Testimonials

Hello everyone, my name is Leah and I just wanted to talk about Extra Time which is a club that I’ve been working at for 17 years now and I still love it as if it was my first year. It is a club for children and young adults with special needs to socialise and make friends. It’s a great environment to have loads of fun and we are doing so many great activities like art, sports, cooking and many more. We all love going out on trips and having fresh air and seeing different environments. We love going for picnics where everyone has so much fun and it’s great to be silly making loads of funny faces and jokes, getting fresh air and exercise.

All of my colleagues are amazing, we love being with the children and young adults as we learn from them as much as they learn from us. If we are low the children and young adults will cheer us up. They don’t need to do a lot to cheer us up, all we have to do is go and see them and they will give you that smile that warms everything and makes everything feel better. We are rewarded with beaming smiles from them.

We are a club which is funded purely as a charity so parents and carers can have quality time alone knowing their children or young adults will be cared for and having fun at Extra Time. We are open every afternoon Monday to Friday. We are also open in all the holidays apart from Christmas. In the holidays we have so much fun and we will go on long outings and trips to different places. It could be anything from just going outside for fresh air or somewhere like swimming or bowling which all of us love. It is a great environment to have fun, make friends, have lots of company, stimulate and be stimulated. But mainly we as staff and our fabulous children and young adults enjoy laughing and joking and getting to know each other, learning to understand each other and for us to connect with them as individuals and as a group to help them and make them grow and be happy.

Like I said I’ve been there for 17 years and I still love it. I don’t think I’ll ever leave because the children, young adults and all my colleagues make me happy, make me laugh and they give me so much joy. I just hope I give these things back in equal quantities.

I love Extra Time. Please support us. Thank you.

Leah Elkin