New parent workshop dates just released!

3 mins read

Thursday 19 May 2022

Tags: early years, parent workshops, toilet training, helping your child sleep, early years entitlements

We’ve lined up some more of our popular free workshops for parents who care for a child aged 5 or under this June and July.

Our workshops are currently all online and cover a wide range of topics of interest to parent carers with a younger child including toilet training, early years entitlements, speech & language, anxiety, encouraging positive behaviour, helping your young child sleep and educational support for young children with additional needs.

“The first workshop I went to was Contact’s Early Years Entitlements one and I loved it so much and found it so useful that I booked up for all the other workshops that were available!”

Gemma Diggins’ youngest child, 4 year old Ethan, has a number of medical conditions including Down Syndrome. She told us about the confidence boost attending some of our early years workshops has given her.

“Before Ethan was born we knew that he was going to have Down Syndrome and a heart condition. We now know that he has 9 different conditions and we see 21 different medical professionals at 5 different hospitals. I found out about Contact through the charity’s supportive Facebook Group. We were going through the EHC Plan process at the time and I wanted to be absolutely sure I knew what he was entitled to and how I could support Ethan. The first parent workshop I went to was Contact’s Early Years Entitlements one and I loved it so much and found it so useful that I booked up for all the other workshops that were available!

“The Contact team running the workshops has lived experience of caring for a child with additional needs and an amazing passion for their job which shines through. They share so much useful information – I’ve been raving about them to everyone I meet! And I haven’t used it yet, but I plan to use Contact’s Listening Ear service very soon too. I’ve also attended the workshop about education because I want Ethan to go to a special needs school, as well as the workshop about handling meetings. I absolutely loved that one because it gave some really valuable advice and ideas about things I hadn’t even thought about before, simple things like taking someone with you to your meetings with professionals to take notes for example. I can also recommend the behaviour workshop. And the speech and language workshop really helped me understand that it’s OK if Ethan is non verbal as long as he can communicate with us in other ways.  

“All the workshops I’ve been to have given me confidence and the knowledge to move forward and not feel so alone. I’d just like to say thank you! I was struggling until I found Contact and at last, I feel like things are slotting into place.”

Find out more about our early years workshops and book your place today.

Find out more about all our workshops and events.

Our early years information and advice for parent carers

Take a look at our webpages to help you, your family and your child through the early years of their life.