Down Syndrome UK is a national charity aiming to enlighten, educate and empower parents, professionals and the public about Down syndrome. 

In 2017 we launched Positive about Down syndrome to show people the reality of life with Down syndrome in contemporary Britain, providing information and support to new and expectant parents. We provide training to medical professionals and have recently introduced #PADSPods to disseminate information to all. In 2019 we created Pants4School - an award-nominated national initiative promoting awareness and providing information and support to empower parents and professionals to understand how to enable their child with Down syndrome to be toilet trained before school starts. We run a network of more than 100 support groups across the UK sharing best practices, resources, information and advice.

We have an amazing online community for our families. Knowing important it is for them to have access to accurate contemporary information, we provide our wonderful book ‘#NobodyToldMe the truth about Down syndrome’ to all expectant and new parents, and literaturetomaternity units, health professionals and educational settings.

We have online early development, speech and language, feeding and physiotherapy groups for our pre-schoolers, Makaton courses for new parents, grandparents and educational settings, as well as useful sessions for areas such as behaviour, wills & trusts and toilet training with our Pants4School programme. We also have experts in conditions such as nystagmus, hirschsprungs and dysphagia – we don’t want any of our families to feel alone on this journey. Our new early education support contains resources around choosing a nursery, starting school and EHCP support.
We believe every parent should receive the best possible care and support.
We believe the arrival of every baby with Down syndrome should be celebrated.
We believe every child with Down syndrome should be given every opportunity to flourish and thrive.