Ms Niamh Kerrigan:

My journey starting with Lauren was tough because there was no communication. I had to fight for everything through the years. I even had to fight to get her into school, because she was refused from her first school before she had even walked in the door. I first heard about this programme from Ms Ní Raghallaigh when my daughter was eventually diagnosed at the age of 12 - privately - with an intellectual disability. She started in a special school and that was when I met Ms Ní Raghallaigh who was a speech therapist there at the time.

Ms Ní Raghallaigh was doing the special needs programme which the school was piloting. She asked whether I wished to attend. To be honest, at first, like most parents I thought I was being offered the programme and would not get the six half-hour speech therapies this year or whatever the case may be. However, it was explained that was not the case and one of the subjects the course would cover was planning for the future. I did not know what was going to happen with Lauren when she left school. I just knew that she obviously was not going on to college and she could not get a job. I did not know where we stood. I thought I would go on this course to see what it was all about.

Never have I been enlightened as much as I was on that programme. I was in a room full of parents who were experiencing the same things I was - sorry. It was a safe place and we were able to help each other. It felt as though my child was not different from everybody else's child. I did not have the possibility of talking to other parents at the school gates because Lauren was going to a special school. She was picked up from home every day and brought in by private bus. I did not have that community.

This programme formed such a community for me and it helped me realise I was doing an injustice to my daughter because I was protecting her too much. She did not even make her own lunches. She was never left in the house because it might burn down if she was there by herself. I never knew what she might do. In this programme, I learned how to make, or give, my child that ability to be independent. I realised that other parents were doing this and I should be doing so, too. I realised I was doing a terrible disservice to my own daughter.

The programme helped me to grow that to the stage my daughter is 18. She is in adult services, which I learned about in the programme as well. She is getting two buses there by herself. Since September, for the first time, she has walked into a shop and bought her own things. It was all from the support I got through the programme. It was the first time I had ever been offered this. I had never been offered anything beforehand. When she was two, Lauren broke my nose and I was crying down the phone to the district nurse asking for help because of the tantrums Lauren would throw. Nobody was coming back to help me. Nothing was there. If I had known about programmes such as this when she was younger, I guarantee I would have done them then and I think my journey would have been smoother than it has been until now.