Repair - Edinburgh

All of us at Repair - Edinburgh HQ are saddened to hear of the untimely passing of fellow advocate and campaigner Carol King who set up and ran It takes a village (Currie).

Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends at this time.

Many congratulations to our founding member Carolyn, who attended the opening of the Scottish Parliament as a VIP guest! Carolyn is indeed a powerful and tenacious campaigner, as well as a loyal friend. It’s a privilege to work with her, and this was truly a well-deserved invitation.

Meet my Local Hero! At today’s official opening of Parliament we celebrated the contributions made by some incredible people in our communities. I was thrilled that Carolyn Samson agreed to be my local hero. She is a phenomenal advocate for kids with additional support needs, campaigning with the REPAIR group to make sure these kids get the right support both in schools and in after school care. As many of you know, this is an issue close to my heart - so thank you Carolyn for all that you do speaking up for these kids! ❤️

Latest newsletter drop!

Lots of things to sign up for and dates for the diary.

hope you enjoy!

https://repairedinburgh.wordpress.com/newsletters/

I'm sure lots of us have received help from, and would be happy to support, this excellent local charity.

Can you help us win? 💚

Mindroom has been entered into the Movement for Good, Health & Wellbeing Special Draw, where 10 charities will each receive £5,000 from Benefact Group.

This funding would help us continue our mission to improve the quality of life for neurodivergent people by removing barriers, increasing opportunities, and shaping a more inclusive world.

If you’d like to support our work, please nominate Mindroom using the link below. The nomination window is open until 24 May 2026.

👉 movementforgood.com/draws/special/health-wellbeing

Thank you to everyone who continues to support us and help ensure no mind is left behind.

What happens when your child is unable to attend School?

Every Parent or Carer of an ASN child is an "everyday hero", in ways other parents can rarely imagine.

This is a theme of this year’s Paisley Book Festival and on Friday this week Steering Group member Lesley Macniven will be chairing an event centred around the impact on families when a child cannot attend mainstream school.

It's rare to be able to hear this talked about in a public space. But in the safe, private ASN forums we inhabit, we know that this is not uncommon, at all.

Caro Giles wrote Unschooled while home educating (at different points) 3 of her 4 girls, and fighting for them to access a state-funded education.

She wrote this memoir as an act of advocacy, sense-making & self-preservation. It's an unfiltered story of our times that shows the complications, challenges & opportunities women have to show our mettle, while wishing we didn't have to.

We would love anyone who can to join us at Paisley Town Hall to discuss how aspects of mainstream schooling are harming an ND generation and burning out their mothers, and how society could do better.

There will be a Q&A at the end when we would love to hear from other everyday heroes.

We also hope others will come along with curiosity, interested to find out more. We need allies in this war of attrition for those of us still in the trenches.

If you know anyone in the West, who has a child whose needs are not being met in mainstream education, please do tell them about this event.

Caro Giles: Unschooled📚

📅 Friday 15 May

🎟️ Book now: bit.ly/4cLjynq

What happens when your child is unable to attend School?

Every Parent or Carer of an ASN child is an everyday hero, in ways other parents can rarely imagine.

This is a theme of this year’s Paisley Book Festival and on Friday this week Steering Group member Lesley Macniven will be chairing an event centred around the impact on families when a child cannot attend mainstream school.

It's rare to be able to hear this talked about in a public space. But in the private ASN forums that we inhabit, we know that this is not uncommon, at all.

Caro Giles wrote Unschooled while home educating (at different points) 3 of her 4 girls, and fighting for them to access an education.

She wrote this memoir as an act of advocacy, sense-making & self-preservation. It's an unfiltered story of our times that shows the complications, challenges & opportunities women have to show our mettle, while wishing we didn't have to.

We would love anyone who can to join us at (the very accessible) Paisley Town Hall to discuss how aspects of mainstream schooling are harming a generation and burning out their mothers, and how society could do better.

There will be a Q&A at the end when we would love to hear from other everyday heroes.

We also hope others will come along with curiosity, interested to find out more. We need allies in this war of attrition for those of us still in the trenches.

If you know anyone in the West, who has a child whose needs are not being met in mainstream education, please do tell them about this event.

Caro Giles: Unschooled📚

📅 Friday 15 May
🎟️ Book now: bit.ly/4cLjynq

Caro Giles: Unschooled - Paisley Book Festival Friday 15 May, 12:00-13:00 Paisley Town Hall Pay What You Can (£5/£8/£12) Glasgow-based author and mother of four, Caro Giles, joins us to discuss the escalating crisis unfolding in British schools, as explored in her memoir, Unschooled. After three of her daughters became unable to go to school,...

