The next S.P.A.C.E. meet up for parents and carers of children with ADHD, takes place on Tuesday 11th March at the Dog and Partridge in Stockport.
The Dog and Partridge
272 Buxton Road (The A6, near Stockport Grammar School)
Great Moor
Stockport
SK2 7AN
Our monthly meet ups are an opportunity to meet other parents in a friendly and relaxed setting. It is also an opportunity to chat to the S.P.A.C.E. team and ask us questions face to face. We have occasional guest speakers, but we usually let you get on with chatting to other parents. The team is here to help and signpost where we can, but our biggest strength is in parents meeting other parents that share their challenges.
Guest Speaker
This month we are being joined by Hayley from PACTS (Parents and Carers Together Stockport), Stockport’s official parent carer forum. Hayley is joining us to explain more about PACTS’ work and the support they offer.
Newsletter
Our monthly parent and carer newsletter will be sent out as a meeting reminder in a couple of days.
Our April meet up will be on 8th April at the Dog and Partridge. Dates for the rest of the year are available on our meeting dates page
SPACE Meetings
Happy New Year
Our first parent and carer meet up of 2025 takes place on Tuesday 14th January from 7.00 pm. The SPACE team will be at The Dog and Partridge in Great Moor, Stockport.
We hold our monthly meet ups on the second Tuesday of the month between 7 and 9 pm. The meeting dates for the rest of the year are already available.
There is a lot of misinformation about ADHD which can be confusing, especially for those with a recent diagnosis. Here at SPACE we seek to find out accurate information and share it with other parents. There is no charge and no need to book in advance. The S.P.A.C.E. team will be at the Dog and Partridge and if you are raising a child with ADHD, then you are welcome to join us.
The Dog and Partridge offers us a relaxed, friendly environment to welcome parents and carers. Our meet ups are an opportunity to meet other parents, ask questions and help establish a valuable network. Our monthly meet ups are informal and parent led. The most important thing to us is that parents and carers can spend time with other parents, have a chat and feel relaxed.
The Dog and Partridge
272 Buxton Road (The A6)
Great Moor
Stockport
SK2 7AN
Further information about our meet ups including a map to help you find us is available on our SPACE meet up page.
If you are a parent or carer of a child or young person with ADHD and would like to join our monthly newsletter, please subscribe below or share your email address with us in person.
Claire’s Christmas Message
As we come to the end of the year and all the chaos that Christmas can generate, I’d like to wish a happy and peaceful Christmas to all our families. The hype, excitement and changes in routine doesn’t always suit children and young people with ADHD, so the Christmas holidays can be a stressful time.
There is no right way to be a parent, but there are definitely lots of wrong ways. Techniques that suit many children, may not work with those who are neurodiverse. Much of the parenting advice that our parents were raised with, is at best outdated and in some cases illegal! I hope that our parents trust themselves in the face of well meaning advice from friends and relatives. I hope that they recognise that they know their children, better than anybody else.
Our charity was set up by parents, who looked for support and found that what they needed didn’t exist – so they created it. If you are parenting a child with ADHD, then you are welcome to join us for our monthly meet ups or join our private online community. There is no charge and no need to book in advance. You don’t have to share medical information or provide proof of diagnosis. We are relaxed and informal and do our best to offer a warm welcome.
As a parent I went to my first S.P.A.C.E. meeting after my child was diagnosed with a condition that I’d never even heard of! I know how it feels to be scared to walk into an unfamiliar place, looking for strangers that might help me make sense of this condition. The relief I felt when I met people who understood how this one gorgeous child created so much chaos at home, and who genuinely knew how it felt spending my days fighting both with and for my then twelve year old.
I didn’t realise that night that I’d still be part of that group 20 years later, or that I’d help to support lots of other families and eventually go on to become Chair of this amazing small charity, which was set up by a lady that I’m now so proud to call a friend. That cold, dark, winter night when I walked into the Arden Arms changed my life and I know that S.P.A.C.E. has done the same for many others.
Our goal for 2025 is to continue being there for our families and to make sure that they get access to all the information they need to make informed decisions about their children. The team are here to provide information and signpost to other relevant services and organisations, but one of our biggest strengths is that through our small charity, people get to meet other other parents and carers with similar challenges.
S.P.A.C.E. were here supporting the ADHD community before it was cool. On the one hand it’s amazing that the profile of ADHD has grown and that there are lots of other organisations out there, but unfortunately not all of these organisations are as good as their marketing. We know our own worth, so we focus on our families and continue to do what we do, because being our authentic selves matters and makes a difference.
Here at S.P.A.C.E. we are constantly thinking of ways to raise awareness about ADHD. Our advent calendar is a seasonal reminder about the work we do to help provide information and support to parents and carers.
We have lots of ideas for other ways to share useful content, but at our core, we are a parent support group so we will always put our limited resources into that ahead of generating amazing content for social media. Unlike lots of organisations we don’t have financial targets. We’re an independent charity and our goal is to ensure that any local parent of a child with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) that wants to get information and support knows that we exist. That’s it. We just want families to know that we’re here if they want to join us.
We’ll be at the Dog and Partridge on the second Tuesday of the month throughout 2025, so feel free to pop the dates into your brand new diaries or share our content with friends and family that may be interested.
- ADHD Advent Calendar
- Our advent calendar includes a new piece of information every day during the run up to Christmas.
- Monthly meet ups for parents and carers of children with ADHD
- Our 2025 meet up dates are already on our website
- Social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram.
