Our mission
We are a community supporting parents, carers and professionals working with children and young people with ADHD through:
- Knowledge (providing information, knowledge and practical support to parents, carers and professionals)
- Advocacy (raising awareness of ADHD amongst general public, local schools, local healthcare groups, local community and at government level)
- Empowerment (empowering those with ADHD and their families through provision of knowledge and practical support)
with a view to improving the lives of children and young people with ADHD and their families.
Our values
Underpinning everything we do are the values that the ADHD Embrace team of staff and volunteers embody:
- Inclusive: Everybody is welcome and we strive to make our offering accessible to all as a safe space and being non-judgement
- Quality: Delivering services to a high standard and aiming to ensure the treatment and support for those with ADHD takes a holistic approach (health, education, family and community)
- Collaborative: Working with parents and professionals and other local organisations to achieve positive outcomes for children and teens with ADHD and their families.
- Commitment: Working together as a team to ensure that we deliver our mission.
We commit to working hard to encourage equity, diversity and inclusion in our community and our team and to adopt best practice. This is achieved through the following approach:
Our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Statement
1. Diverse and inclusive leadership:
· We aim to be led by diverse, inclusive and effective leaders who embrace the benefits of diversity of backgrounds, skills, experiences and perspectives and recognise the contribution diversity makes to our charity mission.
· We work to best accommodate equity, diversity and inclusivity in our operations and adopt principles of fairness.
2. Recruitment and training:
· When we recruit for Trustees, volunteers and staff we advertise our roles widely to be able to attract and encourage applicants with diverse backgrounds and skills.
· We aim to understand the current diversity of the organisation, noting areas of underrepresentation. We take a proactive approach to ensuring that appointments made take account of the principles of EDI.
· We seek to ensure we provide suitable training to our team to embed the principles of EDI across the charity.
3. Inclusivity:
· We cultivate a culture where our staff, trustees and volunteers work as a team and each person feels respected, able to contribute fully and give their best
· The ways that we connect with our staff and communities will be intentionally inclusive and nurture a sense of belonging
· We seek to increase engagement with people from different backgrounds and those in diverse communities where we aim to bring awareness and understanding of ADHD to more people.
Our history
In 2002, Annette Wilson set up a support group for local parents in Richmond upon Thames:
“When my son was diagnosed with ADHD in 2002, the condition was not widely understood in the UK, and I felt very isolated. I had a strong sense that there must be other families like us wanting to better understand the condition and also share our experiences with other parents in a similar position. I approached the psychiatrist, under whose care we were and asked if I could use a ground floor space at Richmond Royal Hospital to host ADHD coffee mornings and distribute a flyer to tell other parents. That was the start of the ADHD Embrace community, where the focus was to provide a community for those whose lives were touched by the condition. Since then we have expanded our activities enormously to share knowledge, provide advocacy for the condition and also empower families and those with ADHD.”
Initially operating as ADHD Richmond and then ADHD Richmond and Kingston, the group has operated with the amazing support of volunteers for twenty years. Also for a large part of that time Val Ivens led the day to day operations and today is our Family Support Lead. In March 2020 we registered as a charity in order to secure our long term sustainably as a community group and in July 2021 we rebranded as ADHD Embrace.
Over the years we have built a reputation for the work we do to support families and professionals working with children and young people with ADHD. This only has been achievable with the dedication of the core team and also the enormous support from the many volunteers over the years and more recently with the support of our funders.