Support for siblings – Playgroups

Siblings play an important role in the lives of their brother or sister with additional needs. While there are some wonderful parts to being a sibling, it can come with some unique challenges. Parents are often concerned about their child’s role as a sibling and seek to understand how they can best provide support. Some of the things identified by siblings as being helpful include:

• Information about their brother or sister’s disability or illness, how it might affect the family and strategies to help them explain the disability to others.
• A sense of involvement about family routines and the role each family member can play to help create a strong, caring and unified family unit.
• Freedom to express feelings – good and bad to help siblings cope.
• Skills to deal with difficult situations such as teasing or reactions from peers or the community.
• A sense of being special too. Parents, family, friends and professionals can all play a role here.
• Feeling valued by being allowed to assist in the care of a child with disability and being appreciated.
• Contact with other siblings of children with disability where they can share experiences and learn they are not alone.
• A social network that allows them to interact with others outside of their life as a sibling of a child with disability and to whom they might turn to for support

Carers support groups – Peer Support Gathering

Access to social and emotional support from others who have a ‘lived’ experience of raising a child with special needs will help you to become an informed, confident and resilient parent.

EKF operates in Southwest Sydney area. We are aiming to link carers to specific support groups. We will also be working with you to form your local and specific group to connect with other carers in a regular gathering through which they can ask questions, seek advice and recommendations, discuss coping strategies or simply catch up.

Members of the groups can support each other through shared knowledge and experiences, ask specialised or diagnosis-specific questions, provide a sounding board for one another as well as emotional support to better cope with developments and transitions.