Update from Autism Bedfordshire

Further to your generous donation of £820 in October last year, I am delighted you update you with our achievements during a very difficult year. Against the odds, our dedicated staff and volunteers were able to run a comprehensive programme of summer activities for autistic children and young people in Bedfordshire albeit with reduced numbers in line with Government guidelines. The programme was an incredible success with a total of 80 autistic children and young people enjoying the exciting range of activities and visiting entertainment on offer. The programme also provided their parents/carers with a vital break from their caring responsibilities, which was so desperately needed after 4 months in lockdown.

One of the key things to ensure we could run the schemes safely and in accordance with Government’s Protective Measures guidance was to ensure that we had sufficient PPE for children and staff. Although we were obliged to purchase the equipment prior to the schemes starting, we were delighted that we could use £300 of your funding to cover the costs of purchasing this vital equipment.

We used your donation to purchase:

  • 200 Disposable Surgical Face Masks with Earloop
  • 3 Infrared Non-contact Forehead Digital Surface/Body with Fever Alarms
  • 4 Medical Non-contact Infrared Thermometer with Accurate Digital Readings for Adults and
  • Babies and 40 Koolpak Original Instant Ice Packs
  • Antibacterial Hand Gels
  • 2 Fire HD tablets
  • 1 Epson EB-S41 SVGA Projector

Your generous support has made a huge difference to our ability to run adapted services to support autistic people and their families during Covid-19. The future is still very uncertain but we have a robust and innovative senior team who are doing everything possible to ensure that we not only get through this crisis but that we become stronger as a result of it. We have developed online services that have reached new people and we will be able to continue these once things start to return to normal. We have learned many lessons about how we can communicate with the autistic community and will incorporate these into our services, going forwards.

On behalf of all our members, we thank you very much indeed for supporting us and helping us improve the quality of life for these vulnerable people. We really do appreciate it.

Yours sincerely,

Emma Reade

Autism Bedfordshire