This summer, we put on Autonomy Fusion, our exhibition of the artistic work of young people and adults with Asperger’s syndrome. The exhibition was held at the Hive Gallery, in Shrewsbury, and later at the Shropshire Autism Conference. To cover the costs of the exhibition we applied for a Shropshire Arts Grant, and were successful. The artists have had their expenses paid, and also have been paid as artists. This has really helped to inspire and motivate them. We were also successful at getting a Mid Counties Cooperative Community Grant towards some display boards, which we can use for our publicity or in other exhibitions.

We got some publicity too when we received a phone call from the Rotary Club who had received a letter from us over a year ago. They appeared at one of our socials to present a cheque, and we featured in the local paper. The cheque paid for our summer outing on the Sabrina river boat on the River Severn last Sunday afternoon.

Autonomy is growing from strength to strength. A grant from the European Social Fund is helping to pay towards our Inspire! mentoring project for new members. It is also paying for Motivate! a series of self esteem boosting courses to be run for our members run by a qualified life coach. This is a new venture for our group and will definitely inspire our members to live more positive lives.

Autonomy is growing and gaining more funding too. We got a small grant from the Mid Counties Co-op last month as we applied for it! We will be putting on “Fusion” – a display of art, poetry and photographs from our members, backed by music specially composed by Eric for the event – just right for support from the Co-op. Fusion is at the Hive Arts Centre in Shrewsbury from May 29th – June 26th and is an opportunity to promote the skills and abilities of local people with Asperger’s syndrome. See Asperger’s syndrome is not all negative! Fusion is yet another way to gain us more publicity and funding! A press release is on its way to the local paper – again!

Being left at back at home I had my thinking cap on and started to spread the word about needing clothes donations.  Anyone who cames in donating I have been advising them we take clothes also. So we are really now starting to see more donations of clothes – ultimatly means we are filling up more green bags to send to the textiles company to make more money!

When the guys have settled in back home then we will be able to brainstorm….

How do you get more publicity for your group? Have a birthday party and use your pitch your project funding to celebrate it!

Autonomy had its fifth birthday party last month and over 70 people came, including our mayor, some councillors and a lot of people connected with Asperger’s syndrome. We had over 30 members come too. It was a great evening. We a lovely buffet, had a display of art work and photos, some music and entertainment from our members and also a drumming workshop to finish.

As a result we have had a few enquiries for membership and got to talk on Radio Shropshire. We also have been interviewed for an article in the Shrewsbury Chronicle, which should help raise the profile of the group and also Asperger’s syndrome.

We are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and World Autism Awareness Day on April 2nd with a talk by our members about Evolution. We hope to gain some publicity about this too seeing as Shrewsbury was the birthplace of Charles Darwin!

It is all go now for Autonomy!

Our ‘Comparing Experiences’ meeting on the 28^th January was very well attended.  We were joined by members of the WHITS-END ADHD Support Group from Lichfield and a party from the Wolverhampton ADHD Group which included their ADHD nurse. 

Our thanks to the two members of staff who attended from Staffordshire Parent Partnership.  They were very helpful.  Hilary Mcfadyen, Skillshare Project Co-ordinator, took ideas from those present with a view to setting up a series of workshops deemed to be most helpful to Parents/Carers.  We decided that a Saturday would be the most suitable day and the focus would be mainly on teens and transition after school.  Another workshop focussing on relaxation and skills for parents to help youngsters relax was also discussed.  Excitingly in addition, we considered these workshops to be a potential launch pad for our parents to go out as emissaries to schools, for example, to educate staff, dinner ladies, governors and teaching assistants about ADHD.

The Wolverhampton Group proposed that we meet up in the summer for a social event and it was felt that a therapy and relaxation day for parents could be organised.   The Cannock Chase Rangers may perhaps be used as child minders – they could take the youngsters for a walk while parents were using a hut for therapy on Cannock Chase premises.  The possibility of using mature students for the therapy/ aromatherapy is being followed up.

