A father's love Sunday Night Channel 7

Every year in Australia, as many as 700 children are born with Cerebral Palsy. At some point, the child’s developing brain has been starved of oxygen. Cerebral Palsy is not a disease nor does it appear to be genetic. It does not get worse over time, but there is no ‘cure’. Cerebral Palsy often causes serious difficulties, especially in speech and movement. This means that every one of these children needs physical rehabilitation and their parents need help to look after them, especially because Cerebral Palsy is often described as the most expensive of the childhood disabilities to manage.
Those are the simple facts. Until a few years ago, I would have read them and shaken my head sympathetically and gone on with my day. But the statistics were suddenly translated into real life when my own little boy was born with Cerebral Palsy. One minute we were expecting the arrival of our son, and the next we were being told that he was going to be a quadriplegic, never walking or even standing up on his own, and he would certainly never speak.
Please take a moment and watch "a father's Love" .That is Jackson, charging at me. As soon as I held him as a tiny baby, I knew I would never let him down. And so, when the Doctors told us the news, there was simply no way I was going to let that be the end of the story. Never walk or talk? There had to be a way to help my boy.
Jackson is an incredibly brave and determined little human being and, defying the odds and the Doctors’ expectations, he recently walked on his own for the first time. He has started to speak. It has been five years of really hard work for Jackson and me, but we have not achieved this on our own. We have an incredible team of physios and speech therapists working with us, every day. This has not come for free and many Australians would be surprised to know how little of this support is covered by Medicare. So, today I am asking you for your help.
We have created a charitable foundation to help Jackson and, taking what we are learning about how to beat the odds, to help other children with this same set of enormous challenges. Our major project right now is to design and build a house that Jacko can live in. Once that is complete, we will start work on raising funds for more houses, incorporating the very best innovative design features so that children with Cerebral Palsy can live with freedom and dignity.
Sincerely and with many thanks for the time you have given us to read this.
David Keleher
PH: 0411 212195
