Introduction

Ali Abubakar · Introduction

Rob,

Congratulations and Thanks for doing all the work in setting up this forum.

As we have to start from somewhere ... let's start from here:

I'm inviting dads of young Downs people who've left school or college and have started or attempting to start a career or any kind to share your experiences with us.

My daughter has just turned 21 and will be completing her second year of 'Supported Learning' at a college in Glasgow in the summer. At the moment there are no grant offers for any further college education. So you can imagine our current preoccupation as we enter this new phase of Judith's life challenges.

Looking forward to learning from your experience.

Ali

Rob · Hi Ali,

Its good to find you here - sounds like a really critical transition you are going through there - hope it all goes well for you.

I'm based in a country town in Central Scotland, and things are a bit sleepier here than in the city.

We also had a major transition this year - my son Jo has successfully managed the transition from mainstream primary to mainstream secondary, and everyone has been coping well, including him! So its a great relief - I was really quite worried there would be a few dramas, but that hasn't proved to be the case.

I guess we need to send out some emails to other groups now to help a few more dads to find us. As far as I know there are no other groups like this anywhere in the world - if so I havent found one yet! So hopefully things here will get pretty busy soon.

anaz · Hi

Hi
My name is Ally and I am from london. I run a support group in East london for children with DS. my website is at
www.upsideofdowns.org.uk
My son is 13 years old and has Mosaic DS. nice to see more people doing something for our children. I have come across some other forum below is some adress

The Down Syndrome NSW website has just been relaunched after (and
during!) a major revision, and we too have included a page for fathers,
after a very successful workshop for Dads only at our Families' Weekend
in 2005, and speaking with the D.A.D.S. group that Linda Hall referred
to in Vancouver. The page is not yet finished, but there are some links
to recent press articles by dads that I discovered through this list,
and I''ll get sme more photos up soon. We didn't know how the Dads
Workshop would be received, but it was the hit of the weekend.

Home page: www.dsansw.org.au
Dads' page: http://www.dsansw.org.au/index.php?pg=42
I attended a workshop with Richard Fletcher who runs the Engaging
Fathers program (http://www.newcastle.edu.au/centre/fac/efp/index.html)
at the University of Newcastle (NSW, not UK)about a year ago, and he
pointed out that most of what is offered to "parents", is actually
assumed to be for mothers, by those proding it, and the parents
receiving it. He asked all of the agencies present (a wide spectrum of
social services, not all to do with disability) to think about the
foyers of our premises - were there images of fathers? What were they?
Often posters about domestic violence etc, not at all welcoming to
fathers. We didn't have those images, but we didn't have anything
acknowledgeing the existence of fathers on our walls either. Now we
have a selection of fabulous photos of dads and kids with DS from our
calendar archives, and dads who call in do notice.

Jill
(Sydney)
Hope you find the above information helpful.
hope to hear from more people

Introduction

Hi Ali,

Hi