What Have We Been Up To, So Far This Year?
NAS Stafford have packed a lot into the first four months of 2023!
As well as running our weekly Soft Play Sessions at The Play Shed, we have also hosted three parent and carer sessions.
Our first parent and carer session featured the incredible Daniel Jones from The Aspie world who talked about his experiences as an autistic man and the very popular YouTube channel he runs. We are always keen to platform autistic voices and Daniel gave us great insight into his world. With this in mind we also hosted The Staffordshire Adults Autistic Society who told us about the work they do to support adults in Staffordshire. We are very grateful to Liz and Salwa for their time (and we ran over time quite a bit on this occasion!) In February our friends and co- members of NAS Stafford, Julia and Tracey from Pro-SEN Support services gave us some excellent advice around the EHCP process and their support was invaluable.
Future groups hope to look at diet, and SEND, and one of our upcoming sessions will offer a chance for a face-to-face meeting.
Half term saw our holiday Stay and Play session with face painting from Cosmic Faerie. There were some remarkable designs on show! We also treated our parents and carers to a special afternoon tea because sometimes the adults need spoiling! At our Easter Stay and
Play we welcomed Nature’s Burrow with their wonderful petting zoo, and the children interacted with the animals beautifully, in their own time and on their terms, whilst the staff made sure of the animals’ well-being. This was followed by an Easter Egg hunt, and an Easter tea party. There were also some amazing Easter Bonnet designs!
We were lucky enough in February half term to receive another generous donation from the Sheltonia Masonic Lodge, which enabled us to offer one of our very popular family fun float swimming sessions at Stone Leisure Centre. We would like to thank Chris Miles from the
Lodge for supporting us and it was a huge pleasure to meet him and his wife when they came along to the swimming session; they were delighted to see how many people took part.
NAS Stafford is always happy to provide information and outreach and this April Tracey and Julie gave the Understanding Autism talk to the over 55s Tuesday Mixer Club. This was very well received and we spoke to many of the Mixer Club members individually after the talk was done. Over the coronation bank holiday Tracey also represented NAS Stafford at The Big Help Out in Victoria Park, and it was great to see how many people turned out in spite of the weather. Fortunately, the rain held off for most of the afternoon! NAS Stafford is also hoping to collaborate with the Autism Pyramid Group in Uttoxeter, not least because we have members in common. Watch this space!
We have welcomed many people, new and long-standing members, to our NAS family so far in 2023, and we look forward to continuing to provide events, activities, outreach, and support to many more throughout the rest of the year.
Look out for details of our summer programme, coming soon!