‘Making a positive contribution’

2020 has been a year of change for many of us. Everyone has had to make adjustments to normal life to accommodate the need for social distancing, better hygiene and safer working practices.

We have seen a real rise at Clear Sky in referrals since the start of term, from schools who need to support many more children who are suffering from a multitude of COVID-19 related and other emotional or behavioural issues. Fortunately for us, we have a great team of dedicated therapists who have been able to adapt their therapeutic interventions as needed, and who have been able to continue to provide care and support to as many children as we have received referrals to date.

Clear Sky’s ‘Rainbow Values’ are:

We are a Mindful Team

We let every child shine

We create safe spaces

We are playful

We never, ever give up

COVID-19 has dictated some practical changes to our working practice. We are mindful, through our extended risk analysis of the increased need for heightened social distancing and cleanliness and as such, are required to rigorously clean surfaces and our individual therapy spaces between each intervention. Of course, one to one therapy with primary aged children presents challenges in terms of distancing and when applying appropriate use of PPE and face coverings; particularly where so much of our work focuses on the importance of facial expression to support empathy and understanding in our work.

On top of this, we are also now required to provide individual play and art kits for each of the children in our care, which are cleaned and isolated between weekly sessions. This has meant that favoured toys such as hand puppets and soft toys may still be used in a child’s sessions, reducing the risk of any cross-contamination.

All of these additional measures come at a cost and we have been blown away by Community support that has been provided to help us with these. This month we were delighted to be supported by The Arts Society whose Abingdon and Goring on the Thames (and District) groups both generously donated funds to allow us to provide individual Play and Art kits for the rise in children we are seeing! These grants allow us to create:

• A typical Art kit costing around £20 which contains paper, pens, paint, glue and some decorative items

• A typical Play kit costing around £40 containing some craft materials, a soft toy, a make-believe kit or some miniatures.

The Arts Society Arts for All grant is intended:

‘To make a positive contribution to people’s lives through the arts’

We were delighted to be able to apply to them for this grant through ‘a special grants round to respond to and encompass the needs highlighted by the COVID–19 pandemic, as well as our usual funding objectives’

We are very grateful indeed to The Arts Society Abingdon and The Arts Society Goring and District for generously supporting our work!

We continue to fundraise to support even more children through our latest campaign ‘Supporting Childhood Trauma Through Play’ and you can pledge your support for this project here

The project is being operated by Aviva and we must reach a total of £2000 pledged by 15 December if we are to achieve our funding goal! We are really grateful for your support!