Wheels of Experience -
Because every child deserves a break

Wheels of Experience is a fundraising project to raise money which will buy a wheelchair accessible motorhome for disabled children

Hello and thank you for visiting Wheels of Experience. My name is Annette and I'm Mum to Sophie, who is a bright, happy and intellectual little 3 year old. She's just started school part time and she's also just started to throw tantrums when she doesn't get her own way!

Sound familiar? Yes of course it does, because she's at that age. But our lives are different to most people. Why I hear you ask? Well you see, Sophie has a problem, her muscles don't 'work' properly, in fact her muscles don't really work at all, but most importantly her breathing muscles don't work very well.

What this means is that Sophie cannot sit, stand, walk, talk or even breathe. She is connected to a ventilator for 24 hours a day just so that she can live.

But as I've already said, she is a happy little chappy!

Not wanting to turn this page into the Sophie story, to find out more about Sophie you can visit her website here.

Being in a wheelchair and permanently connected to a ventilator has it's downfalls as I'm sure you can imagine. We try to make what time we have left with Sophie as normal as possible, this includes going on holiday once a year.

Unfortunately going on holiday with a child that runs off batteries and needs more supplies than a football team has it's challenges! We can't go more than an hours drive away, we have to take so many supplies with us that it requires two trips out, and once we get to our location, we have to spend a day setting up our 'mobile intensive care' unit so that it's safe for Sophie.

The sheer logistics involved almost makes you say 'sod it, it's just not worth the hassle, let alone the risk to the child'.  And this is what many families of disabled children do, they just forget about holidays all together.

We almost did too. After all, every time we go on holiday we say to ourselves, 'ruddy hell, there's got to be an easier way!'

We nearly stopped going away, but Sophie deserves a break. In fact every child deserves a break, no matter their disability.

And then came the idea for The Wheels of Experience.