OUR ACTIVITIES
BACKGROUND
aebal was established....
PROVIDE:
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Supportive, fun and friendly environments to enable people to grow in self-confidence and gain a real sense of belonging.
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A limitless amount of mainstream community based activities and opportunities to promote both physical and emotional well-being.
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The social dynamics for friendships to form through shared interests and values.
The service and our...
......in 2012. Inspired by the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, an idea was born to create a Nottingham based social care service that specialised in adapted sports and exercise for the learning disabled.
At the time, Jason was working in the supported living sector of social care and becoming increasingly disheartened by how little the learning disabled and autistic residents went out into the community.
Tired and predictable routines, unmotivated staff and bored and socially isolated residents was perceived as normal and acceptable.
Even when attempts were made to inject a bit more fun and variety into the week, it was notably apparent how few community outlets and opportunities there were.
A change was clearly needed in both the way the staff felt about their jobs and the type of support that was available.
Whilst researching into council run care services, Jason stumbled across a new initiative, funded by Nottinghamshire County Council, called Community Catalysts.
This was a venture providing support and information to encourage more people in Nottingham to set up small independent care services (also known as Micro Providers).
So, there was now an idea, an identified need and a means in which to take it forward! Jason registered with Community Catalysts and proposed the idea for an adaptive sports service to give people a new and exciting outlet in to the community. Momentum built, legal knowledge was learnt, a business plan was created and "Sport Support" was born! Sport Support then quickly died due to it being a terrible name. A few days later though aebal Leisure was born! Adpated Exercise Boosting All Lifestyles! Also a terrible acronym however, it didn't matter as aebal (pronouced "able") was a much better and more emotive name.
Overseeing the progression of aebal Leisure was a wonderful business mentor, Rebecca Stanley who provided the direction, the belief and a lot of helpful contacts for Jason to speak with and promote the idea to. As a result of the meetings, a few months later a social worker who had heard about a new sports based service decided to give aebal Leisure a try and referred 4 services users! Swimming, bike rides, snooker and hiking sessions ensued until 4 clients became 10.
Then in 2014 Jason recruited his first staff member and future Service Manager, Jack. (Sadly, no longer with aebal after being an integral part of the service for 7 years).
The team continued to grow as did the number of service users, however the service never deviated from it's humble beginnings and it's ethos....reinventing the image of social care through the creativity of the support and approach to employment.
.....support have evolved a huge amount since 2012. Whilst we continue to offer a wide variety of sports and leisure activities, our service now encompasses much much more. These days we also like to refer to ourselves as simply aebal.
Jason continues to remain actively involved in the support and sessions, ensuring staff understand and embrace the aebal ethos; approaching social care as an art rather than something systematic and impersonal.
aebal provide:
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Supportive, fun and friendly environments to enable people to grow in self-confidence, combat difficult feelings and gain a real sense of belonging.
-
A limitless amount of mainstream community based activities and opportunities to promote both physical and emotional well-being.
-
The social dynamics for friendships to form through shared interests and values.
An example of a typical aebal session might be organising 3 clients to participate in a shared interest of climbing, it could be joining one of our evening cooking socials or it maybe doing something comical like getting involved in one of our Karaoke evenings!
All the activities and opportunities we provide are 100% in the community and as inclusive and mainstream as possible. We support in small groups and on a 121 basis, without the need for day centres.
Over the years we’ve also had the opportunity to listen to our client’s experiences and difficulties with managing the pressures and expectations of mainstream society. We understand the struggles many of them have faced with feelings of not fitting in and social isolation.
Our belief as a service is that, regardless of learning disability, autism or mental health condition, the way to a happier life and improved well-being is to learn to embrace who you are, and then do the aforementioned embracing whilst being out in the community doing mainstream stuff … in the company of a bunch of kind and supportive people!
This is who we are and what we do…. even though that sentence was very very long. We also do long sentences.