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carole kelly

Current Woman of Rochdale, Carole Kelly, has an
ambition to make the borough more accessible
for children with disabilities and/or complex and
additional needs.

She spoke to Katie Davies about local group ‘Jolly
Josh’ and her vision for the future.

Jolly Josh is a registered charity in Rochdale which
enables families with children with disabilities and/
or complex or additional needs to meet, exchange
information and create social networks with others
in similar situations.

At weekly sensory themed sessions, currently
based at Springside with Hamer Learning
Community, a variety of professionals, services and
charities connect to provide support to families.
James and Carole Kelly with children Sophie and Joshua
This vital local charity was the brainchild of
Carole Kelly, from Wardle, who wanted to ‘organise “I took Joshua to many baby groups and never met
a group with no questions asked, where everyone another disabled child or a child with complex
could feel included and not isolated, and where we medical needs. It became hard to go out when
all understand what one another are going through’. people asked, ‘what is wrong with him’.

In April 2017, Carole became the full-time carer for “I attended an information day event in Rochdale
her son, Joshua Kelly, who, at the age of six months, for parents and carers of disabled children with the
was found to have ‘extensive brain damage’ due to hope to find services that would help Joshua and
the genetic condition Mitochondrial Disease, which our circumstances, but sadly, they were minimal.
causes mutations in mitochondria, vital to every cell We already had a play worker and there was
in the body. nothing else available as he was under four.

A week after his first birthday, Joshua’s health “Finally, I met a mummy at a sign language group
began to rapidly decline and in May 2017, Carole whose daughter was also fed through a
and her husband, James, were given the nasogastric tube – the first child (other than Josh)
devastating news that their son had ‘weeks, maybe that I had met with one. I was so excited that Josh
months, until he found peace’. would know that he wasn’t the only child to be
different and we had so much in common to
“The idea of Jolly Josh two years ago was pure discuss. That’s when I realised this interaction was
imagination”, said Carole. what I needed.

“A chain of events would lead me to realise that “I knew then that Jolly Josh was going to make
there was a huge gap in the system; the solution an impact.”
would become Joshua’s legacy.
Carole approached Joshua’s care team with her
“When my son became ill, it was an incredibly dark ideas for a local group that would enable children
time. As a ‘stay at home’ mummy to both my babies with disabilities and their families to ‘Connect,
(Joshua and his big sister Sophie), we wanted to be Support and Thrive’, whilst inspiring inclusion and
out and about, making memories. overcoming isolation.
REAL ROCHDALE - WINTER 2019 18