We are always encouraging staff, clients and the wider community to knit squares to make up blankets for people in poor countries.  This will help them to keep warm.  Thank you to those who have already contributed!

Responding to the upset of how adults with disabilities have stopped going to their usual day care/work placements we have recently, with great success, set up a 'Get together' club on a Wednesday afternoon.  Each person brings their lunch to the club and for £3 are entertained and encouraged to join in with a variety of activities.  We are currently delivering these sessions at our head quarters, which is 'Bridge House' in East Cowes.  Each care home supply a carer to attend to any personal care needs and to be on hand if any of their residents have a problem.  We supply at least 3 qualified Activity Support Workers to make sure we are able to entertain, support, encourage and to make sure they have light refreshments throughout the 2 hour session.  Each person receives a raffle ticket and we have 2 prizes each week.

To keep these sessions viable we are asking for the general public to help us out by donating, tea, coffee, sugar, hot chocolate, squash, biscuits and any arts and crafts that they feel would be appropriate. 

On the first session we had a general discussion of what they would like to do and ended up putting the music on and having a sing-a-long and a dance.

The second session we made necklaces with wool and pasta and then decorated them using glue, glitter, stars and paint.  One resident didn't seem interested in doing this but he had such a fantastic time bashing the balloon we gave him across the room to his friends and the staff.

Here are a few ideas we have in store for the 'Get together' club:

Iain on keyboard and getting us all to sing-a-long to a variety of music.

Eco band - making musical instruments out of recycled materials and playing them to our hearts content.

Themed events - such as dressing up as different characters from a film or book or BOTH!

Fish 'n' chip supper - eating together as our Community Spirited extended family and encouraging arts and crafts to do with the deep blue sea!

I can't tell you how excited the whole team at Community Spirited get on a Wednesday afternoon. We receive so much job satisfaction out of these sessions ourselves as well as the members who join us on a weekly basis.