We were also delighted to have Sara Heath from fellow ‘Pitch Your Project’ winners Autonomy with us. She gave us a lot of good ideas to follow up.   We talked about The Lighthouse Group and Autonomy joining forces in the future to urge The Chief Executive from the local Trust to address the absence of support for those with ADHD and ASD passing into Adult Services.  Concerns about this issue are already being voiced over in Shropshire.

It was thought that The Lighthouse Group could consider putting in a bid for an ADHD Nurse, as the Wolverhampton Group found theirs to be so helpful but the need to be strongly promoting specialist ADHD clinics across the patch as other areas do was of the essence.

 The meeting also included a raffle and every one who came went away with at least one prize – so it was a win-win for all.

Best Wishes to you all 

This is the first of my six blogs. I begin our journey…

After all the preparation with the volunteers but especially Graham and Paul we arrive at Runwell to present our pitch. I could tell Graham was especially nervous but we all agreed that just getting as far as we had was great. We presented our pitch and spent some time with the Timebank team and had a delicious lunch… Paul even tried sushi for the first time! We all left feeling like it had gone well but definitely did not feel like we had won. Overall though Paul and Graham got alot from the day, they had their chance to express their life stories with people listening intently… it was nice to see them on a natural high for the rest of the day! When I got the phone call from Nancy on the Monday it was the usual busy manic Monday and Nancy left an answerphone message. When I listened to it and heard we had won, I screamed. After reassuring all staff everything was ok I was quick to call Paul and Graham, they were over the moon ( I swear I thought Paul screamed too!). We then told the volunteers, it was just delightful to see everyone so happy we had won.

After the initial excitement died down I sat with Paul and Graham and we discussed the ideas from the day. As Scotland was only in a month we decided to focus on spreading the word about ‘Tress for Life’ and once we got back we would spend time on longer initiatives.

I have to say since we pitched our idea Graham is now volunteering, he drives the minibus and helps out at our day centre.  And surpirsingly Paul as we speak is unloading food from our van from a collection/presentation he did at a local school. So already we are using our volunteers more wisely.

Scotland is 2 weeks away so my next blog will be full of our fun we had up in the higlands and we will be moving forward with all our ideas we have….

The standard of pitches was, as always, incredibly high and the Dragons were inspired by the energy and commitment of all the groups.

Drum roll please….

The winners who you’ll shortly be hearing more from are…

South Essex Partnership: HARP (Homeless Action Resource Project)

Had great ideas for ways to get more of their service users volunteering as a way to grow their services, and their pitch was a real testament to the power that volunteering has to change lives.

Basingstoke and North Hampshire:  Safe and Sound

Keen to develop their profile and reputation, the Safe and Sound volunteers had thought hard about how they could develop their existing offer.  The group use peer led volunteering to raise awareness of the risks associated with substance misuse, reduce harm and promote the health safety and enjoyment of people using local entertainment venues.

Greater Manchester West Mental Health: Early Intervention Volunteers

The Early Intervention boys won us over by demonstrating the real impact their volunteering and network was having as well as clear plan for its growth.

On the 30^th November we had the launch of the Bedford Bangladeshi Council which was a huge a success. A lot of time was committed into organising the event. A lot of our volunteers helped with the catering/ distributing leaflets and posters and also with the set up and the clearing of it at the end of the day.

We had approximately over 250 people attend the event. We had various people from statutory and voluntary organisations hold stalls such as Health Horizon, 0-19 Inform, Children’s Services, Pine cone children’s Centre, NHS and Bedford Police.

Bedford Bangladeshi Women’s Association also held a stall to promote and give more information about the services we provide, what we have achieved and what we would like to do in the future. We also had a leaflet to display the need for more volunteers and how they could benefit.

