ADHD Parent Support Group
The summer break has flown by and the new school year has started. Whether you’ve had a great summer or it’s been a difficult few weeks, if you’re parenting a child with ADHD, you are very welcome to join us at the Dog and Partridge on Tuesday 9th September between 7.00 pm and 9.00 pm.
Address:
The Dog and Partridge
272 Buxton Road (The A6)
Great Moor
Stockport
SK2 7AN
The dates for the rest of our 2025 parent and carer meet ups are available so that you can add them to your diary.
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 Much of the parenting advice that our parents were raised with, is at best outdated and in some cases illegal!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.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
Claire
As many of you know SPACE is ran by a small team of volunteers. We use our professional skills and knowledge to support families with ADHD. This week is National Volunteering Week, which seems like a good time to talk about the challenges of managing a task of this size, with the constraints that come with running a busy organisation with such limited resources.
At present we primarily work with parents of children with ADHD. The key strength in our current structure is that we are firmly part of the community we serve. The reason that the four of us run this charity is because we all have at least one child with ADHD. SPACE was formed to create a support network that didn’t exist. We came because we needed support for our own families and we stayed because we wanted to support those that came behind us.
The task ahead of us is huge, but we’re determined to tackle it head on. We have worked hard to build our knowledge on ADHD and make sure that we are always up to date on new developments in the scientific community. We have established positive relationships with not only the families we support, but also within the local SEND and national ADHD communities.
Parenting is hard and parenting children with ADHD can sometimes be especially hard. Often we as parents are required to fight for our children, because for many of them school can be problematic, particularly for those who have difficulty managing their behaviour during the school day. At home, as parents, we sometimes fall into the trap of fighting with our children, leaving us trapped in the middle and on the receiving end of everything from everybody.
Over the years we have heard every myth, stereotype and ridiculous theory about ADHD and it is staggering that after all this time, we still talk to parents with a new diagnosis and hear the same nonsense that some of us heard over a decade ago about our own children. So much more is known about the condition today, yet the same old stigma and misinformation is still being fired at parents. Children are still struggling in education. Those with Inattentive Type ADHD are still being ignored and misdiagnosed. Parents are still being made to feel bad about considering whether they should let their child try medication and people with book deals are still making money by claiming that it doesn’t exist!
ADHD isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but living successfully with the condition usually needs knowledge, support and a few practical techniques. Children and young people need to know that their brains work differently and learn how to mitigate the potential downsides. Parenting a child with ADHD often needs a different approach, one which accommodates those differences. Parents also need information about the various local services and unfortunately many of them also need to know their rights as they manoeuvre the various systems affecting children with special educational needs.
We currently work full time in our day jobs and squeeze multiple jobs as part of SPACE into morning commutes, lunchtimes, evenings, late nights and weekends. We regularly use our annual leave to exhibit at open days, attend meetings with professionals from the NHS and even attend the All Party Parliamentary Group on ADHD at Westminster.
The problem with squeezing multiple jobs into gaps that don’t exist, is that there isn’t enough time to do everything. Our current structure simply does not afford us enough resource. To do everything on our list some of this needs to be a job, ideally several jobs. Resources are often referred to as The 3 Ms – Men, Money and Minutes. We are four women, with no funding and no time and yet despite these facts, year in and year out we make a difference. Despite the small team size, this is actually a 300% increase on one of our previous incarnations, where Michelle ran the group alone with no formal support.
SPACE currently has no paid staff and every single thing we do, is done by one of us. Between us we cover every role, in every department unpaid and top of our day jobs and family commitments. It’s frustrating when we have to park ideas due to a lack of funds or we miss opportunities to attend events, but mostly it’s frustrating that we could do more to help families if we had more time and more money.
At present we are not a funded service and have existed with no financial support from either the NHS or our local authority. As we currently have no funding streams in place we hold occasional fundraising events, our most recent one being our sponsored zipwire.
During 2018’s ADHD Awareness Month we put on a conference called the World of ADHD According to SPACE and the conference was primarily funded by the team hurtling down some Welsh mountains along with some additional funds provided by a small number of conference supporters who paid a small amount to exhibit products and services that we felt would be useful to local families.
Over the years we have managed to keep our costs down. Our monthly meet ups have been generously supported by local business owner Heather, who owns Funky Monkey Coffee Company and allows us to take over the venue free of charge each month. This has provided us with a welcoming and comfortable venue, in which to meet parents and we will always be extremely grateful to Funky Monkey for their support. We have managed to balance the books for a very long time, but this has also impacted on the amount of activities that we have been able to do so far.
The good news is that there are numerous sources of funding for 3rd Sector organisations like ours. The bad news is that actually securing that funding requires certain skills. Making time to research the available funding pools and produce written bids is challenging. In many organisations there will be a specific person or even a whole team of people responsible for bid writing, so we’re playing catch up. We’re attending events, using online resources and accepting offers of help from people in our personal networks who have been kind enough to help us learn those skills. We are also trialling other fundraising activities including Amazon Smile and JustGiving.
Despite the hard work, the frustrations and the challenges, we love what we do. We love being ADHD Champions. We love that we get to help other families. We love being able to reassure parents that ADHD isn’t always a bad thing. We love highlighting positive role models and sharing in each others sucesses. We love the community we’ve built and no matter how our organisation changes in the years to come, we’ll be here to welcome many more parents to our tribe.
