Vanessa is married to her husband Karl, and is a mom to three wonderful kids, a son and two daughters. She is a web developer for several non-profit organizations and is honoured to have been able to develop the Okanagan Autism Family Connection web site. This organization is near and dear to her heart.
Motherhood has always been a lifelong dream for Vanessa, but the journey hasn’t been without it’s challenges. Vanessa’s second child was born with a life-threatening genetic illness and later diagnosed with autism (PDD-NOS) and global development delay at the age of four. After coming to terms with her with her daughter’s life-long illness, the addition of “autism” to her daughter’s list of challenges was not overly shocking; she had always known that she had developmental delays.
Throughout the years her daughter (now 11 years old) has been well supported through the Child Development Centre (COCDA), the public school system, her paediatrician, and various behaviour consultants, interventionists, speech pathologists and occupational therapists. It has been a true blessing to have each and every one of her daughter’s “people” as part of the family, and Vanessa sees a real benefit to having long-term service providers that know her daughter well.
After nearly seven years of intervention and many types of therapies she has seen such changes in her daughter. Yet, with new successes come new challenges (isn’t that the way parenting goes?) Now that Vanessa’s daughter is “over six” it has been increasingly difficult to find services. And so, Vanessa is extremely excited about this new web site and its potential to connect parents with each other and with service providers.
She’d love to connect with you on our Forums, and welcomes any feedback you have about this web site.