When it was confirmed to us that our daughter would have long term communication issues we decided that Makaton would be a great way to help us communicate as a family and to allow our child to have the same level of interaction and experience as any typically developing child. At the time we found it quite difficult to access training in Makaton as NHS courses are scarce and when available are only provided to one family member per family. We managed to get some basic starting points through a local child charity who then pointed us to some fantastic online resources. Using these the onus fell on us as parents to become self taught and to provide everything our child needed in her new language. I want to help parents who find themselves where we were and provide accessible, affordable makaton training for the whole family, and for wider mainstream communities to help children who rely on this language to communicate in the wider world. To do this I need to complete Makaton's training courses, register a licence with them and buy startup materials. The course alone costs £2000. It will be a long time before I could self fund this so I am hoping my local community can help me fund the course so that I in turn can give back to the local community in inclusion and acceptance for those with communication difficulties.