project team meeting

Community Projects

Finding new ways to help neurodivergent young adults

The SpLinter Group is constantly looking for new ways to help improve the lives of people with learning differences, mental health conditions and other disabilities.

Safe Places

Since 2015, the SpLinter Group has taken a lead in Northumberland on the national Safe Places scheme. Safe Places sets out to help anyone who is feeling anxious or lost when they are out and about in Northumberland. The idea is to recruit venues such as cafes, shops and community centres, and train them on how to offer support to someone who is feeling anxious in public. We give out cards and encourage people to downlaod the app which can guide them to the nearest Safe Place.

Winston Churchill Foundation

Another exciting project is where Dennis our gaming coordinator has been provided with the funds to carry out a study visit to America and Japan, to help us see how we can make our enterprise ideas for gaming work better. You can read Dennis’s blog and report here.

Point A Info Hubs Project

In 2023, we started work on a new project which will help neurodivergent people access information and local services more easily within Northumberland. Working in partnership with Adapt (North East), Northern Butterflies, Northumberland Echo and Central User Forum, this project is working towards the creation of three local info hub support centres as well as an extensive online resource centre. The project is led by a group of people with direct experience of the kinds of information that neurodivergent adults might need. The members are enjoying getting to know each other and would like a peer support network to continue as another way of getting more support.

We cannot rely on volunteers alone to develop these services so, when we come up with a new idea, we often have to find ways of financing the project. Sometimes we organise fund-raising events to do this. For larger projects, we frequently apply to the government for special grants to help us.