Hayley Goleniowska

A former language teacher and voice-over artist, Hayley is now the Mum of two gorgeous girls, the youngest of whom, Natty, has Down’s Syndrome. She blogs, speaks and writes articles on the subject for all who will read or listen.

Through Downs Side Up she aims to both offer support and encouragement to new families with a diagnosis, and gently change perceptions of Down’s Syndrome from within hearts through beautiful words and photos.

Her daughter Natty is a clothing model and an amazing ambassador for children with disabilities everywhere. She has appeared in The Sun, Mail Online, Bella Magazine and on ITV Daybreak.

You can find Hayley on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

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Special needs round-up: The many meanings of Christmas

I simply cannot believe that I am sitting here, writing the very last BritMums round-up of the year. No, I’m not ready. No, I’m not organised. But this year I …

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Special Needs Round-up: Tricky taboos and this is me

There must be something in the crisp Autumn air that is stimulating your writing muscles, because there’s a veritable plethora of original and beautifully crafted writing out there at the …

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Special Needs Round-up: ‘Awareness’ & hurtful comments

Three meaty topics for you this month: Transitioning through life, insensitive comments and ‘awareness’. Here’s what our round-up bloggers think. How about you? Our vests have been dug out and …

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Special Needs Round-up: New term newsletter

Welcome back to the Special Needs Round-up for our new collection of must-read posts and news of what’s been happening over the summer break. I hope you all survived the …

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Special Needs Round-up: Whistle stop tour of the month

I can always judge the manic pace of a month by how jolly quickly my Britmums special needs round-up seems to whizz around. I mean, surely I only wrote the last …

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Special Needs Round-up: Meet the BritMums finalists

I simply cannot believe that almost a year has passed since I excitedly swapped my wellies for more metropolitan attire and heading to London for Britmums Live, my very first …

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Special Needs Round-up: Joining forces peacefully

This month the Round-up is going to take on a completely different format. For never before have the disability and special needs bloggers, charities and journalists been so completely united …

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Special Needs Round-up: What about the siblings?

You will not make it through this month’s posts without crying, so you may want to pull up a chair and grab some tissues first. I think this is quite …

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Special Needs Round-up: Individual differences and education

Some months an unexpected cluster of blog posts pop up around a certain topic, and this month education , resources, flexibility and children’s individual differences have been at the forefront of our …