This is Ellie and one of her carers on a trip out. Without direct payment carers we wouldn't be able to have days out or weekends away the health trusts would be forcing us to stay at home and wait for an agency carer to come and do Ellie’s care and feeding needs. 

This vital service gives Ellie and us as a family the freedom of choice to have and give care the way we choose. Ellie deserves that choice and deserves the freedom to choose who feeds her. It's a very personal thing and not a young adult with severe physical, social Learning and sensory needs should be subjected to by someone they don't know or trust. 

Trust takes a long time to build up and by not allowing our carers to continue to be trained we are failing Ellie and many others like her. Please help us by sharing our story and encouraging friends and family to sign. 

By continuing direct payments and changing the legislation from purely social Care to social and helathcare/ delegated nursing tasks with appropriate training we are saving billions that trusts are paying to agencies to provide this more rigid service. Money which could be invested back into providing more care where it is needed. 

We need them to be accountable for their actions and rectify this huge mistake by calling on the justice minister to push through emergency Legislation to amend the outdated carers and direct payment act NI of 2002.

We have gotten this far because we have all stood together on this. Please help us with one final push to get the legislation put forward. 

We have lobbied all assembly MLA's and all local governments to bring this up in local and national discussions. 

And with huge thanks to Carol Jordan and Alison Flemming for publicising our story on 'Up Close' on UTV. It makes for shocking responses from the health trusts and hopefully will force The Minister for Health to take action. 

Keep following us over on Instagram #elliesfightforfreedom_ni and keep sharing. Thankyou for your continued support ♡