What lockdown means for families with disabled children

When lockdown starts, all kinds of things stop. The first one, in March, was the worst time of my life as a parent, not because of my daughter’s severe disabilities, but because of the lack of support.

Elvi is 19. She has a mental age of three, sleeps four hours a night and can’t walk. She has to be showered, dressed, fed and physically moved around our home. I have learned so much from my beautiful, funny daughter. She works incredibly hard to achieve the smallest things. We were told Elvi wouldn’t live past two and that she was unlikely to speak. In the summer she said her first five-word sentence: ‘I want crisps please, Mummy.’

Through necessity, being Elvi’s mum has made me resilient and resourceful. But the pressure of caring in lockdown nearly broke me and thousands of other parents, and so this second national lockdown is terrifying.