Thinking back over Joff’s early years for the Diary Project has naturally evoked a number of emotions. Gladness that (mostly) all has come good for us, smiles at the memories of things we did as a young family, frowns and frustration at the numerous, stupid, and unnecessary fights we’ve had to have with services over the years, when, all being equal, you should just be free to enjoy your time being a mum/dad to your kids regardless of their support needs.

A wise friend/hero quoted to me recently “if you have a hero, look again; you have diminished yourself in some way” and while I can thoroughly buy into that thought-provoking sentiment, I somehow can’t help but think of certain people in heroic terms when they’ve done something special for Team Effie over the years. They say that it takes a community to raise a child and that’s never more true when your child has additional support needs.

Our first family hero was our Health Visitor up in Lossiemouth. We knew her back then as Linda Glen, but a wee bird tells me she’s now Mrs Scott! (warm congratulations to you both)

We came back home from Glasgow and Linda immediately rustled up all manner of support services for Joff – a physiotherapist, an occupational therapist, a speech and language therapist and a teacher for the blind. She also helped us out with vital information – telling us about the existence of Disability Living Allowance and Invalid Carer’s Allowance as it was known then.  I’ve met enough parents of children with disabilities since then to know that not all Health Visitors are equal and not every family gets that sense of appropriate and timely support. Perhaps reading this, Linda might modestly say she was” just doing her job” but in doing so she set us an example of sourcing community support that we’ve been copying ever since.

I must slip in a couple of side notes about a two of the therapists in those early days. Jonathan Caddy was a peripatetic teacher for the Blind in Moray. He is the son of the founders of the Findhorn Foundation and as well as bringing us toys and resources for Joff, and a huge sense of moral support, he was one of the first people to recognise our strengths as a family. He knew just how well we were coping with Joff’s contact lenses and asked us if we would mind helping other families in Moray with their children who used contact lenses - by us providing a bit of peer mentoring and “live demos” of us taking Joff’s lenses in and out. I remember Jonathan with a great deal of fondness. A good guy.

I also vividly remember the first time our speech and language therapist came to the house, an RAF quarter. We had an early morning appointment arranged, but I had had a rough night with the kids and woke up with barely 10 minutes to spare before she arrived. Panicked, I dressed quickly, hoofed it downstairs and saw that our living room was like anneker’s midden (Scottish term for a real mess) There were the kids toys, clothes bound for ironing, ironed washing not put away yet, bits of arts and crafts stuff not tidied away from the day before, a washing mountain (aye Greg, I have them too <grin>) coats and shoes, a changing mat and nappy paraphernalia lying around.  Hastily, I gathered the lot up and punted it wholesale into the kitchen, right next to the living room and closed the door on it. The carpet was relatively crumb free so I thought “beauty, that’ll do, I've got away with it”.

The lady came on time; we made our introductions in the hallway next to the kitchen. I said I’d go upstairs and get Joff out his cot. Great says she, I’ll just give my hands a wash first – and opened the kitchen door as if she lived there. Thing was, she had visited a number of families living in RAF quarters so she knew fine well there was a kitchen with a sink behind that shut door and just kind of breezed in unthinking.

The two of us just kind of stared at the three foot high mountain of detritus lying in the middle of the kitchen floor. I totally died off on the spot. The phrase for that in Scotland is “Black Affronted”. She immediately apologised for her presumption and I apologised for the state of the mess she was looking at. Even though now I still blush thinking back about that incident, I am now gentle with myself in that most days and most visits, our house is clean and tidy. And she wasn’t there to judge.

Our next major source of help was the Ladybird Pre-school Playgroup. So more about that next time, faithful readers.