Our service is called Gombards, it’s a residential home where we support people with severe and complex needs. We are really proud of what we achieve for the people we support. For example, one lady joined us who had not been supported in the way she needed to be before. Now she’s thriving, and we’ve seen a major change in her life.

One of our proudest achievements of all is United Sparkles, our creative enterprise. We use hand over hand techniques to get the finger prints of people we support. We make the art in our art room. It’s their space, and a place where they can get away from whatever else is going on. After getting their finger prints, we add the art to mugs, bags, baubles and more, and sell it at fairs.

United Sparkles is unique. Without their fingerprints, we wouldn’t have any designs. It just shows that people with all disabilities are capable of doing anything. That’s in the United Sparkles motto, “there’s no greater disability in society than the inability to see a person as more”.

We also get some good reviews from the parents. Some of them probably never ever thought their sons or daughters could do this. Knowing the parents are getting to see this, wow! That puts a smile on your face.

The people we support get lots of benefits from taking part. One of the people we support is blind. We do the glass baubles with her, because she’s got very gentle touch. And she smiles while we’re doing it. So we know she’s content and happy to be doing it. We’ll explain all along what colours we’re using and what we’re going to do. Her smile says it all.

We also bring people we support along to the fairs. People love to meet the artists, and it’s important they are there rather than us selling artwork on their behalf. At Gombards, we’ve never wanted the people we support to be segregated. People should feel included in everything that we do, and that’s what we strive to do at Gombards.

⮜ Return to the 2023-24 Annual Report