As we prepare to wrap up another year here are just a few highlights from what has undoubtedly been another challenging year, but has also been one during which Teamwork Trust has adapted, grown and continued to proudly support autistic adults, people with learning disabilities and individuals with mental health needs across Northamptonshire…

Restrictions: At the start of 2021, national lockdown restrictions meant that all three of our Teamwork sites were unable to open after last Christmas.
Instead, we embraced all things digital. Service users were able to choose and dip into a daily timetable of education classes and emotional support and wellbeing activities – everything from PE and a kitchen disco to a book club, virtual choir, lunchtime cook-along sessions and zoom quiz nights.
Many of these online activities have continued throughout the year, as Covid restrictions have been eased – complementing our on-site activities and classes.

Creative alternatives: Our Valentine’s Ball had to be cancelled, but the creative thinking continued. One of our apprentices Martha came up with a plan and spent weeks planning and sourcing petals, balloons, cakes and gifts.
More than 80 luxury gift boxes were then delivered to our delighted service-users – a true Valentine’s surprise. Messages of thanks from parents and carers came flooding.

Digitally equipped: Throughout the year our service-users have been steadily kitted out with over 80 brand new tablets and mobile phones - all thanks to a successful inclusion project that is helping more local adults with learning disabilities and metal health conditions adapt to the digital world.
We are open! Then, in April, we were finally able to reopen our doors and welcome back our service-users, who gradually started returning. Welcome back sessions along with new classes, equipment, work benches and activities commenced – and the smiles still keep coming.

Support when most needed: We have worked particularly hard this year to support our service-users to receive their coronavirus vaccinations. Put simply, if we hadn’t stepped in when we did, there would be lots of people with learning disabilities and autism that still wouldn’t have had the vaccinations.
In June we joined Wellingborough’s Covid Community Champions programme, a new scheme to deliver better Covid-19 advice and vaccination information to Wellingborough’s disabled community.
We followed this up by running a forum for disabled people – both projects set up by Support Northamptonshire so that disabled people and their families in Wellingborough and North Northants remain safe, healthy and happy during the pandemic.

Co-production: A positive shift towards a culture of co-production has gained momentum throughout the year, ensuring our service users’ voice is prioritised and included throughout their time at Teamwork. As part of this we held a #CoProWeek video campaign – to support and reinforce the fact that all our big decisions are only ever made by involving our service users.
Emotive videos from service-users on our steering group committee played out on social media during July’s nationwide campaign courtesy of Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) – a campaign designed to showcase organisations which work in equal partnership with their people.

Camera, lights, action: Teamwork’s notoriety went national when Sky TV's documentary Landmark featured artist Jason Wilsher-Mills and members of Teamwork Trust’s Corby site. Since the broadcast a group of our art-loving service users enjoyed a day trip to Scunthorpe to attend the opening of Jason’s new exhibition at the 20-21 Visual Arts Centre.

Thank you
And finally, a big thank you to all our valued supporters – for your continued commitment to and interest in all that we do here at Teamwork Trust.

We would like wish you and your families a happy and healthy festive break.
Lots in the pipeline for 2022 – see you next year!