- We’re also on TikTok, Threads and X but don’t share a great deal on those platforms at the moment
- Information sessions for those working with children and young people
- Spotify playlist of artists with ADHD
- Our Spotify playlist covers a wide range of artists covering everything from hip hop to country
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
Claire
Monthly Meeting Dates for 2025
We hold a monthly in person meet up for parents are carers of children with ADHD. Our monthly meet ups take place on the second Tuesday of every month at The Dog and Partridge in Great Moor in Stockport between 7.00 pm and 9.00 pm.
The Dog and Partridge offers us a relaxed, friendly environment to welcome parents and carers. Our meet ups are an opportunity to meet other parents, ask questions and help establish a valuable network.
Although we do a lot of different things, including signposting and teaching professionals about ADHD, at our core SP.A.C.E. is a parent support group and our meet ups are our most important activity. There is no charge and no need to book in advance. The S.P.A.C.E. team will be at the Dog and Partridge and if you are raising a child with ADHD, then you are welcome to join us.
2025 Meeting Dates
- Tuesday 14th January 2025
- Tuesday 11th February 2025
- Tuesday 11th March 2025
- Tuesday 8th April 2025
- Tuesday 13th May 2025
- Tuesday 10th June 2025
- Tuesday 8th July 2025
- August summer break
- Tuesday 9th September 2025
- Tuesday 14th October 2025
- Tuesday 11th November 2025
- Tuesday 9th December 2025
The Dog and Partridge
The Dog and Partridge have hosted our meet ups for the last few years and thanks to their support we have been able to keep our costs down, which allows us to save money and means that we can spend our funds on the essentials we need to run our charity.
For those of you visiting for the first time, we are usually in the large room facing the bar. If you are travelling by car, there is free parking but please remember to add your car registration to the tablet on the bar to avoid being automatically fined by the company that runs their car park.
The Dog and Partridge serves a range of food and beverages, including lots of non-alcoholic options. In addition to delicious food they also hold events throughout the year.
Why We Don’t Want To Be Kim Kardashian
What does the world famous reality star Kim Kardashian have to do with a small Stockport based ADHD childrens’ charity? The answer to that is very little (as far as we know) other than the fact that we are both harnessing the power of social media to let people know that we exist.
Just like Kim, SPACE Stockport are on Instagram, but if you happen to follow us both, you’ll notice that she has a lot more followers than us and we’re totally OK with that. We are 100% fine with the fact that Kim has over 360 million Instagram followers whilst we only have 848, because Kim’s marketing goals are different to ours.
SPACE Stockport is run by parents of children with ADHD for parents of children with ADHD and as such we won’t be getting any celebrity endorsement deals. We don’t have our own cosmetic products, skincare range or clothing line. We don’t even have our own fragrance, but despite the lack of branded products we are on a mission. We’re on a mission to make sure that Stockport parents of children with ADHD know that we’re here. We are looking for what marketing professionals would call a niche market. If you live in Stockport and have a child with ADHD, then we are looking for you because we want you to know that we exist.
Our marketing goals are quite straight forward. We’re a non-profit organisation so the number of people that attend our monthly meetings and engage with us on social media doesn’t generate us any income. The committee is made up of volunteers, so nobody gets a new BMW if more people join us for a coffee and getting a 100,000 likes on Facebook or a million followers on TikTok won’t get any of us a bonus, but we’re still on a mission. If you are from Stockport and your child, or a child that you care for, has Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder then we want you to know that we exist, that’s it. That’s our mission.
Parents of children with ADHD are regularly told what they should be doing. We’re told that we are parenting our children incorrectly. We’re told that our children will grow out of it. We’re told that our children are eating the wrong foods. We’re told that our children just need a firm hand. We’re told that ADHD doesn’t exist and that our children are just badly behaved. Parents of children with ADHD are told lots of things. We’re not here to tell you anything. We’re here to provide information. We’re here to share our experiences. We’re here to signpost agencies that we have found useful. We’re here to make sure that you know you are not the only family going through some of the day to day challenges that you face. Even if local parents of children with ADHD never contact us, our marketing mission is that they know we exist, because if they know that we are here, then they know that they can get in touch if they want to.
Using Instagram and Facebook to spread the word about our existence may be relatively new, but we’ve been on a mission to support other parents for almost two decades. The venue has changed over time, as have the volunteers and the parents joining us every month, but the mission has always been the same, to make sure that people know that we exist. Stockport has less than 300,000 residents so if we manage to get a million followers then the chances are that most of them aren’t really interested in us and vice versa. We love having our Facebook posts shared and being retweeted on Twitter because somewhere amongst those extra readers will be more of the people we’re looking for.
If local parents know that we exist, then that means that they know they’re not the only parents going through the challenge of raising a child with ADHD. It means that if they have a bad day, they know that they can vent to us privately on Facebook. It means that they know that there is a network of other parents they can talk to. It means that they can find out about local conferences. It means that we can provide a source of information. It means that they are able to attend our specialist presentations. It means that once a month they can join us for a drink and a chat if they want to.
The bigger picture is that we want to fight the ongoing stream of ignorance about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. We want to dispel the myths and ensure that our children are not penalised by schools for things that they cannot control, but our priority is to support families. If you have a child with challenging behaviour, the playground can be a lonely place. We can’t do anything about that, but when you’ve had one of those days we can be there to reassure you that you are not alone. We can’t do anything about the fact that raising a child with ADHD can lead to family disagreements on the best way forward, but we can be there to let you know that you are not the only family with those problems.
The reason our mission is to let people know that we exist is because if local parents know that we exist, then it means that they know that we’re here if they want us. It means that they know that they are not the only one and some days that’s enough. SPACE Stockport may officially only be three people on paper but we’re part of a much bigger community. A community of other parents who want the best for their children. Kim can keep her 360 million followers because we’ve got each other.