Sign Along With Us Community Blog

British Citizen Award for Service to the Community

Sun, 08 Nov 2020 14:53:36 GMT

British Citizens Award for Service to the Community

I am very overwhelmed with emotion and extremely excited to let you all know that I have been selected to receive The British Citizen Award for Services to the Community (BCAc) .

The formal Medal and certificate presentation should have been held at the palace of Westminster this month but because of the current situation has unfortunately been postponed.

Thank you so much to Sarah for nominating me who runs one of the charities I am a ambassador for Peeps - HIE .

I’m told Sarah nominated me for my charity work, my fundraising, my contribution to community and commitment to changing the lives of others. I am so grateful for your kind nomination and it was so unexpected but so appreciated.

Sarah said, "I am very proud of our Ambassador Jade from Sign along with us for receiving a Britsh Citizen Award.

She not only supports us ( she's even going to do a wing walk next year, talk about going above and beyond! ), but is also an Ambassador for the fab charity Jolly Josh . Jade has raised money for other great causes, and is of course spreading the message of inclusion and awareness. "

So apparently technically I can now use the name - Jade Kilduff BCAc on formal things, I’m sure those who know common as muck me will have a good giggle at that one xx

Our Friends at Jolly Josh

Sat, 16 May 2020 17:50:01 GMT

Our Friends at Jolly Josh

Jolly Josh aims to relieve the needs of those with additional needs, complex needs, disabilities and those with Profound and Multiple learning Disabilities, their families and carers within Rochdale and the wider area.

The idea of #JollyJosh in 2017 was ‘pure imagination’. A chain of events would lead Founder, Carole Kelly to realise that there was a huge gap in the system; the solution would become our son’s legacy.

Carole and other families did not have access to #connectsupportthrive with one another, there were no services in place for disabled children/those with #complexmedicalneeds under the age of five, and their families, which would break down the barriers of isolation and promote inclusion. She asked herself, where would families turn to, had Jolly Josh not have been established? Thankfully, we are now here, and we will continue to aim to improve services for our families.

At Jolly Josh we support and #inspireinclusion by:

• facilitating sessions for those with disability and/or additional/complex needs, to improve the quality of life of those living with a disability, additional need and/or life limiting condition and their families.

• helping connect those with a disability(s) and/or additional/complex needs and their families to professional support agencies and other charities to further support.

• providing peer to peer support for families and carers of those caring for a person with disability(s) and/or additional/complex needs.

• providing a safe, secure and inclusive environment for those with a disability(s) and/or additional/complex needs along with their families and carers outside of the home.

• to do all things possible to help those with additional/complex needs, disabilities, profound and multiple disabilities and their families.

• arrange, or support public meetings, lectures, conferences, seminars, courses of instruction and other educational activities, including for the consideration and discussion relating to additional/complex needs, disabilities, and profound and multiple disabilities.

• publish and distribute PowerPoints, presentations, books, pamphlets, reports, leaflets, journals, films, tapes and instructional matter on any media.

• provide or procure the provision of advice, professional services, counselling, holistic services, therapies and guidance.

• alone or with other organisations seek to influence public opinion, make representations to and seek to influence governmental /institutions/other bodies regarding the development and implementation of appropriate policies provided that all such activities shall be conducted on the basis of well-founded, reasoned argument.

Jade's Wing Walk for Peeps

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 17:26:11 GMT

Jade's Wing Walk for Peeps

Hi I'm Jade from Sign Along With Us . I'm taking my role of Ambassador for Peeps to a whole new level - in fact I'll be taking to the skies to do a sponsored Wing Walk!

This is no mean feat and I'd love to have your support. I'm going to add to the challenge (you know me!) by doing some Makaton signing while I'm up there!

Every penny will go to support families affected by HIE (you can find out more on the Peeps website ), and to raise awareness so that no-one feels alone. Please give if you can, but if you can't a share would be massively appreciated.

As some of you know, my younger brother Christian had a HIE event (brain injury due to lack of oxygen to the brain) after needing 24 minutes of resuscitation when he was stillborn at birth.

This led to him being sight impaired and being diagnosed with Quad Cerbral Palsy. This charity is so close to our hearts and we are very passionate about helping them in anyway we can.

When Christian came to live with our family from hospital at 5 weeks old we were told he had a grade 3 HIE injury . we had no idea what that was and what that could lead to and we knew nobody else who had experience or could help us.

Peeps are changing that by providing families who’s child has an HIE (hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy) event with information packs and more importantly supporting families from the start and being there throughout their journey whatever the outcomes are for the child and family.

Peeps was set up in 2018 by Sarah & Steve Land . Below Sarah explains why:

We found ourselves in the world of HIE when our daughter was born in March 2015 – she stopped breathing shortly after birth and, without any warning, our NICU journey began.

Neither of us had heard of HIE before, none of our friends or family had, and let’s be honest, it was a scary time. I googled it (going against the advice of all the nurses of course!), and luckily found a Facebook forum for families. If it hadn’t been for that group, the advice and information offered by other mums and dads, I think we might still have been wondering what on earth was going on!

So, we wanted to change things a bit, reach out to families in the early days, and bring the information to them, rather than them having to look for it.

Sign Along With Us - Our Beginnings

Thu, 16 Apr 2020 14:22:26 GMT

How Sign Along With Us Started

I’m Jade and I have a little brother called Christian who has a type of brain injury called HIE , this was caused by him being still born for 24 minutes.

Christian also has cerebral palsy , visual impairments, global development delay and sensory processing disorder but above all of that, he is just the most incredible little boy.

We were told that Christian would never be able to communicate but I just didn’t want to give up, so I decided to start signing with him and eventually after 18 months he signed back.

Since then he has come so far and can now sign around 250 words and can even say some words too. He is just a miracle. Myself and Christian wanted to share everything we knew with the world in the hope that they would learn some sign language too, so then it would help Christian and other people like him to not feel isolated and to be able to communicate with more people.

We decided to set up Sign Along With Us and started posting signing videos online .

Due to the positive reaction we decided to take it further and start teaching classes at the local community centre and this is where we got our amazing Sign Along With Us Choir together.

We just knew it was such a special group where everyone was included and could be themselves. We wanted to share Our Group with as many people as possible in the hope to inspire them to learn some sign language as well as to showcase all of the amazing people who have overcome different difficulties and challenges in their life but now have been able to stand proud and say This Is Me !!!!