‘And God is able to shower all kinds of blessings on you. So in all things and at all times you will have everything you need. You will do more and more good works’
2 Corinthians 9:8
(Accessible Edition New Testament, a project which we are collaborating in with Biblica).
Your generosity has helped us to equip children’s, youth, and family’s teams:
Back in the autumn I shared about three important projects that needed a total of £6,500 to become a reality, plus we needed a further £3,500 to meet the ongoing running costs of the Additional Needs Ministry. With your continued generous support and through God’s grace we were able to meet all of these project costs and close the gap to meet our ministry costs for the end of the year by raising £9,900 as a response to the autumn appeal. We can only do this much-needed work, making a real difference for children and young people who have struggled so much through the past two years, with your help and I am deeply grateful to everyone who faithfully and generously journeys with us in the Additional Needs Ministry.
Will you partner with us once again to help us reach our spring appeal target and play our part in continuing to change the reality for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities?
The three projects we delivered in 2021 thanks to your support:
Resource - 'Invited to Belong'
We partnered with Youthscape to produce an exciting new resource for children’s and youth workers, which we launched at their National Youth Ministry Weekend conference in November. 800 youth workers were there, and through your support we were able to give each of them a free copy of this resource so that they could take it back to their own groups and churches to work through.
‘Invited to Belong’ will help them to ensure that their youth work is accessible and inclusive for all, a place where everyone belongs, especially children and young people with additional needs. The pack includes inspirational stories of groups and churches that have successfully made this work, thoughts about what Jesus taught us regarding inclusion, resources to learn more about additional needs and the barriers that young people face, helpful tips to overcome these barriers, case studies to practice with and tools to take this forward in their own setting.
“Really inspirational, thank you for the incredible resource! Great job!”
“Great to listen to Mark Arnold from Urban Saints talking about a new resource to equip churches to be more welcoming and inclusive to young people with additional needs. This is so important and central to the gospel.”
Feedback from launch of ‘Invited to Belong’
Book - 'How to Include Autistic Children and Young People in Church'
In February this year, our new book, ‘How To Include Autistic Children And Young People In Church’, was published as part of the Grove Youth series. The book provides an easy-to-read introduction to Autism, outlines some of the barriers that Autistic children and young people can face in church as well as how to overcome them, shares how being inclusive of Autistic children and young people benefits everyone, and gives a 10-part study plan for churches to use to create belonging for all.
“Mark offers a fantastic introduction to supporting autistic children in the church... It contains some great explanations of life from an autistic perspective as well as practical ideas on how to move forward in supporting autistic young people. If every church were to implement these simple suggestions and principles our communities would be the richer for it. I thoroughly recommend this booklet to anyone who works with children.”
Olly Goldenberg, CHILDREN CAN
Through your generosity, we are able to give hundreds of copies of this new book out for free to all of our Urban Saints Groups and Camps, as well as some of our connected churches.
Equipment - 'Hybrid' training and conferences
We’ve learned a lot over the last two years about how to provide online training well and we’re using that knowledge to help us put together ‘hybrid’ training that brings together people who are in the building and people who are connecting online, providing an interactive and inclusive training experience for everyone.
To make this work we needed the technology to effectively link people in different places into what we are doing at a church or meeting hall. Your support has helped us to purchase the kit to get this in place just as in-building additional needs training bookings start to increase.
2021 ministry update
While 2021 was another challenging year in many ways, we also saw great blessing and favour as we reached out to support children’s, youth and family’s workers who have been connecting with, and including, children and young people with additional needs and disabilities and their families. Here’s just a snapshot of what else we achieved through the year together with your support:
Writing:
In 2021 over 92,000 people visited ‘The Additional Needs Blogfather’ website and viewed the blogs there over 115,000 times!
“Thank you for your inspiring words. Each one of us is made in God’s image no matter how that looks.”
We’ve also had lots of opportunities to write articles and resources for a wide range of publications and ministries over the year, including across the UK, Europe, and North America.
