“Another exciting World Autism Awareness Day in 2017 with so many events, brilliantly supported by many staff, members of the public, local schools, organisations/businesses and the people we care for.

Every year it seems to grow bigger and better due the collective creativity and hard work of all those at Autism Together in unison for a common and important cause and, ultimately, making a real difference to the lives of people with autism everywhere.

Given the support we received from the public next year should be even better!”

Rick Myers, Community fundraising officer

WAAD2017 Sponsored Walk

On a warm and sunny World Autism Awareness Day a group of parents, friends, children, staff and service users got their blue on and joined in the fun for a lovely stroll around beautiful Birkenhead Park.

After meeting with everyone at the visitor centre our walkers took in the sights, sounds and smells of the park, walking over the historic Swiss Bridge and looking at the lovely rockery.

Many walkers were dressed in blue and lots of the younger participants, and many of the older ones, sprayed their hair blue and even had blue tongues thanks to the tongue painting lollipops.

It is now a theme that we have dogs joining in and receiving medals alongside all our finishers, who received a lovely medal and certificate for taking part. Money is still coming in, with just over £1400 in the bank so far for this event.

Next year we are aiming to walk, run and challenge around this lovely park, so watch out for more details.

Bounce25

A team of eight individuals (Emma Crabb, Philippa Lamb, Ben Howard, Toni Denham, Sophie Hatta, Sarah Head, Philip O’Sullivan, Sarah Madge) came together with the intension of raising awareness of autism by using the trampolines that our service users access on a daily basis.

The service users face multiple obstacles in their day to day lives so we knew it had to be a challenge.

The BOUNCE25 Event was held from the 2nd April until 3rd April where six staff members from Autism Together and two trampoline coaches met at Grange Road West Sports Centre  for a sponsored Bounce with the intention to complete 25hours bouncing and to raise money and awareness of autism.

Prior and throughout the event we had some support from special guests including Luke Strong (GB Champion) and the Deputy Mayor of Wirral and many more.  The Bounce was also featured in multiple newspapers, radio stations and on the TV.

At 12pm on Sunday we started to bounce and took rotation of 20 minutes. The hardest part of the bounce was the deprivation of sleep and the exhaustion from continuously bouncing particularly  in the hours of 4am-8am in the morning, it was worth it though as we managed to raise over £1000 for such a good cause. We finished bouncing at 1pm. We had continuously bounced for the full 25 hours.

At the event we had many volunteers who witnessed BOUNCE25 and filled out paperwork as the current world record attempt is 24hours so we are waiting to hear back from Guinness to see if we have achieved a world record which we hope will have more publicity and make more people aware of autism.

The Light Cinema – autism friendly screening

Autism Together teamed up with The Light Cinema in New Brighton to host a Night at the Movies, where an autism friendly screening of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was shown.

This was a great event for the whole family, tickets were charged at just £5 per person and for every ticket sold £1 was donated to Autism Together.

The screening itself differed slightly from the norm due to it being autism friendly. This meant that there were no adverts before the film started and it went straight to feature, the lights were slightly raised and the sound slightly lowered to help ease sensory overload. It is also a relaxed performance, which means that people are able to talk during the screening and swop seats if they wish.

All ages and every member of the family enjoyed the performance; this has become an annual event for World Autism Awareness Day and our partnership with The Light Cinema which has grown in strength as we now continuously display art work created by our service users.

The Light Cinema also offer monthly Autism Friendly screenings of family friendly films, check out their website for further information.

60’s Night at The Queens Royal, New Brighton

To launch our weekend of World Autism Awareness Day activities with a real bang we held a great evening of nostalgia with a sixties night on Friday, 31st March attended by 60 guests from far and wide.

The event began with our special “Get Your Blue On” cocktail followed by Chicken n’ Chips in a basket and dancing to the swinging sixties sounds of Contact, a fantastic covers band who regularly support Autism Together events. There was also a great raffle with fantastic prizes and the night raised a total of £1,798.

