its weight in gold. It was so user friendly and contained all the advice and information that we had been lacking before.

After a few meetings we began to think about our Family Service Plan. Ensuring that all the key people were there was a challenge, but C took care of all the planning and admin. Our pre-planned agenda had made everyone really focused and we had soon agreed our plan. Since then, everyone involved has provided the service they agreed to at that meeting.

A is a much happier child than he was a year ago. Consequently, we are a much happier family and we are coping a lot better with day-to-day living. We know the future is not going to be easy. But thanks to the support we’ve been getting, we have all learned to laugh and enjoy life again."

Useful contacts

• Organisations and charities for carers