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We are excited to have been named as a finalist in the Vernon Building Society’s Community Awards 2020, where we are in with the chance of winning a part of £10,000.

Any money received from the Community Awards will be put towards Seashell’s award winning CADS programme, which provides opportunities for disabled and non-disabled young people to participate together in a series of unique sport, health and leisure activities.

Our fantastic CADS team tackled the pandemic head on by taking their sessions to the online world. We have welcome over 150 members into our Seashell Trust CADS Facebook page, where the team have hosted the CADS Olympics, built outdoor dens, held competitions and danced along at Disco Friday, to name a few!

It would be fantastic to win a share of £10,000 so Seashell can continue to provide as many opportunities as possible through CADS.

Our CADS team are delighted to introduce a case study from a family who recently participated in the virtual CADS programme, and enjoyed every minute:

“When I first saw that CADS were going virtual, I was a little sceptical as to whether I would be able to engage my two boys, Bailey (11) and Luke (7).  They both have autism and it had been particularly challenging to get Luke to engage with anything virtual as he would just scream and want me to turn off any videos of people he knows or anything that looks like work.  We all needed a break from the challenges of home learning and so I decided we would give it a go. 

We fed back on our experiences from the virtual Easter CADS and both boys really enjoyed and engaged with many of the virtual May CADS activities.  They really liked seeing a timetable and were looking forward to some of the upcoming activities.  It was easy to print out instructions and I could gather equipment from around the house so they could take part in various challenges.  The bingo session was amazing! Staff had gone above and beyond to create something really special that engaged my two so much we had to repeat the video over and over in the following weeks. This was very welcome as it also encouraged them to join in with exercises and build up a sweat with the crazy joker!  We have extended this now and made our own crazy joker video that goes with a yoga spinner game we bought, to make it extra engaging. 

They both loved the quiz and have taken inspiration from it to start designing their own quizzes on Kahoot.  I felt that virtual CADS was very inclusive with a variety of activities to appeal to different children and it gave me a very welcome break from trying to come up with endless activities to keep the boys occupied.  The fact that there were competitions and prizes was a wonderful bonus and inspired the boys more.  They were totally delighted to receive a fantastic prize after the event and it has been great for encouraging further activity and engagement at home.  We have just looked at the ticket and information for the virtual Summer CADS and we are all very excited!” 

To vote for Seashell Trust in the Community Awards, please click here.