Inclusive Family SEND Festival

Your support meant the world to us, and we were able to provide both Musical Theatre workshops with a West End theme and SEND dance and movement workshops for children and young people in Guildford. Our activities were accessible, and not affected by finance and were open to all. Since our appearance on Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 for inclusive dance for children and young people, we are being asked to support many more service users with a wide range of SEND and LT&LLCs in Surrey, but who have no/very limited budgets due to the challenges of their conditions. On occasion, we have sadly been forced to close much needed SEND classes, which local families rely on, due to inadequate funding to sustain. Also, many more families with disabled members live in poverty with parents unable to work full time or at all. Many are struggling more with poor mental health worsened by feelings of isolation having been unable access usual services and many, especially those with learning disabilities/autism struggle to express and deal with their emotions. We need to offer even more heavily subsidised services to ensure financial accessibility, especially now so many are affected by the cost-of-living crisis and our own costs e.g. staff costs and room hire are increasing, as we now often have to pay travel to make it viable for our teachers. As a charity, we enable people with special educational needs, disabilities, (“SEND”) and long term & life-limiting health conditions (LT&LLHCs”) to get active, build resilience, have fun, reduce stress, loneliness, and improve long term physical, emotional and mental health and wellbeing, addressing the challenge of disabled people being twice as likely to be inactive as non-disabled people. Our core values are inclusion, innovation, value for money, quality of delivery and excellent service & ensuring neither finance, fitness, ability, disability nor family circumstance are barriers to participation. Participants tell us that our classes improve their mood, build confidence & resilience better enabling them to meet the challenges of their conditions. We enable people with special educational needs, disabilities, (“SEND”) and long term & life-limiting health conditions (LT&LLHCs”) to get active, build resilience, have fun, reduce stress, loneliness, and improve long term physical, emotional and mental health and wellbeing, addressing the challenge of disabled people being twice as likely to be inactive as non-disabled people. Our core values are inclusion, innovation, value for money, quality of delivery and excellent service & ensuring neither finance, fitness, ability, disability nor family circumstance are barriers to participation. Participants tell us that our classes improve their mood, build confidence & resilience better enabling them to meet the challenges of their conditions. Part of our ongoing strategy is to increase our fundraising efforts to enable more delivery in more areas of Surrey which is subsidised or free, and very accessible to the families who need it most. Our activities our fun and inspiring, and our success stories and testimonials often bring a tear to the eye! If you would like to stay in touch and help us to run future projects - please contact us on [email protected] Thank you again - for helping us to make a difference.

Did you catch us on the radio on Friday, where our founder Rachael Hurton went live on BBC Surrey to talk about our Guildford Crowdfunding campaign? If not, you can listen to the podcast above!