Swansea Stepping Stones project marks world autism awareness week

Children from Action for Children’s Swansea Stepping Stones project have released hundreds of pink and purple balloons in a city wide World Autism Awareness week event last week.

The event celebrated a week of autism awareness which involved children promoting and raising awareness and understanding of the world of autism within their schools and community groups.

Phil Davies, children’s services manager for several services that support and enable children with Autism, including Stepping Stones, said: ‘We were delighted to participate in this first event of its kind in Swansea. Around 700,000 people in the UK are on the autism spectrum. Together with their families, this means autism is a part of daily life for 2.8 million people and anything we can do to increase understanding and provide support to these families is very worthwhile indeed.’

Swansea Stepping Stones work in partnership with other agencies such as health visitors, midwives and local schools. To help under-fives get ready for school our services include: child and family health services; parenting programmes and antenatal support; early year’s education services, such as ‘stay and play’ sessions; speech and language support and family learning.

Further information and resources on autism and World Autism Awareness Week can be found at
http://www.autism.org.uk/get-involved/world-autism-awareness-week.aspx

For further media information please contact Alastair Love, media officer at Action for Children, on 02920 347068 / 07718 244 297 / alastair.love@actionforchildren.org.uk

Out–of–hours enquiries should be directed to the duty press officer on 07802 806679/ media.team@actionforchildren.org.uk