***calling all parents of children who are unable to attend school (EBSNA)***
Glasgow uni are currently undertaking research on this subject and need your input.
Please fill out the form below. As a thank you, you will be reimbursed for your time with a love2shop voucher.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfP-QnEbGl6nj2G9K7ovTWc2ve6LuROY0h3oofzoOXVArf-3g/viewform

The REPAIR Steering Group calls for urgent action on the McManus Review.

Its findings mirror what families live daily: unmet rights, inconsistent support, overstretched staff, and children being failed.

The recommendations are clear. What’s needed now is political will, accountability, and real investment.

Our children cannot wait.

Additional Support for Learning: review Additional Support for Learning Review - led by the Scottish Government's Professional Advisor for Education. Informed by existing evidence to focus on: national and local system conditions that support ASN delivery; experience of delivery in school and how policy translates into effective practice.

Sharing a beautifully-written and very important post this International Women’s Day. To all those female carers who show up every day, whose contributions aren’t covered by the media or rewarded with bonuses but without whom society would fall apart, we see you and we appreciate you.

Thank you to A Different Journey for this beautiful post.

On International Women’s Day, my social media feed will be filled with women who are, in every sense of the phrase, smashing it.

There will be founders and leaders, campaigners and creatives, women who have carved out space to build businesses, shape policy, create art, change culture. And I will celebrate them all, because their work and ambition matters.

But this year, I find myself thinking about a different kind of strength. I am thinking about the mums who stepped away from paid work because their child’s needs demanded it, and whose days are now shaped by care rather than career.

The women whose work begins long before sunrise and rarely ends when the lights go out. The ones whose days are shaped not by strategy meetings or growth targets, but by school emails that need careful emotional translation, by medication schedules, and by forms that ask them to prove their child’s needs again and again.

The women who have become experts in chasing, clarifying and correcting systems that rarely join up, who can recite diagnoses and dosages from memory, and who manage multi-agency communication with the diplomacy of seasoned negotiators.

From the outside, it can look as though they’re ‘not working.’ They’re not in an office whilst their children are at school, and there’s no salary appearing in their bank accounts at the end of the month.

But those hours of perceived freedom are often spent recovering from fractured nights of sleep, advocating for their child, researching, planning or preparing for meetings that will determine the shape of their future. It is labour that is largely invisible and entirely relentless.

Strength is often measured by what we build, launch, or lead. It is associated with upward movement and visible achievement. Yet there are women using every ounce of their intelligence and stamina not to climb, but to stabilise. Using their strength to hold steady, absorbing pressure so that a vulnerable child does not have to carry it alone.

Some women build companies - but some women build safety nets. Both require resilience, strategic thinking and courage.
What is rarely acknowledged is the cost. The careers paused or quietly abandoned, the pensions that will never quite look the same, and the financial vulnerability that hums beneath everyday decisions.

There are the creative ideas that sit in notebooks or floating somewhere in the backs of minds because there is simply no bandwidth left at the end of a day spent firefighting to make them a reality. It is not a lack of ambition - it’s a redirection of it. It is choosing, again and again, to pour skill and energy into safeguarding someone else’s wellbeing.

Visibility and value are not the same thing. Just because this work doesn’t trend or attract applause, does not make it smaller. In fact, much of our public infrastructure quietly relies on it. Unpaid carers prop up health services, education systems and social care structures that would struggle to function without them. The labour may take place around kitchen tables, in hospital waiting rooms and in bathrooms where five minutes of quiet feels like a luxury, but it is no less real for being domestic.

On International Women’s Day, I want to widen the lens just enough to include these women too. The ones who crave space to think freely and create something that belongs solely to them, but who are constantly channelling everything they have into managing sleepless nights, recurrent illness brought on by exhaustion, and advocacy they never imagined would become part of their identity. The ones who tried to do it all and discovered, through necessity rather than weakness, that something had to give.

You are not less driven because your drive is directed toward care.

You are not less capable because your competence plays out behind closed doors.

You are not less powerful because your strength is expressed through endurance rather than visibility.

Strength does not only exist in boardrooms and on stages. Sometimes it exists in the steady decision to stay, to learn, to co-ordinate, to protect, and to show up again tomorrow even when today has taken everything out of you.

This International Women’s Day, alongside the women breaking ceilings and building empires, I am celebrating the women who are holding entire worlds together in ways that few people ever fully see.

Strong - but not in the way you might expect.