SWINGS & SMILES
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Mission Statement
Our mission is to support children and young people with special needs and their families to be happy, have fun and feel included. Swings & Smiles offers children with special needs and their whole family vital support to build and sustain important social networks and friendships in an environment where they don’t feel judged. Through attending Swings & Smiles families are able to cope with better with stress and feel more confident. They are less isolated and able to develop friendships with other families of children with special needs and receive emotional and practical support. We offer services for children and young people aged 0-19 years. Special needs is an umbrella term for a wide arrays of diagnoses, from those that resolve quickly to those that will be a challenge for life and those that are relatively mild to those that are profound. It covers developmental delays, medical conditions, mental health conditions, and congenital conditions. This includes autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, global development delay, Down’s syndrome and children that have an undiagnosed genetic condition. Our list is not exclusive and we welcome any family who has a child that has been unable to access mainstream play facility.
About This Cause
Swings & Smiles is a small, locally based charity offering support, friendship and play for children with special needs and disabilities and their whole family. We offer a wide range of services and support, including a 7 day a week timetable of sessions at our centre alongside sibling support and a comprehensive outreach service. Whilst our centre operates from Thatcham, we see families from as far as Hampshire and Oxfordshire and are able to offer outreach to schools, groups and individuals within a 40 mile radius. The demand for our services is continually growing, and last year we saw a 44.5% increase in access to our services. Swings & Smiles needs continued support to enable us to carry on providing families with somewhere they can access support and play that they may not be able to find elsewhere. Without Swings & Smiles many of those families report that they would struggle to find somewhere for their family to spend quality time together in an appropriate environment. “Swings & Smiles is the only place we feel we can attend and get no judgement from others and no people staring, everyone understands. The staff have always been so helpful and supportive, not to just our daughter with her special needs but also to her sister and myself.” They may also lack opportunities for inclusive and accessible fun or feel more isolated with less chances to talk to specialist staff or others who understand. Swings & Smiles is a friend to those who need one and hopes to help these families, and many more, to be happy, have fun and feel included for years to come. We know through our work and from wider research that disabled children and young people lack specific opportunities for inclusive and accessible fun, as they get older chances to socialise reduce even further. Being unable to interact with peers who look or act the same as they do brings about feelings of isolation which results in a lack of confidence, low self esteem and anger. Being unable to create positive relationships outside the family also gives less opportunity for independence building and development of social skills. As of November 2020 we support over 460 families. Siblings too experience huge disadvantages, often taking the role as carer in practical or emotional tasks, this can lead them to also feel isolated and different from their peers. As young carers the demands placed on siblings means that they are often mature beyond their years and opportunity to just have fun is limited. This impacts them in similar ways to their disabled brother or sister; reduced opportunities for social contact, low self esteem and confidence. They often report feeling forgotten at home with more attention being given to their sibling and can be embarrassed out in public when people stare or judge their sibling. As well as everything we offer at the centre, we are also fully funded to be able to deliver sessions in the community with our outreach van. We’re able to take the joy of Swings & Smiles out and about to schools, groups and individuals by bringing specialist sensory equipment and engaging sessions to those who may not be able to make it to the centre. Recently we have established an online support system, this includes a wellbeing app for parents, group delivery and one to one support.