Over the last few months we have been so busy doing things, that we haven’t had chance to write about any of it, so here’s a whistle-stop tour of what the SPACE Team have been up to. Apologies in advance for the sheer volume of notes. For those of you who prefer highlights we’ve condensed the last few months into the following bullet points.
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So as you can see, it’s been a busy few months for us here, especially considering that we currently operate as a team of volunteers with no source of funding, both of which bring their own set of challenges. There are activities that we can’t do due to a lack of time, activities we can’t do due to a lack of money and we are constantly learning new skills to ensure that our organisation is able to meet the challenges that we have to face head on. The SPACE group started in 2004 because what parents needed at that time didn’t exist, so they created it and over time we have changed and adapted and we have no intention of slowing down now.
On Friday 19th October we ran our own conference – The World of ADHD According to S.P.A.C.E. and despite the usual pre-event panic and the initial worries about ticket sales, the event was a roaring success.
We set out to produce an event that was suitable for both parents and professionals. We wanted to create an event which provided information about ADHD that was useful and allowed for reflection. Without understanding the background to ADHD it is hard for both families and teaching professionals to understand why children with ADHD behave the way that they do. If an adult believes that a child is choosing to behave in a certain way then their management of that behaviour is very different to how they manage disruptive behaviour that a child genuinely can’t help.
ADHD is a neurobiological condition and yet school policy is often informed by official SEND documentation that lists it as a set of behaviours, rather than a difference within the brain. Most people do not know the facts about ADHD and the enduring stereotype of naughty boys throwing chairs continues to steal focus from other presentations of ADHD, particularly those with the Inattentive type. Misinformation and ignorance spread by certain parts of the media have contributed to the ingrained stigma surrounding the condition, all of which contributes to a system that fails children and leaves the adults responsible for them without the necessary information and support.
We held our conference at the Guild Hall in Stockport with a handful of carefully selected sponsors at the back of the room offering products, services and information that was relevant to the audience on the day. We had a room full of parents, carers, young adults and those in the teaching profession who were all keen to learn more about ADHD so that they could take that knowledge away and use it to support local children.
Our guest speakers were amazing. They generously gave their time to write and deliver brilliant informative sessions and we could not be more grateful.
The majority of presentations from the day are available on our main website including a short film called Shine A Light on ADHD which we were given special permission to screen ahead of it’s official release on October 31st, the final day of ADHD Awareness Month.
Throughout the year the SPACE Team have been supporting the initiative started by ADHD Action to raise the political profile of ADHD and the push for an ADHD Act of Parliament. In January we travelled to Westminster for the launch of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) led by Jo Platt MP.
In October we returned to Westminster to attend an APPG meeting on Education chaired by Alex Sobel MP. We were aware that the Shadow Secretary for Education, Angela Rayner had been closely following the progress of the APPG. Angela has a personal interest in ADHD and was aware of our involvement because she has been a good friend of our very own Michelle for many years.
We made the trip from Stockport and Angela made time to not only attend the APPG meeting, but also spent time with us at the Houses of Parliament afterwards.
Last week we attended the ADHD Foundation‘s conference in Liverpool. As always it was a brilliant and very informative. We attended the Education Day and took the opportunity soak up knowledge from the Keynote speakers and catch up with some of our friends in the ADHD community.
The ADHD Foundation is an amazing resource for those with an interest in ADHD. They deliver training in schools and provide services to the NHS. Their website includes a wealth of information for both families and professionals including downloadable information sheets.
This year’s conference was focused on Neurodiversity and Mental Health and included information on not only ADHD but also lots of interesting material about Autism. It isn’t possible to cover a full day in a blog post, but here are some of the notes we made on the day.
Tony is the Chief Executive of the ADHD Foundation and delivered the welcome and introduction session.
Daniel is a Member of the Scottish Parliament and openly discusses his ADHD and how he uses medication to allow him to access it’s positives and control any potential negatives #Itakemypillsbecause When told that he was brave to be so open about his ADHD his response was “I’m not brave, but I am angry”
Useful online resources
barrycarpentereducation.com
engagement4learning.com
mental health.org.uk
butterflyprint.co.uk
booksbeyondwords.co.uk
Paula is a Principal Educational Psychologist at Place2Be The Place2Be website includes a number of downloadable resources for primary schools, secondary schools and youth groups.
Rory is a world famous comedian and impressionist, he is also Patron of the ADHD Foundation and a campaigner for a better understanding and treatment of ADHD. Rory has publicly spoken about his adult diagnosis of ADHD and took part in a Horizon Documentary.
We were frankly so busy enjoying this presentation that we didn’t make many notes!
The work on our website, blog and other online stuff is ongoing whilst we update, redesign and rearrange the content. We are reorganising our online content and we will be adding more information over the coming weeks. No matter how many changes we make and regardless of how often we change it’s look, the website will always display the details of our next parent and carer meet up.
And that ladies and gentleman is at least half of everything we’ve been doing over the last few months. Apologies for the sheer volume of notes, but too much seemed better than too little, especially when there were so many pages!
Now that everybody is up to date on where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing, we’re going to try and update our blog more often so – watch this space.
