The Education Centre for Children with Down Syndrome
The
Education Centre for Children with Down Syndrome in Darlington was only
launched last November and already it has 17 sets of parents and children
and is now set to launch a Saturday Club.
County Durham Foundation provided £7,000 to help the group buy new
equipment and pay for specialist staff.
The group was set up by parent Maggie Hart who found there was nowhere north of Chester to get practical early educational help for her young son Alexander. With the help of other parents she applied for funding and started meeting every week at the school.
Mrs
Hart said: 'The plan has just snowballed really. I visited a specialist
centre down in Portsmouth and developed its model on a smaller scale.'
The support group currently meets every Friday morning in Beaumont School on Glebe Road but is set to move into Haughton Education Village, the UK's first privately-funded "superschool".
The group was set up in partnership with the national organisation Down
Syndrome Educational Trust to help pre-school age children with Down Syndrome
to improve their language, reading, writing and numeracy skills.
'The group is proving really popular and when we start to meet at our
new venue we can use some of the extra funding to expand the service we
offer. As well as Darlington we have parents coming from across County
Durham and Teesside.'
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