Former Boyzone and Coronation Street star Keith Duffy speaks to Northern Ireland World on autism after awarding an honour to National Lottery community champion to Julie McKeever
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00:00 I was invited up here to the party down today by the National Lottery who are gifting a
00:08 lady, Julia, for her work with autism and the awareness of suicide within autism, which
00:15 is something that kind of shocked me. I've been working with autism for over 20 years
00:19 and I didn't realise that there was a higher percentage of suicide within children and
00:23 adults with autism. But there is, and unfortunately Julia's story is a sad one in so far as that
00:30 she lost her son with autism to suicide and she's trying to just get the word out there
00:37 to parents of children with autism that this is a thing and it needs to be taken seriously.
00:43 And the work that she's done is remarkable and it's been awarded by the National Lottery
00:48 and they contacted me and asked me because of my connection with autism to come up to
00:52 Port Adonai to be part of the award ceremony. So that's why I'm here.
00:57 Tell me a bit about your own experiences with autism and your daughter.
01:02 My daughter's 23 now, Mia. She was diagnosed at about 22 months old. She was non-verbal
01:10 since she was nearly 8 years of age. She lived very much in her own world, an isolated world.
01:16 We worked very, very hard. Most professors we met told us that she'd probably end up
01:21 institutionalised one day, that she might never speak and we weren't prepared to believe
01:26 any of them. So we just kept fighting. We kept providing the appropriate intervention
01:31 where we could. We kept Mia stimulated as often as possible. We managed to get her into
01:36 a fantastic schooling facility that we were able to provide ourselves. And from living
01:43 in her own world and non-tactile and not very affectionate, we've got the most beautiful,
01:47 loving, affectionate young lady now. She's 23. She got her Bachelor of Science in DCU
01:53 last year in Enterprise Computing. She's working now for the United Medical Group. She's coding
01:59 for a pharmaceutical insurance company and she's doing wonderfully well. So her story
02:05 is a very, very happy story. It's not without its issues or problems. You know, socially
02:11 Mia is still a little bit kind of shy and maybe behind. But she's a very, very happy
02:19 young lady. She's very aware of her autism and she's very positive in promoting and helping
02:26 other children with autism now.
02:28 What would your message be to parents of young children who've just had a diagnosis, one
02:34 of their children has been diagnosed with autism?
02:39 My kind of advice, having lived with it for 20 years and obviously worked with many, many
02:44 families with young children with autism, it's very important when you get an assessment
02:49 or a diagnosis done that you concentrate on the positive sides of the assessment and the
02:54 diagnosis. A diagnosis will only tell you what they believe or where they believe your
03:00 son or daughter might be on the spectrum because it is a spectrum disorder. But there will
03:05 be positives, there will be qualities that your child has and it's the qualities and
03:09 the positives that you need to cling on to. Whatever the negatives are, whatever the disabilities
03:13 are, you use the positives to be able to correct them. If you focus on the negatives and the
03:18 disabilities it's a dark world. But if you focus on the positives and what we can, not
03:24 what we can't, well then it's a positive world and it helps and it keeps a smile on your
03:29 face and on your child's face.
03:30 Did music help?
03:34 Music therapy is a good help for a lot of children on the spectrum. Mia loves music,
03:39 she loves singing and dancing. So yeah, music is positive, so it helps everybody, not only
03:46 children on the spectrum.
03:47 And what's your future in music now? What are you at the moment?
03:52 At present I am touring with Brian McFadden, he was of Westlife. We call ourselves Boys
03:59 Life. We celebrate the music of Boys On and Westlife and we do our own Boys Life music.
04:05 We've just written and recorded our own studio album. And we're very busy all over the world,
04:11 from Australia to Sweden and Denmark, just back from Dubai, all over the UK. And we're
04:18 very happy doing what we're doing.
04:20 So Julie, tell me about your award and how you feel.
04:24 I'm absolutely overwhelmed to be truthful with you. It's fantastic to have won the recognition
04:29 that the lottery will bring for the Autism Hive and for Luke's story and for suicide
04:35 prevention. I think it's fantastic.
04:37 Tell me a little bit about Luke and how you came to set up the Autism Hive.
04:45 Luke was diagnosed with autism at the age of 12. We found that whenever COVID came in
04:49 2019, that Luke's mental health deteriorated a wee bit. We knew that he was struggling,
04:56 obviously with what was going on around the world. He would have been very uncomfortable
05:01 if we were going to his flat. Obviously we didn't see what was going to come, but we
05:09 tried our best to be there for Luke at that time. Looking back now, I can see that Luke
05:18 was asking for help, asking for support, but we didn't see it. Unfortunately, in February
05:25 2021, Luke died by suicide. It just devastated us as a family. As a mum, I wanted to know
05:34 why my son got this low with an autism and not understanding mental health as it was.
05:43 I went on a journey to find out, as maybe most mothers would. The answers that I was
05:49 given then, I found out that autistic people are nine times more likely to die by suicide,
05:55 something that I didn't know. I couldn't comprehend it, to be truth with you. I had
06:02 realised that that information and research wasn't out there. We created the Autism Hive
06:08 to educate and train others into knowing that there are co-occurring conditions with autism
06:16 that could affect people's mental health.
06:19 Your Hive has become very, very successful. There's a lot of people coming and getting
06:27 help these days. You're based in Portadown as well.
06:31 We are. We're based in Portadown. I feel that we're growing in awareness. Mothers and families
06:37 are coming to us for the information. They're fearful of where their children are. They
06:42 know that they're suffering from mental health and they're living in isolation. The support's
06:48 not there. We have got a lot of influx of people wanting the information and the help
06:56 and support from the Autism Hive.
06:57 How did you feel today? Did you feel that Keith was supportive of you, given that he
07:04 has experienced himself?
07:06 Yes. Initially I knew of Keith and I knew that he had a daughter with autism. I didn't
07:11 know everything that he does for autism. To be truthful with you, I've just been overwhelmed
07:16 by how passionate he is, by how knowledgeable he is and the support that he's been doing
07:24 over the past 14 years for autism. He's fantastic.
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