Interview with Jaclyn Harron from Circle of Support

Tell us a bit about yourself and/or your organisation.

My name is Jaclyn Harron, I am 41 years old and married to Simon. We have 3 children, Eoghan age 12, Conal age 10 and Aoife age 6. I work as a Data Scientist, having obtained my PhD in Social Work from QUB in 2012, and volunteer as a Grants Officer with Circle of Support (COS) for Autism Families.

In 2017, when my daughter was 2 years old, we realised that her development had started to regress and the few words she had stopped and she would not answer to her name or make eye contact. After speaking to our Health Visitor, she decided to refer Aoife to Community Pediatrics. At this appointment, the Paediatrician told us that Aoife had Global Developmental Delay and was likely on the autism spectrum. At this stage, I did what I always do and started to research to find help and information and this is how I found COS.

COS aim to make a practical difference to children and young people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) by providing a strong support network and a range of activities and services available to all and any families and children in need. Their objectives are to:
• Be child and family centred;
• Offer support to parents;
• Provide support to siblings and the opportunity to meet and form friendships;
• Reduce the feeling of isolation experienced by families with children who have additional needs;
• Develop a community of Autism through a support network; and
• Further raise awareness, acceptance and inclusion of Autism and other related conditions in the local community.

It was a further two years before our daughter received her formal diagnosis of ASD and, during this time, the support and advice I received from other families through COS was invaluable. I have made lifelong friends and nothing is ever too much to ask. Although COS is fully parent-led (we do not receive any government or statutory funding), all families take time to help each other where they can.

How well have you/your organisation adapted to the pandemic?

COS is a charity that is run by autism families for autism families so, as our group is fully parent-led, the lockdown due to the pandemic was particularly difficult for us in terms of supporting our families with our usual outings for children. During lockdown, we continued to provide support virtually in terms of advice on many issues facing children and young people, which became more prevalent during lockdown with many services for families being stopped. Families of children with autism told us that they were very isolated during this time and, with all routines such as school cancelled, children’s lives were disrupted causing distress to both them and their families.

We have a private group on social media where we can engage with all of our members and we do so on a daily basis. The group is used as a support network where parents post questions or issues and there are contributions from the wider community of parents. In addition to continuing this, we also ran a few other socially distanced projects during lockdown such as:
• Providing all registered families with packs of face masks, accompanied with a social story to help the children and young people either wear a mask or to understand why those around them were wearing them.
• Delivering care packs to families of older children.
• Running arts and crafts competitions online.
• A drive through Santa experience at Christmas time where children could visit Santa from the safety of their car and received a gift and a photograph.

We are looking forward to getting back to what we do best and that is providing face to face support for families that need it most.

If you would like to respond to this ask, please follow the link below and enter “COS” to the first field.