Sunflower is a parent led Community Interest Company founded by two parents with over 20 years of working and volunteering for SEND charities between them. The idea was to create our own organisation that focused on the wellbeing of parents and carers of children with SEND (aged 0-25). We started our first coffee morning in March 2025. Since then, we have run biweekly meet ups for parents during term times and family events during the holidays. As a new organisation we are learning and adapting as we go and are incredibly excited by how things have gone so far!
Our current services are as follows:
These are our bi-weekly parent sessions held at North Library. They run every other Tuesday from 10am-12pm. From January 2026 we will run these sessions by alternating between ‘fun sessions’ i.e. Crafts and wellbeing activities, and informative sessions i.e. speakers from local services and workshops. Please check our events page for dates and activities for each session.
These are specific half term sessions for families of children ages 11-17 only (siblings are welcome to come as long as they fall into the required age group). Held at the North library and ran in a similar way to our regular meet ups, these sessions allow for families of older children to come a socialise with their children. These sessions were designed based on feedback from parents of teenagers noting that there are very few activities for teens with SEND that did not infantize them, yet they are limited in their opportunities to socialise outside of school where they could not go out on their own. Funded by Islington’s Local Initiatives Scheme we have set up a safe space where parents can have a coffee and a chat while our young people can engage in age-appropriate activities and hang out with each other or if they want to sit on their phones/ iPads the whole time, that’s fine too! Parent/ carers are responsible for their children at all times. These sessions run Tuesdays of half term 10am-12pm, please check our events page for exact dates.
These events aim to include the whole family, siblings as well, with limited age restriction (depending on the location). Events like this take place during the longer school holidays (i.e. easter, summer, Christmas). There will be no Christmas event this year, but we hope to have something spectacular for 2026! These events will take place at various locations across Islington so please keep an eye on our events page and sign up to our mailing list for more information on upcoming events. This summer, funded by Islington Giving, we ran a family funday in Barnard Adventure Playground. This included exclusive use of the playground for our families, as well as facepainting and calming indoor activities. Parent/ carers are responsible for their children at all times during these events.
As we grow as an organisation, we hope to add more services and events, please let us know if you have any suggestions on what type of things could benefit your family.