Contact a Family provides support, advice and information to families with disabled children across the UK. They can help parents through any and every stage of their special needs journey.

We take a ‘one-stop shop’ approach to answering enquiries from families because we recognise that their lives are often very complex and they have a range of information and support needs.

They were particularly helpful to us when compiling The Good Schools Guide - Special Educational Needs.

Contact a Family adds

Typically, parents contact us soon after finding out that their child has a disability. The need for straightforward medical information is often the first thing that we can help with. We have information on thousands of medical conditions that affect children, including many very rare disorders. We also try to link parents up with a national support group, so that they can talk to other families who have been affected by the same condition. These groups are often small and run from the home of another family. They are a real lifeline for families, though, and a fantastic source of information on coping with a particular condition. Other parents can also tell a family how their own child coped with, for example, going to a mainstream school, or why they decided to choose a residential special school. Talking to others can help families to make up their own minds as to which course of action to take.

In the case of a very rare disorder where there is no support group we can try to link the parent one to one with another parent in the UK or abroad via our helpline or our family-linking website. If a parent wants to start a support group, we can offer development support and advice every step of the way.

Helpline

The family is likely to face a range of practical problems as the child grows up. Our helpline has a large range of free fact sheets covering most issues that face families with disabled children and answering common questions on rights, such as:

Do I have a right to return to work part time after maternity leave? How am I going to pay the rent on a lower wage?

Contact a Family would carry out a full benefits and tax credits check and advise about employment rights. Parents might also want to know about childcare for a disabled child and help from social services to adapt the family home.

We consistently find that many parents remain unaware, for many years, that they can claim Disability Living Allowance for their child, regardless of their own income and savings.

This benefit is assessed purely on the level of care that the child needs or on the difficulty that they have getting around. Many parents are also unaware that if their child uses a wheelchair indoors they automatically qualify for money off their council tax – again, regardless of income or savings. Small concessions like this can make life much easier for families. Another ex...

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