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  • 12 minutes ago
A mother from Bordon thinks Everyone Active is not living up to its name at Alton Sports Centre.
Elese Reed, who has an autistic five-year-old daughter called Emmie, is angry that the centre will not devote one of its 279 hours of monthly soft play provision to a session for neurodiverse children.
The adjustments required include reducing the number of children using the play frame, dimming the lights and turning off the radio.
Chris West - contract manager for Everyone Active, which runs Alton Sports Centre on behalf of East Hampshire District Council - said: “We continually review our activity programme in order to ensure it meets the needs of people from across the local community.
“We are proud to run a variety of inclusive sessions across East Hampshire, including weekly inclusive soft play and bouncy castle sessions at the nearby Taro Leisure Centre.
“We will advise our customers of any changes to activity programming in the future.”

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00:01I requested one hour of inclusive soft play for neurodiverse children at Alton Leisure Centre.
00:07The reason for this was so that my five-year-old daughter, Emmy, could do what her sister can do
00:12on a daily basis comfortably.
00:14Also, for a neurodiverse parent, life can be very isolating, so to go to an inclusive or send session where
00:22there's other parents in a similar position, it would have built a community.
00:26People can judge you when a child has an autistic meltdown, when you're out and about.
00:31If they had had that in the environment where other send parents were around, it wouldn't have been a judgemental
00:35environment and you'd have been felt a lot more supportive.
00:39If Emmy going to a normal soft play session, it's far too overwhelming for her and causes her great distress
00:45and anxiety because of her autism.
00:47Her senses are overloaded and heightened and she isn't able to cope, and therefore she can't access facilities that her
00:55peers are able to.
00:56All I was asking for was for my child to be able to access facilities equal to her sister, but
01:02this wasn't available.
01:03So bye.
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