About Ciara

Hello I'm Ciara

I’m Ciara Jones and I hail from the lovely city of Dublin originally, but have had the great joy of living in another lovely city, Liverpool, for over twenty years now.

Amongst the much bric-a-brac of life accumulated over the years (both literally and metaphorically), I am also the proud 'owner' (!) of three young adult children and a lovely husband.

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Now when said husband and I embarked on ‘The adventures of Parenting’ over twenty years ago (book to follow?) nowhere in my wildest imagination did I think it would propel me into creating Spectrum Talks at this time. For Spectrum Talks has been born solely as a result of my over-whelming wish to have a truly HONEST conversation about raising children with additional needs.

I’ve had no choice in debating the need for its creation, that’s the actual truth of the matter, especially from about Chapter 3 onwards in ‘The adventures of Parenting’, when our beautiful son, Cormac, began to share with us (and the whole world too) his particularly, gloriously, unique personality traits…

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To further fill you in here, I’ve also enjoyed for over thirty years now, a wonderfully privileged rewarding career in the health sector, firstly as a midwife and then as a community public health nurse in the pre-school and school-age sector. I’ve worked in Ireland, the USA, New Zealand and the UK.

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As a result, I’ve gained some extraordinary insights first hand from talking to and supporting other parents and carers at every stage of their child’s journey. It’s a journey that begins in the first home we all inhabit, our mother’s womb, to then entering this very confusing world, to after a few years of trying to ‘figure things out’ (hard when you’re aged 0-5 years), before being dropped off at a school-gate, to then finally leaving that school-gate for the last time…

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I view my professional experience here as a very precious gift shared to me for over many years now. I’ve heard SO much from other parents with children with possible or confirmed additional needs around their thoughts, concerns, fears for the future, challenges faced in the wider world, feelings of being sometimes marginalised as families. I have not only heard possibly your sentiments…I have also experienced some of them myself along the way. Sometimes that can be hard, sometimes that can be very hard. However, me being me, (I do like a challenge) when I have found over the years that the world struggled to sometimes understand my beautifully autistic Cormac, I determined to come back and try to explain to the world where Cormac was coming from, with the longed-for hope that with understanding would come empathy, with empathy would come acceptance and with acceptance would come fairness for everyone, in the fullness of time.

So to this end, I’ve given many talks over the years to parent/carer forums, universities, colleagues (really anyone who will listen to me!) about the need to talk very honestly about our differences and how by truly embracing them we will all be richer in the end. I always employ my much-cherished sense of humour into all conversations, as I have found that when I insisted to myself to find the comedy in some of the darkest moments I’ve experienced over the years, it has been truly empowering in every sense of that word.

So if you are the very privileged parent or carer of a child (whatever their age) with ‘additional’ needs please head over to my socials (links below) where we will keep talking and empowering each other, in the interest of our children having the same level of opportunity as everyone else…(that’s all we are asking for after all). I’ll also be happily sharing some of my wisdom gleaned over the years from raising Cormac and also from my professional experience too in this field…eg. what to try out with your children at home (and equally what not to!)

Further, I'd be very happy to contribute on panel discussions, radio or podcast interviews in an effort to help keep the conversation going in broader society, about what sharing our differences really means for us all.

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