Josanne, aged 29, embracing life at St Elizabeth's Centre in Hertfordshire, 2015
Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. I once came back from dropping my child at playgroup to find that I couldn’t get into my house. I put the key in the lock but when I tried to turn it it wouldn’t move. Jammed. Stuck. Locked out. After enlisting the help of a locksmith, it transpired that a tiny millimetre length of metal had broken off the mechanism. The littlest thing stopped the whole thing from working. A millimetre away from getting into my house, yet wholly locked out.
Little things can be so important. Take, for example, the Little Blue Cup campaign launched in recent months. A 13 year old autistic boy with severe learning disabilities had used a blue sippy cup since he was two, and wouldn’t drink from anything else. His father managed to find a replacement from a friend when the first cup wore out. But as this second cup began deteriorating and efforts to get him to drink from other cups - however similar - failed, they grew increasingly concerned. Without that blue sippy cup he would become dehydrated and had already spent time in hospital.