We had local MP Patrick Hall, Councillors, Journalists from Channel S and Bangla TV (digital channel 786 and 813) attend on the day. The day was a huge success it was family orientated event. We had face painting, balloon modelling and a children’s entertainer. The community were able to find out more about what Bedford Bangladeshi Council would be and most importantly be able to nominate for a position.

We have since been working in partnership with Shackleton Lower School working in Partnership with them to introduce Bangla classes after school, as there are a high number of Bangladeshi pupils attending that school.

Many of our Volunteers will be teaching and working as teaching assistant. We have completed CRB’S for all. All our volunteers have been generously giving their time to help produce resources to run the classes. Letters have gone out to parents and we have had a positive interest. We have had a meeting on the 23^rd of January with the Head teacher and parents to inform more on how this will be delivered and how their children will benefit from this. The Bangla class will be officially be starting once a week after school from 3:10-4:30pm at Shackleton lower school on the 04^th February 2009.

We will be looking into more training to help our teachers develop themselves. We have booked First Aid Training for our volunteers on the 14^th of March which is a Saturday with British Red Cross.

I look forward in telling you more about the Bangla class and Bedford Bangladeshi Council.

We were very fortunate to receive a £500 cheque from the Shrewsbury Round Table this month – this money has paid for a new projector for our laptop. Now we don’t have to borrow projectors from other organisations and can be totally independent with our training.

Another positive is that Sara hopes to attend a meeting with Staffordshire Pitch your Project winners, the Lighthouse group in Stafford this coming Wednesday. The Jigsaw group are also coming to the meeting, so we will have a lot to talk about. It is interesting that our groups have so much in common – we would not be meeting up with each other if we had not attended the Pitch Your Project prize giving presentation at Staffordshire hospital in November!

A very Happy New Year to everyone and hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. 

Our second Annual General Meeting was held on the 3^rd November and we have now reformed a committee of members with clearly defined roles.  Already we are reaping the benefits of this.  So that committee members can be regularly updated, a ‘telephone tree’ has been set up to facilitate all round communication especially for those who do not have access to email.

We have now managed to have our new volunteer flyers printed.  Picture shows front of leaflet.  These are currently being distributed in a variety of locations likely to attract volunteers.  Plans will be made to encourage and mentor anyone who applies.  We have already had our first helper come forward.  We hope this will be the first of many more. 

Recently an article was published in the ‘letters to editor’ page of a local newsletter which directed a great deal of criticism towards parents of youngsters with ADHD.  The writer implied that ADHD was simply a label which gave parents a medical excuse for their child’s bad behaviour.  The writer also implied that the main cause of the problem was due to bad parenting and suggested that children were being kept under sedation with the controversial drug Ritalin to solve the resulting difficulties.  These sweeping statements were extremely distressing for everyone in the group.  An excellent response from one of our parents was published in a later edition dispelling a lot of these biased opinions and appealing for everyone including teachers to recognise the condition and spend a little more time thinking about ADHD as a real special needs issue in the same way as Dyslexia.  Hopefully this will help to educate the general public about this very misunderstood condition.

Moving on – Lighthouse Group members recently enjoyed an outing to the local ten-pin bowling centre – a great favourite with the youngsters.  Also a trip was arranged to see Aladdin at the Gatehouse Theatre in Stafford on Tuesday 30^th December.  Everyone had a wonderful time and the youngsters were given the opportunity to meet Aladdin backstage after the show.  This make them feel very special and certainly gave them something to boast about to their friends. 

We have more events for the children in the pipeline.

More news on networking – we have recently been in contact with Sara from fellow ‘Pitch Your Project’ winners – Autonomy, also commended at our local Trust’s Celebration Day for Service Users and Carers.  Hopefully, Sara will be joining us at our next meeting 28^th January.  We are looking at the possibility of a joint venture involving other groups and the local Health Trust too – maybe a conference mainly aimed at addressing gaps in awareness/provision for both ADHD and ASD in Staffordshire and Shropshire.