Little Rascals' mobile sensory room

Shropshire Star

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00:00We're here at Little Rascals in Bicton Heath, Shrewsbury, and we're with Dave Edwards. Hello, Dave.

00:05Hello, hello. Dave, now a lot of people are going to think, I know that face, it's from the football world,

00:09it's Wolves, it's Shrewsbury Town, but a bit of a different world this one. Little Rascals,

00:14it's a project that you and Ben set up, yeah? Yes, yeah, so it was when I was at Wolves actually,

00:20we were based in Monkmore to start with, the other side of town, and it was a business initially,

00:24we wanted to start a soft play centre for kids, and it was all going great, but we always wanted

00:30to have a charitable arm and use sort of my connections between football and maybe the

00:35platform which I'd been able to generate to sort of help the local community, and we were sort of

00:41thinking of ideas of what we could do, and then Ben's previous job that he was in was helping

00:46children with disabilities, especially special educational needs, and he said there's a real

00:50lack here in Shropshire for services, things for the kids to do, things for the family to do,

00:55so we brought that into Little Rascals, and adapted the play centre, made a sensory room in there,

01:01and it was a huge hit straight away, and we had specific days which would just be for sort of

01:07children and their families with special education needs to come to, and with disabilities,

01:12and it was nice for them knowing that the general public wasn't going to be in, it was a really safe

01:17environment, and the kids could be kids, this can be unpredictable at times, but we created a really

01:22nice space for them, and unfortunately after Covid we lost the site due to the landlords, so I wanted

01:29to take the site back, but fortunately we'd already set up here in Vickton Heath, and we've been able to

01:34develop this with some fundraising. Well yeah, we've had a little look inside the centre there, and

01:38the central room in there is fantastic, and you know, basically you've replicated it, but on wheels,

01:44haven't you? I mean it's a great, what you've managed to achieve here, it's like the TARDIS,

01:49you look for the outside, but then when you go in, there's just so much stuff going on inside here.

01:53Yeah it's amazing, like I said, we had the sensory room at the old centre, and we had a year or so here

01:57where we didn't have a sensory room, and we really missed it, and how much it could help the kids,

02:02so we did a big fundraising challenge initially to get that built, I had a charity match actually,

02:07Walsworth Street, which went a long way to raising the funds, and as soon as we built that,

02:12Jess, our manager, had this sort of little dream of hers, can we take it on wheels, and can we take

02:17it to people who can't necessarily get to the centre, and with the help of Greenhouse, who have

02:22really helped us with the funding, and the van, and then obviously other fundraisers that we do,

02:27and people help us with money, we've been able to create this, and yeah it's not been fully functioning

02:32for very long, but already it's making a huge difference, and it's something I'm really proud of.

02:37So we're here at Little Rascals in Shrewsbury, and we're here with Jessica.

02:41Hello.

02:42How are you doing?

02:43I'm really good thank you, how are you?

02:44I'm good thank you. Jessica, just talk us through I guess first off what Little Rascals is all about.

02:50So Little Rascals is a technical foundation set up in 2015 by Ben and Dave Edwards,

02:58their idea was initially to set out to create a safe space for children in the local community that

03:03have special educational needs and disabilities, as they could see a massive gap in the market

03:09basically for a place that was safe and secure, that provided for children like that. Since then

03:15the charity's changed and grown, I came on board about four years ago and took over the running of

03:19the business and the charity, and since then we've had a lot of tough challenges with Covid shutting down

03:26our big site, I was moving over to Bicton Heath and having to pretty much start again,

03:31but we're back on a good pegging, charity wise and business wise, and we're at a point where we're

03:36growing. So it's a real sense of pride to kind of know that you are creating something that

03:41there is a real need for, you know, people are crying out for the use of this band, so it's

03:46definitely something that we're proud of and we want to get it out there and keep fundraising for

03:51things like this so that we can continue to support the community. And you even do a little free trip

03:56each week, don't you, where you take it out kind of no charge to a group, is that right? We do, yeah.

04:00So the idea of the van was to have this resource available for nurseries, schools, places that don't

04:07necessarily have a functional sensory room, to use for those children with additional needs. So once a week

04:13we will go out to a different school or organisation and let them use it for the day free of charge,

04:17as part of the charity initiative. And it's going kind of Shropshire and just over the border at

04:23times as well, yeah? Yeah, we say Shropshire and surrounding areas. The charity was set up initially

04:27to help our local community but we know with what we have here we can go beyond that. When we have

04:33the opportunity to do so, it's run on a needs basis, so organisations or people who want to use it have

04:40the opportunity to fill in an application form and all free of charge to go out to them and then also if

04:45you wanted to rent it and do it and all the money goes back to the charity. We're a complete non-profit

04:51here at Little Rascals, even when it's open to the general public, every penny goes back into the

04:55foundation. So when we do rent it out, again that money helps us provide more services and

05:00go on to the next fundraising project as well. And am I right in thinking your foundation's

05:05coming up to its 10th anniversary? It is, yeah. Crazy to think it's 10 years,

05:09but this November, Little Rascals is 10 years old, so we've got a special night planned at

05:14Hawkesland Park where we have a couple of speakers, some food, a bit of a, been able to showcase all

05:19the work we've done over that last 10 years. So the sensory room, we've moved sides with the sensory

05:24room, this and then our next project is we really want to have a respite centre of our own which can

05:29really take us to the next level of being able to help people. So that's the big dream in three to five

05:35years and things like the 10 year anniversary will help raise lots of money towards that as well.

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