Latest News for Parents & Carers

A disability advocate has highlighted the importance of representation as comedian Chris McCausland appears on Strictly Come Dancing. McCausland is the BBC programme’s 14 and scored 29 points out of a possible 40 last Saturday. Yahya Pandor, who lost his sight during the pandemic, said McCausland was proving barriers “don’t stop” blind people.

A visually impaired woman is backing a national campaign calling for the Government to strengthen the law around pavement parking. Nicky Askew, 53, from Anchorsholme, Lancashire, is also hearing impaired and says she and her guide dog, Unity, face daily danger.

When Tonye Faloughi-Ekezie decided to write her first book it was for her own children and she printed just two copies. She had been trying to explain to her son why people came to the house to play with his sister, Simone, but not him. “There is a severe lack of local content that depicts the modern African family,” she says. “African children with special needs have very few entertainment or learning resources which have them represented in characters.”

Paramount Pictures UK will be showing their 16 the day before general release, meaning deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers across the country will be able to watch them first.

The mother of a teenager with severe learning difficulties says she was so desperate for help from social services that she felt she had “no option” but to drop him at school and not return to pick him up again. Rita Orr says 15-year-old Callum, who also has autism, often had physical outbursts in which he would injure himself.