Dancing continued late into the night and there is no doubt we will be repeating the experience next year, probably with a 70’s night.

School Assemblies – Raising awareness of autism

This year a number of schools took part to raise awareness of autism and fundraise for Autism Together.

We had a small team of speakers here at Autism Together which consisted of;

  • Jane Carolan – Director of Operations
  • Lindsay Tilston-Jones – Fundraising Manager
  • Rick Myers – Fundraising Officer
  • April Ryan – Fundraising Administrator
  • Lucy Norman – Support Worker, Supported Living
  • Alex Wilkinson – Mum of son with ASD and supporter of AT

The speakers visited various schools and carried out awareness raising assemblies, visited classrooms and held Q&As directly with the pupils. We had great support from all schools involved and were particularly moved by the enthusiasm to learn more, keenness to help others with ASD and their general support in World Autism Awareness Day. Some schools had dress down days wearing something blue and others held bake sales and covered the topic of autism in lessons throughout the week.

Since we have posted about local school involvement on our social media networks, we have been contacted by a number of other places all looking for something similar and we are keen to get out there and talk more about the autism spectrum and help children to be become much more aware.

Special thanks to the schools that took part this year, including:

  • Woodfall Lane Primary School, Little Neston
  • St George’s Primary School, Wallasey
  • Bedford Drive Primary School, Birkenhead
  • Liscard Primary School, Liscard
  • Woodchurch CE Primary
  • Thingwall Primary School

Exhibition of Artwork in New Brighton and Hoylake

Very talented artists, model makers and photographers from the Creative Arts and Media groups have recently held two art exhibitions to celebrate Autism Awareness day.

The Floral Pavilion in New Brighton hosted a fantastic display of work for two weeks. During this time thousands of people passed through the theatre and we received very high praise for the quality of the work. We have already been invited back next year to show off the amazing creativity of our service users.

Meanwhile our busy Media department put on an exhibition at The Hoylake Promenade Community Centre. The theme was ‘Harry Potter’ with a superb selection of models and paintings of various characters and props from the films. Again, we received lots of compliments about the high quality of the work on display.

Light it up blue

On Sunday 2nd April several of our friends in Wirral and Liverpool helped to see World Autism Awareness Day 2017 out in style, by supporting Autism Together and the global autistic community to ‘get their blue on’ and ‘light it up blue’.

Historically, iconic buildings, structures and locations all over the world have made the effort to participate in this event, to set tongues wagging and bring autism awareness to the fore.

2017 was no exception and our supporters in many locations joined us to make it a special day and evening.  They included; St George’s Hall, Wallasey Town Hall, Floral Pavilion, The Queen’s Royal, Wallasey Central Library, Bidston Lighthouse and Hoylake Lighthouse.

A huge thanks to all these locations for the time and effort they went to, to help Autism Together raise awareness of autism and ensure that the issues faced by people with autism, their families and those who support them are highlighted in a wide range of settings.

Giles Shirley Hall – a CVS celebration

April is internationally known as World Autism Awareness Month.  This beautiful day was not only a day in which we try our best to raise awareness of autism; we also do everything we can to celebrate in style!

As it happens, the folk over at Giles Shirley Hall did precisely that on Monday, 3rd April – and Chloe and April (Fundraising Team) were there to celebrate alongside them!

Numerous people and staff members from our many houses travelled to Giles Shirley Hall to take part.  There was no stopping the fun on site as people dressed up as a variety of characters.  Some even decided to try their luck at hooking a duck, whilst others chose to party the day way to some groovy music tracks.  There was no end to the large array of refreshments on site to keep the festivities going.

Everyone had lots of fun, and it’s important to note that the Fundraising team got involved as well.  Ken, an avid LFC supporter, challenged April to take part in the Beat the Goalie stall and, true to form, he beat April (an EFC fan) at every single opportunity.  Ken scored quite a number of goals, making him the resident Player of the Day.   We managed to capture some moments of our future footballer in the action!

