In the first of our summer campaign stories, Miranda tells us about how a Family Fund break helps her and her son Luca to get away and connect with each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Luca’s got a learning disability, a rare chromosome disorder and autism. The school he was in at the time [of the diagnosis], he was just struggling at the time. My experience with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) was really, really positive. He got referred to CAMHS in the November and I had a diagnosis of autism by the March. I know that is completely unheard of. Then everything just kind of happened really fast. We’ve got an Education, Health and Care plan. And he was placed in a special needs setting in primary. He’s now in a secondary specialist school and he’s absolutely thriving.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Luca’s getting older and he’s getting a lot more able. He’s starting to do a lot more things in the house. He’s learning life skills and he’s got his own bank account now. I’ll wait in the car outside the shop and he’ll go in and buy his own sandwich and things like that. I just properly empower him and motivate him into doing that. And he loves it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“For many years when he first got diagnosed, I had him in this box, this little box, and I smothered him and all the rest of it. And I’ve learned over the time with life experiences in my work that it doesn’t have to define him. I want him to live. He said to me the other day, ‘I think I’m going to live on my own when I’m older’. And I went ‘really?’ He went ‘Yeah, I’ll come and see you, though, for my tea and things like that’.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We’ve used [Family Fund support] as a Hoseasons voucher. Just being able to switch off and detach from school and detach from general life things and go out in nature and destress and stuff.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this short video, Luca, who loves nature, demonstrates how to properly hug a tree:<\/p>\n\n\n\n