The Children’s Challenge – Determined Youngsters as Young as Two to Fundraise for their Own Down’s Syndrome Therapy

Since the Covid-19 outbreak began, the UK charity sector has been hugely impacted. Not only have charities, like other organisations, had to completely change the way that they operate to fit in with the new digital and remote world, but they’ve also seen a significant reduction in charity donations.

For Down’s South London, this has meant quickly pivoting to carrying-out therapy sessions over Zoom and taking its usual fundraising initiatives online. Despite these actions, the charity has been greatly impacted with donations falling by more than 50% this past year as a result of the pandemic. 

Down’s South London is a small, parent-run charity based in Peckham, offering a unique, specialist early intervention therapy service for babies and young children with Down’s Syndrome as well as a local support network for their families. The charity is now looking to replace more than £50,000 of lost income that it has suffered this year due to the pandemic. 

With the challenge in mind, this weekend will see 15 determined children, aged from two-nine and all of whom have Down’s Syndrome, walking, running, cycling and swimming to cover the equivalent of Land’s End to Peckham in the virtual Down’s South London KIDS WALK 300 challenge.

All the children participating in the challenge are either current or former recipients of DSL’s therapy services, which provide a unique package of early intervention speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and occupational/sensory therapy, delivered by a team of highly skilled therapists with specialist knowledge of how young children with Down’s Syndrome develop.

This physical challenge is particularly demanding as children with Down’s Syndrome typically have some level of hypotonia, or low muscle tone, which for many means it has taken longer to learn to walk than it would for a typically developing child.

The charities service targets areas of therapy that are too often either unavailable to families, too infrequent or not specialised enough to make a real difference to our children. Early intervention is vital and, with waiting lists for the NHS growing, we encourage early referrals, right from birth. 

DSL’s specialist therapists see each child weekly, providing them with a personalised multi-disciplinary therapy programme to assist their development in all these areas and lay the foundations for them to grow into independent adults who contribute actively to society.

The challenge is taking place this Saturday on the 17th October and can be tracked on Instagram via @downssouthlondon and to donate, visit Virgin Money Giving Page.

This is a collaborative post but I was not paid for it.