Sadly, all good things must come to an end eventually our fundraising team had to leave the joy and laughter behind.  This was not before they saw the resident comedian Dave take Paul to the stocks – as you can quite visibly see, this duo did not fail to put a smile to our faces, soaking poor Paul from head to toe with a bucket of water… brrr!

Thank you to everyone involved for inviting us to join in the party – we had a lot of fun, and we hope you all had a fantastic World Autism Awareness Day!

Supported Living team – Snowdon Trek

Staff from Supported Living at Autism Together successfully completed a hike up Snowdon on Saturday, 22nd April.

The trip started early leaving the Wirral at 5am on the Saturday and began their trek at 8:30am at the Miners track. After a death defying diversion made by Jill Lockett, Quality and Development Manager, 5 members of the group made it to the summit for 12noon where they bumped into Robin Bush, CEO, and his young son James on the Crib Goch route.

The rest of the group reached the summit at 1:00pm and the biggest achievement and congratulations have to go to Michelle who, with support from Anna, made it to the top with sheer determination.

After all trawling down to the bottom, they regrouped for a celebratory meal together and a well-earned drink!

So far the whole group have managed to raise a fantastic £1,336 for Autism Together and this figure is still rising; the group even aim to tackle the 3 peaks next year!

Bake Sales – Oak House

Our annual Great Office Bake Off took place at the main office in Oak House on Friday, 31st March; this also happened to be our dress down day in the office and of course the theme being wear something blue.

Lots of staff took part in providing for the bake sale from home-made M&M explosion cakes, to blue butterfly cakes and even some homemade scotch eggs! The bake sale at Oak House ran from 10am – 1pm and sales were constantly taking place throughout this time, with visits from various sites, staff and service users. We even had our very own Debbie Hollywood and Terry Berry as judges with some fantastic prizes including a champagne afternoon tea at the Malmaison in Liverpool.

The winner for the best blue cake from Oak House was Sophie from the HR Department for her brilliant Blue Cake and also for wearing head to toe in blue clothing including a blue wig.

The cake sale and dress down day at Oak House raised a fantastic £157!

Motorbike Ride Out

Organised by Paula Armiger (Animal Husbandry Activity Leader) and Outlaws MC. All the bikers met at the Outlaws clubhouse in Birkenhead at 12noon on 1st April.  There were around 30 bikes and Paula’s son came on his scooter.

There were riders from Outlaws MC who travelled from Wales and Stoke to take part, as well as other clubs including Black Pistons MC, Fallen Angels Ladies Club, Snatch MCC (both Wirral based) and the Robbers Dogs (based in Ellesmere Port) along with ordinary bikers who all came out to support this great event.  Everyone who took part in the ride paid £1 to do so, some people paying more than that as a contribution.

The ride out set off at around 1pm and rode around the Wirral, taking in Wallasey, New Brighton, Moreton, Caldy, Thornton Hough and then onto Parkgate where they stopped for an ice cream (of course!). They then headed back to The Tap in Eastham where the landlady Linda very kindly laid on a BBQ with burgers for us, she also donated a cheque for £50 towards the charity.  The patrons at The Tap were very generous as Paula went around with the bucket explaining why they had been on the ride out and the charity we were collecting for, also the fact that it was World Autism Awareness Day on 2nd of April.  The ride out left the Tap at around 4.30pm to get ready for the charity night at the Clubhouse.

The ride out arrived at the night time venue at 7pm. Paula and her husband had collected raffle prizes from different places and the evening was a huge success, we had a rock DJ and the last person left at 3am!

Sales of raffle tickets on the night, entry fee to the ride out and various donations from people raised a total amount of £560.72 which the Outlaws then made up to £600.72.  All in all it was a great success, everyone had fun and money was raised for a very worthy cause.

Your support will change lives

The Ferns

We are raising funds in 2017 to build 2 new rooms at The Ferns so we can offer respite to more people with Autism.

The need for autism-specific respite care has become so critical that social workers have been ‘begging’ for help to find emergency placements for people with autism in crisis. Find out more here.