Those of you that follow either me (@edarcherthinks) or Contact A Family (@contactafamily) will have noticed a lot of tweets about Dowser Day recently. You'll have seen lots of photo's of dinosaurs and may have wondered what it is all about.
Over the last few years Contact a Family been supporting the Mathieson family as they fight against the government rule that takes away Disability Living Allowance (DLA) payments from children who spend over 84 days in hospital.
The Mathiesons' son Cameron spent over two years in hospital with cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy when his DLA payments were stopped. The family are currently awaiting a decision from the Supreme Court on their legal challenge to scrap this rule. If they are successful it could mean no other family loses essential financial support when their child spends long periods in hospital.
Sadly Cameron passed away in October 2012, aged five. Every year on his birthday, 19 June, his mum, dad, brothers and sister celebrate his life through Dowser Day, a nod to Cameron's love of dinosaurs.
Cameron's dad Craig Mathieson explains: "Cameron loved everything and everyone in his life and, like many boys his age, he was fascinated with dinosaurs. Because of Cameron's speech delay he couldn't say dinosaur and called them Dowsers instead."
One of the reasons I love working for Contact A Family is that the Mathieson's aren't a symbol or a test case for us. Everyone in the organization - including people like me who have never met the family take the situation they were put in by this unfair rule personally.
Which meant when we were offered a way to show the family we cared about their loss, and we were grateful for all the effort they are putting in to change this situation for other families by joining in Dowser Day celebrations everyone really threw themselves into it.
Here's some of the stuff the team made in our lunchbreaks:
You can find loads more contributions to Dowser Day from staff, families and supporters here and our thankyou video here. People from all over the country got involved. It was brilliant, and no it won't make a difference to the outcome of the court case wether we made a giant dinosaur head or not. But it does make a difference to remember that families of disabled children are families first, and to support and celebrate ordinary family life.
And it does (to me at least) make a huge difference to work in a charity where everyone really gets that and knows that it is not for us to set an agenda for families but to support them to set their own agenda, get their voices heard and celebrate and protest in a way of their choosing. Contact A Family are really good at what they (we) do, because we are all about families leading the way. Doesn't that sound like the kind of organisation you want to support? As always donating is easy you can do so here.
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