Ellie

Ellie is now 22 years old, she was born at 36 weeks by cesarean section and spent the following 4 weeks in the neo-natal unit. We eventually got a diagnosis of a micro-deletion of chromosome 4, when Ellie was 4 years old.
Having a micro deletion means that Ellie has a severe and complex learning disability,she can walk with help, is non verbal but has a good understanding and is able to make choices.

Ellie has two younger siblings – Jasmine 18 and Sam 15, and last week we returned to the Calvert Trust at Keilder. The Calvert Trust is a truly special place with amazing people working there. It is an outdoor activity centre that specializes in giving people with special needs the opportunity to do activities that we would never dream that our children could do.
Last week Ellie did Rock wall climbing, she was in a harness and roped up and because Ellie can’t help she was pulled up in her harness and rang the bell at the top of the wall with her foot, she loved it, the sense of freedom must have been amazing and she chose to do it again. The following morning it was the zipline and harnessed up to Jasmine they did the zipline 4 times Ellie did lots of flapping and screaming which is a good indication of happiness and excitiment, we then did archery and the bow was adapted so that Ellie had to pull a trigger to release the arrow she did well and had a fierce competition with Jasmine and Sam. The best things about the Calvert Trust are that everyone can do everything, siblings and family members, carers and the person with special needs nothing is too much trouble for the activities team and we had the best time because for once Jasmine, Sam and Ellie did the same activities at the same time.