Starting National FASD awareness week as I mean to go on .

It was wonderful to start this year's National Foetal Alcohol Awareness Month with a brilliant organisation I have worked with before, EK Outreach Services, speaking to their staff team on the lived reality of FASD. I have given talks and spoken publicly on this issue before, but two things really struck me this time.

Firstly, the importance of doing a talk like this at the start of the awareness week. I am standing on the shoulders of giants who have gone before and who continue to do such wonderful work in this area — people like National FASD, politicians such as Baroness Nargund and Baroness Hyde, who have both recently raised questions in the House of Lords, and brave individuals like Sam Gardiner and his mother Jo, who appeared on Race Around the World and highlighted some of the experiences of FASD. My voice joins with theirs as a mother of an adopted child with FASD who has faced many of the highs and lows other families know too well.

Secondly, there is a feeling of hope emerging, and much of this comes from our experience here in Hackney. When I was Civic Mayor, I chose to hold an awareness-raising event about FASD, unsure who would attend. But on the day we saw a packed room of over 100 people from various parts of council services, as well as those caring for loved ones. That event started an amazing programme of work, which I will forever be grateful to officers for, and Hackney is now one of the only boroughs with a comprehensive, audited system across various departments.

Hope and change are possible when we grasp the reality of FASD and when enough support and resources are applied. Working alongside others, I know it is possible, and I will work to be part of that change — for the sake of many of us caring for loved ones with FASD, and crucially, for the individuals themselves.