Rosa Monckton

Friday

Rosa Monckton

While other charities virtue-signal, here’s one that transforms lives: Team Domenica

From our UK edition

19 min listen

Ask yourself: who are the most vulnerable and marginalised people in British society? My answer would be young adults suffering from learning disabilities, who attract sympathy when they are children but, once they enter their 20s, simply drop off the map of public consciousness The consequences of this are dreadful: 95 per cent of them are unemployed. But four years ago that situation began to change, when Rosa Monckton founded Team Domenica, named after her daughter, now aged 25, who has Down's syndrome. Domenica was the last godchild of Diana Princess of Wales, who was a close friend of Rosa's.

Thursday

Rosa Monckton

Let my daughter work

From our UK edition

Freud said ‘Love and work… work and love, that’s all there is.’ And ‘Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.’ What is life like for people with learning disabilities who have the cornerstone of the love of their parents, but who have little prospect of work? Approximately 1.4 million people in the UK have a learning disability, yet 1.3 million of them are unemployed. Think of the misery that figure represents, the isolation and loneliness. The October 2016 Department of Work and Pensions Green Paper, Improving Lives, states: ‘The evidence is clear that work and health are linked.’ It says that there are 1.

Thursday

Rosa Monckton

“The twins I saw will spend their lives staring at ceilings”: Bulgaria’s abandoned children

From our UK edition

It was something about the twins that got to me; after seeing so many baby institutions and children’s homes, I had almost grown used to abandoned children in ranks of cots, staring at the ceiling. The twins — a boy and a girl of six — were set apart; pale, twisted, both with cerebral palsy. Their mother left them in the institution on the day their father had kicked her out for ‘only being able to have crippled children’. I reached into the girl’s cot to hold her hand, and her steady gaze held mine. I bent over to hold her brother’s foot, and felt like a lightning rod between them. But the missing link is their mother.