Mark is 12 year old young child with a diagnosis of Learning difficulties and Autism. He was shy and struggled to mix with other children and his mother requested that he join our Youth Groups in order to bring him out of his shell. Initially when he first started coming to our sessions; he engaged with some of the other children, but mainly just spoke to the staff.

However, as he continued to come to session, he was offered a chance to come to a cooking session and we saw a huge turn around and he seemed like a different person. He chatted with the project coordinator and children and then told us he had thoroughly enjoyed it.

When he arrived with his mam on the third week, she told me how much Mark had enjoyed the previous week. We agreed that he could take any spare places when another young person couldn’t make the cookery session. His mam stated that this would really boost his confidence.

For the next two weeks Mark came to the cookery sessions and absolutely loved it! But there was also a big change was when he then came back into the Youth Group, his confidence had grown so much that he started talking to more other young people rather that mainly staff and he also engaged in a range of games. It was lovely to see his smiling face and hear him laughing – a huge change is such a short amount of time.

You can look contact us if you feel your child would like to try new activities and we’d love to hear from you.