Recently, a group of members from the SpLinter Group travelled up to Berwick to visit the new community hub for Border Links at the Ramparts enterprise park. It was a great opportunity for SpLinter to meet with Melanie Deans who is the director of Border Links, and we used it to discuss with her the idea of SpLinter co-sharing their premises with them occasionally for a monthly social session. During our visit to Border Links, we also had the chance to meet with a couple of the users who come to use the facilities at this hub to gain confidence and feel included in their community.

Also involved in this discussion and present at the visit of Border Links were Diana Smith who works for RISE as a community organiser along with Jaki Duffy who supports young men with learning disabilities that seek help with overcoming their isolation barriers. Throughout this discussion we made it our goal to share with them the main features of SpLinter and how we worked as a user-led group for young adults with learning differences across Northumberland and the surrounding areas. We explained to them about our monthly social get-togethers along with our Sunday games nights hosted on Zoom and we also talked about the possibility of creating local groups and possibly forming a Berwick group.

Following that discussion, SpLinter were invited to attend a learning disability lunch conference at Border Links, which included individuals from different services for neurodiverse people from North Northumberland. It provided SpLinter with an opportunity to share with them more information about our different projects and our main targets as a group going forward. We also used this meeting as an opportunity to promote our Safe Places training and make them aware of Point A and its progress that we’re making to enable and support neurodiverse individuals.