Disco Fever!
We celebrated a marvellous year with our Christmas Disco last Friday. It's been a great year and we've been able to support dozens of families and hundreds of individuals across Barking & Dagenham, Redbridge and Havering in 2019, so it was fitting that so many of our service users were able to get together with us at Dagenham & Redbridge FC last week to celebrate their achievements.
As always, we used to event to present our annual Jack Petchey Awards for achievement and several of the winners were there on Friday to collect their awards from our guest of honour, the Mayor of Barking & Dagenham, Cllr Peter Chand.
Our first award went to John Kirk, one of the young people on our life skills programme. John was initially very nervous of joining the Alpha group. He had a negative experience fropm a previous project, but we have seen a huge improvement in John's self confidence. He enjoys the group and is keen to do the modules and interacts well with the members and the staff.
John
The next award went to a young man who has been involved in lots of activities this year. Nathan Florish also attends the Alpha life skills group. We have noted an improvement in his behaviour and his ability to manage situations that he previously found challenging, resulting in an improvement in his interaction with staff and his peers. Nathan is a pleasant and helpful member of the group and his family came on Friday to share in his success.
Nathan
Our youngest winner this year was Daisy Hutchinson. Daisy became an Autism Ambassador in June 2018 and in the last year she has helped the AA's deliver numerous Autism Awareness presentations to professional bodies. She has volunteered her time during school holidays, showing dedication and commitment.
Daisy
Harrison Mann collected an award thanks in the main to his efforts during Stubbers week. He was a bit reluctant to join in with the activities at the beginning of the week, but as the days progressed he started joining in and seemed to really enjoy the driving, skateboard and crate stacking, and by the end of the week, he was taking part with enthusiasm!
Harrison
Also collecting Jack Petchey awards were Sophia Mower, who attended Stubbers residential activity week for the first time and Laura Kirk, who joined the girls group not knowing anyone, but quickly realised that her skills were something she could share, and she now volunteers to help the other girls.
Ben Devan is one of the success stories of 2019. Before attending the Peer group, Ben was socialy isolated and would not leave his house. Since he has been attending the group his confidence has increased, and has began to make friends and take part in activities outside the group. Another team player is Jesse Idike, who attended Stubbers for the first time, joining in with all the activities and on a similar note, Matthew Young supported another member of the peer group encouraging to turn up him on days he did not want to attend, eventually giving him enough confidence to attend independently.
Congratulations to all our Jack Petchey Award winners!