Our Services

At Skylarks, we have expanded from first providing inclusive play sessions for nursery aged children when we were first established over 15 years ago, to offering a wide range of therapies, activities and services for children and young people with additional needs, their parents/carers and their siblings.

The range of services we offer includes:

Most of our activities are available for both children with SEND and their brothers and sisters to attend. These include our weekly play sessions in term time at which children can take part in inclusive after school activities like music therapy, drama and karate. We also offer family outings in the school holidays, family yoga sessions and more

A few of our activities are just for the children with additional needs, such as hydrotherapy, counselling, 1:1 yoga sessions, osteopathy appointments, Life Skills courses and riding for the disabled.

We have a growing offer for young people ages 12- 16, with additional needs. We aim to support young people by;

Raising aspirations about the future,

Supporting with transitions,

Building employability skills,

Providing networks.

Our offer Spread Your Wings for Young People; includes programmes in career preparation, digital and coding skills, life skills and money skills.

We hope to continue to build our offer for young people with additional needs up to the ages of 25.

We offer a multitude of support groups including the National Autistic Society, Phyz, Girls Connect, Home Ed and Post 16 Maze. We offer free advice around education for children with Special Educational Needs (SEND). We also offer 1:1 appointments for advice clinics for parents, offering advice on benefits, social care, activities and family life. We offer workshops for parents, both online and face-to-face, often bringing in experts in their field such as IPSEA, and local therapists. We also signpost “Local Information” about all support and services we know about which are available locally. You might like to join our closed Facebook group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/Skylarksparents/

Being the brother or sister of a child with a disability often means that children are in effect Young Carers. Siblings are welcome to join in most of our activities.

You can access any of our services for FREE by Registering Online and booking our online or face to face sessions via the What We Do page. You can view our calendar of events by visiting our What's On page.

When you have registered with us, you will receive a welcome email with more details. You will also then start to receive our regular e-newsletters, usually on a Saturday morning. You are then very welcome to start booking any of our activities and services. You will receive reminders of activities you have booked by email or text. If you find you cannot attend an activity you have booked, please delete your booking so that we can offer the place to someone else.

Our independence as a charity means we at Skylarks are able to develop our programme in line with the needs of our families; something that has always been and remains important to us. We do not apply for or receive any statutory funding from government or local authorities. Our services are free to all, but we welcome any donations to help us continue to provide this valuable service. You can make a donation by contactless card reader at our sessions or you can Donate online. If you become a regular user of our services, we would encourage you to think about setting up a Direct Debit, which removes the need to donate for each activity you attend. If every family who uses our services were to set up a Direct Debit for £20 per month, this would cover the entire cost of running our charity for a whole year!

Here is how to find us