Friday, 18 December 2015

Weekend reading and viewing: 19th - 20th December 2015


What No One Told Me When My Child With Down Syndrome Was Born
Sondra Meacham, The Mighty, 17th December 2015
She turned my world upside down four years ago. In December 2011, we were preparing for the birth of our second daughter ... I’m thankful for how much I have learned about what is important.

He is Joe. He is our son
No Label, No Limits, 8th December 2015
When Sarah asked me if I would consider writing something for the PSDS blog I knew straight away that I would say yes. I realised that I’d reached something of a milestone by coming through the trauma and stress of the early months and that I was not only ready to share our story but desperate to! I often wish I could go back in time and tell my pregnant self what I know now ...

Life Expectancy for Those With Intellectual Disability Used to be Nine Years. Today it is 50 and Beyond

Prof Mary McCarron, Trinity College Dublin, 11 December 2015
The ageing of people with an intellectual disability is a success story that was celebrated in the inaugural lecture delivered by Professor Mary McCarron, Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences and Trinity College Dublin’s first Professor of Ageing with Disabilities, in Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute last night.

“This is the first time in history we have ever had a population of people with an intellectual disability who have reached old age and this is something that we should celebrate. Life expectancy for those with Down syndrome in the 1930s was nine years. Today it is 50s, 60s, 70s and beyond,” says Professor McCarron ...
  • Professor Mary McCarron is Dean of Faculty of Health Sciences at Trinity College Dublin and an international expert in the field of ageing and intellectual disability, dementia and Down syndrome. She has been a champion for those with intellectual disability since she began her career as a nurse in the 1980s.
A lonely love
Heather Kirn Lanier, Star in Her Eye, 9th December 2015
... I said it slowly and clearly and sadly, and the sentence felt as weighty as a psalm: “It’s hard having a child that other people actively don’t want.”

There it was. My husband stopped what he was doing—scrubbing the stove? putting away silverware?—and turned to me. He opened his arms for a hug.I pressed my cheek into his fleece sweatshirt and stared at the wall. “I want her,” he said ...


What makes someone fit to parent?
Natalie Rose Corrigan, Daily Life, 17th December 2015
... In Australia, Rebecca*, who has a mild intellectual disability, was still pregnant with her first child when she was reported to child protective services. This may sound like a bizarre scenario, but it's an all too prevalent one among people with disabilities. One in five Australians has some form of disability and parents (usually mothers) with disabilities are up to ten times more likely to lose custody of their children ...

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