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.
Everyday life with Luca
“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.”
Transitioning to adulthood
“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.
“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’.”
Switching off in summer
“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.”
In this short video, Luca, who loves nature, demonstrates how to properly hug a tree:
“It definitely it helps him because now he knows that we can just go up the hills walking to get away from life and the stresses. It’s not just for him, but both of us together, because sometimes it’s just me and him at home so it gets really stressful and it gets like a pressure cooker. So just knowing that whatever month that we can just down tools, both of us go away and connect with each other.
“We’ve used that opportunity, most of the time we’ve gone to the Lake District, in the cottage for a week. And Luca just loves it because he loves nature. He loves being outdoors. It’s helped him in so many ways of, like, cold water therapy. He’s walked mountains with me and we take our dog, and he helps Luca a lot as well.”