Cygnet Elms celebrates Autism Awareness Week

Cygnet Elms recently held a fantastic event for Autism Awareness Week to raise money for the National Autistic Society. The event was organised by service user Florence Grant with the support of Riccardo Brade Occupational Therapy Assistant.

Prior to the day all of the staff and service users created tie dye t-shirts for everyone to wear at the event. They looked wonderful and everyone enjoyed wearing them for the day!

The day started with a craft sale where handmade artwork, blankets, crocheted teddies, handmade masks and many more items were sold. A cake sale was also arranged that included a fantastic rainbow edge cake! Overall the craft sale and cake sale were a huge success! This was followed by a session of karaoke where we had some wonderful performers!

In the afternoon after a fabulous buffet lunch Flo delivered a presentation about autism and the importance of autism acceptance. Flo is passionate about clarifying the myths and misinformation about autism and highlighted this throughout her presentation. The presentation was a great success and was well received by all those who attended. Excerpts from Flo’s presentation can be seen on the video below:

Flo’s presentation was followed by some communication games led by the Speech and Language Therapist. All participants had to engage in a game where they had to describe an object without being able to speak! This was followed by a pet therapy session. There was a visit from Olivia the rabbit and many other reptiles and furry creatures. Everyone enjoyed the pet therapy and it brought a smile to everyone’s faces.

A huge success of the day was the raffle in the afternoon. Prior to the day Flo and her family had contacted many companies to request for donations for the raffle. Flo sent hundreds of emails but it was worth it because she ended up with some amazing prizes for the raffle. In total there were over 60 prizes on the day including a bungee jump voucher!

Overall a whopping £2,614.84 was raised for the National Autistic Society. To make a donation to Flo’s fundraising page please visit https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/florencegrant

We want to say a big thank you to Flo and all the service users for making the day so wonderful and for all of their hard work. A further thank you to all the staff that supported the day and made it a great success!

For more photos of the event please see the photo gallery below (click on the images to enlarge).

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