This is Fab! (Well the first bit is!)

Those of you who know me in RL know that Princess Nat is my sidekick at church. She gives me hugs, we do drawings and we dance to the worship songs together. She comes and sits with me and CJ in the front row.

She’s my little ray of sunshine!

I read Life With My Specials Ks. It’s written by Renee who is Mum to four gorgeous kids. Her daughter Kennedy has DS (Down Syndrome).

On Friday Renee posted about a guy called Burt Holbrook. The story can be found here. He’s aiming for to be included in the Guiness Book of Records as the Oldest living man with Down Syndrome. When he was born the expectant age for DS kids was about 9 or 10. That means he’s outlived that about 8 times! In 2005 this had rose to mid-fifties.

The second link I wanted to show you is for Reece’s Rainbow Down Syndrome Adoption Ministry.  (This is from their website just slightly tweaked) It was started in 2004 as an outreach program to serve new families with babies with Down syndrome in Atlanta, GA. In 2006, the program expanded to include promoting the international adoption of children with Down syndrome.  By raising money to offer adoption grants on waiting children, we are able to give adoptive families the extra financial help they need to bring a child with Down syndrome home from a miserable existence in overseas orphanages.

In alot of countries, because of the cost of medical bills and stuff like that children with DS are often institutionalised by about the age of 4. In some countries, they don’t even make it that far. The idea behind the international bit of Reece’s Rainbow is to raise money and aid adoptions of these children. These Children then move to live with families across the USA. It is possible to adopt to the UK through Reece’s Rainbow but it is restricted on which countries you can then adopt from. There is a page on the website with scary facts about these children with DS here is just one for example

In Central and Eastern European countries alone (this would include Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, etc, but NOT Russia), there are more than 1.5 MILLION CHILDREN who have been abandoned by their families for one reason or another and are living in “public care” (that’s the nice way to put it).  If statistically, 1 out of every 733 live births results in a child with Down syndrome, that means at any given time there are 2,046 children with Down syndrome who need families.  THAT’S JUST IN EUROPE!!  Some do not survive because of serious medical complications…some do not survive because of lack of medical attention, lack of food, lack of LOVE.