This week has seen the
culmination of weeks of planning. Some time ago, I saw a post from our local
library on their Facebook page, showing off their latest wall display in the
children’s area – a local childminding group had created it, and not only did
it showcase some of the kids artwork but it also was an excellent promotion of
the childminder in the local area. The library had commented that they welcomed
other local groups to contact them about using the space for their own display,
and immediately I thought of our ASD Helping Hands group.
The ASD Helping Hands Family Support group has been invaluable to Picklepot and I since we started going
in January 2016. For two hours every fortnight we meet at a local venue and
there are arts and crafts activities, the chance for the kids to play together
and enjoy themselves without worrying about being judged by their peers for
their ‘different’ behaviour, a chance for adults to have a coffee (or tea!) and
a chat about things, a place for us to discuss things, a place where we don’t
have to worry about what anyone else thinks of us because all of us are in this
together.
Since joining the group I have
made friends who truly understand what it can be like. The group has changed,
we moved venues at the beginning of this year and some people don’t come any
more, other people have started coming … but on the whole we still feel like
not enough people know about the group, not enough people know it’s there and
it’s available. The idea is that this is a family support group, so all members
of the family are welcome, and even if the person with ASD doesn’t want to come
to the meeting, that’s OK, they don’t have to; the idea is that everyone feels
welcome, nobody feels judged and the group is a place you can come and enjoy
yourself.
With the idea of getting
information about the group to more people who could benefit from it, I
contacted the library and asked if our group could be considered to create a
display. The library were quick to say yes, and the date was set that our
display would be up ready for the week starting 11th September. At
our next meeting we discussed some ideas of what we could do, and we came up
with our plan.
We drew around hands and cut them
out, and everyone decorated some hands with colouring pencils. We found a foam
tree with foam leaf-colours which we cut out hand shapes and on each one we
wrote the name of the children in the group. I created a big poster for the
centre of the display saying ASD Helping Hands.
One of the ladies who comes to
group knows someone who works for the local free magazine, and she contacted
them about the display – they said if we sent a high resolution photograph
along with a small written piece to go along with the photograph, they would
run it in the magazine as a local interest story, which again obviously
promotes the group and tells even more people about it.
Yesterday, myself and one of the
other mums (and her daughter) met at the library with our display in a carrier
bag in pieces, armed only with a wall staple gun and our imaginations on how we
were going to bring it altogether. We talked, we laughed, we worked it out, we
planned, and we got the display up on the wall. It took us the best part of 2
hours, but it was time well spent and we are so pleased with our efforts when
we were finished.
Today was our first Helping Hands
meeting since before the summer holidays. Afterwards we all went to the library
together, and one of the mums’ fathers met up with us with his fancy camera,
and he took some photographs of the group in front of the display. We now need
to choose which of the final two photographs we are going to send to the
magazine along with the article.
I’m very proud to be part of our
little group. There’s lots of stress and tears involved when you’re struggling
to get where you need to for a family member with ASD, but our group has shown
me there is lots of laughter and friendship along the way as well.
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| We Are Each Unique And Beautiful, Together We Are A Masterpiece |
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