Our Families

Rosanna's Story

I am Natalie and Gemma’s mum. Natalie and Gemma are 2 of my 6 children. I am a Biologist.

When we came to Crieff 34 years ago there was virtually no support or activities for children or adults with additional needs. Along with other parents we contacted Enable who suggested we set up a kind of club and so the Tuesday Club was born.

Natalie and Gemma are involved in several Building Bridges activities and clubs.

We get much satisfaction from seeing our girls enjoying themselves and being part of this community based charity. We also enjoy the respite which is a result of all their activities.

Advice for families

Find out what support and activities are in the area for people with additional needs.

The Future of Building Bridges

I can’t imagine anything better in the future but I’m sure the way Building Bridges has progressed in the last 10 years, there will be something different happening.

Gillian's Story

I’m Gillian, David’s mum. I've just retired from work as a Careers Adviser and Ken, David’s dad is a musician. David is a very proud brother of three younger sisters, Katie, Emma and Sophie.

We moved to Crieff about 30 years ago and David (who was born in Brazil!) attended Crieff Primary and the High School with a lot of support. We were told about the Tuesday Club when David was about 15 and starting his transition into post-school provision. He started going along and we his family started making more links with other parents and carers in the community. Tuesday Club was (and is) brilliant, but some of us wanted more!

About ten years ago a group of us got together and organised a series of focus groups around what people in the local community wanted for their young people with learning and other disabilities. The main priorities identified were:

• More social and leisure activities, ideally promoting integration into the local community
• Opportunities for our young people to become more involved in sporting activities, mainly to promote health and wellbeing, but also because we were aware of the benefits to be gained from developing skills and getting involved in competition at local, national and even international levels
• Respite
• Housing
• Employability

This was the start of Strathearn Building Bridges.

Advice for families

It doesn’t all finish at the end of school! Perhaps more than anyone, children and young people with learning and other disabilities can and will continue to grow and develop, given the opportunity to do so.

The Future of Building Bridges

I’d love to see us have the opportunity to extend our services to support the next generation and their families. We’re also very conscious that our members (and their parents/carers) are getting older, so we’d started a project called “an experiment in shared living” to see if people might be interested in using local respite to see what it might be like to spend a bit more time together… Early days! Employability is also still on our agenda, and I would hope in 10 years’ time we might have a proper project underway to support people to develop these skills.