SOCIALITE Tara Palmer Tomkinson has become the first patron of a small Scottish autism charity after hearing about the role on Twitter.
The television presenter and columnist has accepted the role with Speur-Ghlan (Gaelic for blue skies), which delivers early intervention for young children diagnosed with autism or developmental delays.
It uses a range of research-based approaches, including play and music-based therapy sessions, to help young children aged between six months and five years.
Miss Palmer Tomkinson, who plays the piano and sings, has an interest in autism from previous experience supporting music charity Nordoff Robins.
Miss Palmer Tomkinson, said: "It is a huge honour to have been chosen as patron of the Speur-Ghlan charity; I have been following with admiration the tireless work it does to bring help to children who have an autism diagnosis or developmental delay, and very importantly, the families and friends who surround them."
Speur-Ghlan founder Ruth Glynne-Owen said: "It's fantastic we have someone of Tara's calibre backing us as it'll make a huge impact."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article