Meet the mum who set up a childminding centre for children with special needs while caring for her disabled son
Helen, 40, from Wrexham used her experience of caring for her disabled son to set up her own inclusive childminding centre. When Helen looks around her childminding centre and sees the children she cares for playing and learning, she can’t help but think of her son, Dyfan, who inspired her to start it.
Dyfan, seven, has an incredibly rare genetic condition, Chromosome 8p deletion, and is thought to be the only known case in the UK. He has learning and physical disabilities and is visually and hearing impaired.
‘We didn’t know Dyfan would be born with this condition, so at first it was like a bereavement,’ Helen says. ‘Doctors couldn’t tell us what his future was going to be like, so I’d just lie by his cot each night and cry.’
Yet Helen says it didn’t take her long to see past Dyfan’s disability, ‘And from that moment I wanted to do all I could to help him reach his full potential.’ Quickly realising there were no suitable facilities for special needs children in the area, Helen – who was already a childminder – set up Blythswood Childcare Services with her husband, Dean, and opened the doors to children from a range of backgrounds. ‘Dyfan’s condition has helped me understand the needs of the children who come here,’ she explains.
Helen says she likes to be busy, and she really is – speaking at sessions for people who want to be childminders, working with parents who have just discovered their child is disabled, and acting as a parent advocate.
‘Naively, when Dyfan was born, I assumed we could get a book that would tell us how to apply for Disability Living Allowance and get a blue badge, but there was nothing,’ she says. ‘I want to make sure other parents don’t have to experience that kind of helplessness.’
Helen was nominated by her family, as well as by mums of some of the children she childminds. ‘Special childminders are hard to find,’ they said. ‘That’s why we, and our children, feel lucky to know Helen.’
Our judges said: ‘Helen has used her own difficult personal circumstances to improve the development of other special needs children.’
