Pioneering project pays dividends as Northumberland autism group celebrates Duke of Edinburgh Award gold success
The North Northumberland branch of the National Autistic Society (NAS) has run a pilot programme adapting the Duke of Edinburgh challenge to cater specifically to autistic individuals.
This highly successful local initiative supports teenagers and young adults through volunteering, skills development, physical activities and expeditions.
Following the successful completion of their DofE gold programme, four of the recipients attended a special DofE reception at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.
Grace Wilce, Ats Walmsley, Ellie Owen and Daphne Sutherland attended the event, accompanied by their parents. Both the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were also in attendance.
Locally, the cohort's participation was organised and supported by members of the local NAS branch committee and parents.
What made their participation possible were the adjustments devised between the NAS and the DofE challenge scheme.
The group began their DofE journey in 2023. For the bronze award their skills include such diverse activities as learning to knitting, crochet, and learning the violin.
The volunteering activity included regular local beach cleans undertaken by the group whilst the physical activity included walking, roller blading, cross country dog running, all this time culminating with the group participating in overnight camping expedition to complete their successful bronze award.
For the silver DofE challenge the group continued to hone their bronze skills and created the ‘accessibility tool kit’ - this aims to help with accessibility to allow and enhance access for all to the award scheme. The kit is now being utilised nationally.
Growing bolder whilst still supported by parents and carers, the girls successfully completed a more challenging expedition of two nights in the Cheviots to gain their silver award, which was presented to them by the Lord Lieutenant for Northumberland, Dr Caroline Pryer. The group was also congratulated on completing their silver challenges by the Duke of Edinburgh, when he visited Cramlington in 2024.
The gold challenge followed a similar pattern to the silver, this time with a three night expedition and a four night residential stay in Kielder with various forest based activities.
The branch is now supporting a brand new Duke of Edinburgh cohort who recently completed their bronze challenge, with adjustments as needed.