our positive impact jan-jun 2024

The Congratulations Initiative supports families to ensure all parents have up to date, fair and equitable information and support during both the prenatal and early years. It aims at educating medical professionals in their delivering a diagnosis, providing up to date information about Down syndrome through our Medical Professionals Packs, linking Down Syndrome NSW as key support partner and most importantly saying "congratulations" not sorry.  

Over the last 6 months (January - June 2024), the Congratulations Initiative has supported over 30 families in their pre-natal or post-natal journey: 

• 12 families engaged in our fortnightly Online CatchUP! to connect, share stories and wins about their babies. This service provides an informal platform where parents and carers who have a baby aged 0-2 years can join us online to get to know other families. The babies are always so gorgeous and the half hour timeslot allocated for this forum always goes by so fast......usually running overtime so the parents can keep chatting for a few minutes longer, which is fantastic. 

• New Babies Days were held in March and June 2024. These events provide families with the opportunity to meet and socialise in a casual space with other families whilst listenening to professionals on topics relevant to their children.

Our March event was attended by 12 families and held in Hornsby where EarlyEd experts, Amanda Clifford (OT & Practice Leader) and Rosemary Morrison, (a highly experienced educator) led a session and gave an overview of the benefits of occupational therapy, speech and physiotherapy and showed practically how families can incorporate strategies in their daily activities to benefit their babies.  The session also included sensory processing and interactive play between the parents and their babies.  Huge thank you to our wonderful volunteer Jennifer Young who took photos of all the families at this special event. 

Our June New Babies Day was attended by 7 families and held in Prestons.  Our facilitator presenters were Sarah Starr (Speech Pathologist at Speech Pathology Services NSW) and Lisa Dodd (Accredited Keyword Sign Language Teacher).  Sarah spoke about speech therapy, potential feeding issues to look out for and strategies and feeding items/utensils to manage these.  Lisa gave an interactive presentation on Keyword Sign Language which is always so beneficial and fun for our families.  Lots of questions and answers at this session for everyone to benefit from. 

• Supported 7 families in their prenatal stage, including connecting with a family from overseas who are relocating to NSW. 

• Visited 4 families following the birth of their baby 

• Sent 7 pre-natal packs and 6 new baby packs 

• Delivered one online workshop to 30 health professionals in June on the topic of ‘Down Syndrome in the Prenatal and Postnatal Stages’