For the financial year 2024-2025, we set out to support young people, aged 13-25 plus peer mentors, with Autism and Autistic traits who have fallen through the cracks of statutory services and ended up not leaving their bedrooms, being isolated from the wider community, being unable to get involved in employment or education and isolated from their peers. The geographic areas we targeted were deprived and hard to reach areas with a lack of Autism specific services for this cohort. The team consists of Autistic young people who are passionate about offering support to other Autistic young people. Our company goals 1. We aim to help our young people gain confidence so they feel able to go out and contribute to the wider community. 2. We want to bring more awareness about autism to those who may be unaware of the struggles or even to those who have been diagnosed that haven’t been educated in ways to support themselves. 3. We also aim to collaborate with other services, organisations and professionals in order to help increase their understanding and support the young people. How have we achieved these goals? GOAL 1 - We have continued to notice a variety of hugely heartwarming cases of our young people growing in confidence over time to the point where they have felt willing to turn their cameras and microphones on. Each occasion has seen a wave of support from both the team and also the others in the group. We have expanded our in-person sessions from Harwich into areas including Clacton, Frinton, Colchester and Ipswich, offering a variety of activities such as quizzes, arts and crafts, gaming sessions and helping our young people indulge their love of animals by collaborating with organisations like cat cafes and Exotic Explorers. These sessions really emphasise the increase in confidence amongst our cohort given many were essentially made housebound by their social anxiety. Watching them grow to the point where they are excited by meeting up in person is immensely rewarding. GOAL 2 - We aimed to continue educating and spread awareness of Autism and we have achieved that by continuing to offer our Autism workshops that we successfully trialled a couple of years ago. We have also launched a regular in-person session for the parents/carers of our young people, which has helped benefit them in terms of feeling less alone themselves, having likeminded people to reassure and advise them, as well as helping them learn more about how Autism affects other young people. These sessions are held at a local wine bar to ensure a more social setting rather than formal and allows our parents valuable relaxation time. We have also worked with local venues to run quiz nights for not only our clients but also the public in the local community. These quiz nights have proved a valuable opportunity to spread the word about our company and keep reaching out to families who are in desperate need of a service like ours. GOAL 3 - We have been in regular contact with other organisations such as Social Prescribers, Mind, Essex County Council, Summit, Local Linked Support, the ECL and DWP, helping ensure our Autistic young people receive the correct support and the support they both need and deserve.

Our stakeholders are our young people, their families and our funders. We consult them in a variety of ways, such as: anonymous feedback forms, Facebook Messenger, Discord, individual consultations, assessments and person-centred support. In response to feedback, we have continued to provide face-to-face meet-ups, arrange travel for our young people who find it difficult to get to venues, increased the frequency of our online social groups, varied the themes of our groups around the interests of our young people, increased our professionals meetings to collaborate on topics which are important to our young people and their families, created a parent/carer support group, increased our social media presence and added a ‘serious issues’ group which discusses important issues such as benefits and housing. The team still regularly represents their cohort of young people on neurological steering groups where their challenges and successes are shared (with consent) which helps statutory services target resources and support. The feedback is shared with our funders for purposes of shaping statutory services and ensuring their voices are heard in the wider community.

The total amount paid or receivable by directors in respect of qualifying services was £24,297. There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors, or compensation for director’s loss of office, which require to be disclosed.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration