Supporting our colleagues and charities during COVID-19 – Take a Break Warwickshire

7 Jul 2020 - 2 minute read

We’re continuing to support colleagues who are involved in community-based organisations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Take a Break Warwickshire provides community based short breaks for children and young adults who have a physical or mental disability or life-threatening illness.

They also support adults with a learning disability. This support enables people to live their lives to their full potential, gain skills and move towards independence with confidence.   

Our Power System Engineer Xuefeng Bai, made the application on behalf of Take A Break. Xuefeng lives in Warwick and his son has often joined some ‘Saturday Club’ sessions. 

“I saw many other children and young people attending those sessions and I believed the support from TAB was very important for their wellbeing.  

As a small charity, TAB don’t have the same level of funds during the lockdown period and the support from the community fund is a big help for them.” 

 

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown has created a number of challenges for Take A Break. They continue to support people with disabilities along with their families during the pandemic 

Usually they’d run regular sessions for families and children offering support to the children but also respite to families. Many of the children don’t understand social distancing so it’s still impossible to have any group sessions. The lack of schooling is a challenge too with most schools now unlikely to fully return until September.  

We are proud to support TAB during the pandemic. They’ve used our donation in two ways:  

  • Producing isolation packs to keep the children and young adults occupied. These include arts and crafts kits and sensory resources 

  • They’ve also been able to offer some 1 on 1 sessions, but in full PPE which they’ve had to purchase. 

 

 

Rachel Sweet from Take a Break added:  

“We’re pleased to receive the donation. We’ve put together a number of isolation packs to help keep children busy at home and we’re offering direct support in more innovative ways. As lockdown continues to ease, we’re hoping to run some summer schemes with up to four children. We’re still here and we’ll support families as much as we can.”