Last month I spoke about partnership work with the libraries. Another successful joint venture has been with The Carer’s Resource. Together with Helen Prince, the Strategy and Planning Lead for Young Carers, we collaborated on an Autism Champions project in Harrogate.
Helen and I gained £1000 through the Stronger Communities Inspire fund to pay for 12 online training licenses for community groups interested in expanding their knowledge of Autism. The funding also enabled us to put together a training course for young people. The course was supported by The National Autistic Society; Rob Knox from the Harrogate Branch supporting with the writing of the course material. 30 sixth formers have undertaken the training and are now Autism Champions at Rossett School – in place to support younger students to access lunchtime and after school clubs.
The longer term hope with this project is that these champions will advocate for their young clients, linking up with the community groups then supporting their client to attend – giving parents much needed support and respite.
This project has been a pleasure to work on and one that we hope will extend to other areas of North Yorkshire once the pilot group of 30 have completed their work.