Support communities:
Membership of the ‘Additional Needs Alliance’ online learning and support community increased by 196 members in 2021 to 2,727 children’s and youth workers, parents, church leaders and more, each one being inspired, supported and equipped by the content there.
‘The Dads’ Fire Circle’ continues to help and support Dads of children with additional needs, with a website, a monthly live gathering, and a Facebook group for Dads to connect with other Dads and talk about things; helping them to cope better and stay involved in supporting their children.
Training and conferences:
By the end of 2021 we had delivered 55 online and in-building training and conference events, reaching and supporting 1,539children’s, youth and family’s workers, as well as parents and carers, to make a difference for the children and young people that they journey with.
“Thanks so much for coming to be with us... The team and I really valued and enjoyed the session, and lots of folks have been talking and thinking about it all week. We really appreciate everything you brought, and I believe it’s the good next step for us as church in becoming more welcoming, inclusive, and accessible.”
Feedback from a church Youth Leader
One of the highlights towards the end of the year was leading the ‘Quiet Space’ provision at the Methodist Church 3Generate Youth Conference held at the NEC:
“Honestly Mark, it was the best thing! She said several times over the weekend, ‘I can do this, because if it gets too much I can go to the safe Quiet Space’. Please be there next year so I can bring my son too!”
Feedback from a Group Leader and parent regarding her daughters’ experience at 3Generate.
‘Quiet Space’ provision at the Methodist Church 3Generate Youth Conference
Plans for 2022 and how you help
As we give thanks for all of the ways that we’ve been able to keep making a difference in 2021 for children and young people with additional needs, we continue to push on into 2022 with plans to equip Urban Saints Groups, Camps and connected churches as they reach out to children and young people with additional needs in their own communities. Here are just some of these plans, as well as the support needed to make them a reality:
New training programmes:
We currently have four highly acclaimed training programmes in our ‘All Inclusive?’ additional needs ministry portfolio, each of which helps participants to understand, include, support and spiritually develop children and young people with additional needs and disabilities:
- ‘All Inclusive?’ – Working with children and young people with additional needs•
- ‘All Inclusive?’ – Supporting families of children and young people with additional needs•
- ‘All Inclusive?’ – Making sense of our senses (the five we know and some ‘mystery’ senses!)
- ‘All Inclusive?’ – Disability equality (how the Equality Act 2010 applies to youth work)
All these training courses need updating and refreshing in 2022, work that is time consuming but essential to keep them current. Updating and refreshing our existing portfolio of four ‘All Inclusive?’ training progammes will cost £500 per programme, so we need to raise £2,000 for this.
We also aim to increase this portfolio of training programmes by adding two new programmes in 2022, supporting the new ‘Invited to Belong’ resource and the ‘How To Include Autistic Children And Young People In Church’ book. To create these two new additions, we will need time to develop and pilot the training content, as well as designing and producing all new training workbooks.
Design, development, and production of each of the two new training programmes, including printing 200 copies of each workbook, will cost £2,000 per training progamme, so we need £4,000 to create these two essential new training programmes and make them available to children’s, youth, and family’s workers in 2022.
Please continue to support this vital work
We can only do this much-needed work, making a real difference for children and young people with additional needs, with your help and I am deeply grateful to everyone who faithfully journeys with us in the Additional Needs Ministry. The work I’ve outlined above needs a total of £6,000 to become a reality, and that doesn’t include the ongoing running costs of the ministry. With your continued support we will be able to meet these costs as well as closing the gap to meet our immediate ministry costs for the first half of the year by raising the £10,000 needed as a response to this spring appeal.
Will you partner with us once again to help us reach our spring appeal target and play our part in continuing to change the reality for children and young people with additional needs and disabilities?
Our hope is in this verse that I shared at the beginning:
‘And God is able to shower all kinds of blessings on you. So in all things and at all times you will have everything you need. You will do more and more good works.’
2 Corinthians 9:8
Thank you so much for your encouragement and support, it is greatly appreciated and is making a big, big difference!
Mark Arnold
Additional Needs Ministry Director