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We desperately need to expand our premises to accommodate the huge demand for Touch Trust sessions for the prfoundly disabled, those with autism and challenging behaviour etc. We have premises available, we just need the means to pay for them over a three year period and to equip them properly.
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Touch Trust is ten years old and has been based at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay since the autumn of 2004. We run daily creative movement sessions in our purpose-built sensory room for adults and children with profound and multiple disabilities, autism and behaviour that challenges aiming to aid relaxation, energy, self-esteem, happiness and wellbeing. We use gentle massage, music, dance and movement together with light, colour and fragrance to stimulate all the senses. When we first came to the Millennium Centre, we hoped to run five sessions per week but such is the demand for our sessions (gained via word-of-mouth) that we now run at least five sessions per day and demand for more is constant. We are extending our work into evenings and weekends to meet the demand and we are including families with disabled foster children and very young brain damaged babies in our programme who seem to thrive and improve in our sessions even though some of them have been given devastating prognoses. The latter group has led to us developing an impromptu support group for parents who find great comfort from meeting other parents in similar situations to their own. We desperately want to expand our premises so that we can meet this huge demand. The Wales Millennium Centre is due to redevelop some of its spaces and we have put forward proposals for creating extra fully equipped sensory rooms where we can run extra sessions and extend our work. All that stands between us and realising this dream is a lack of funds. With £250,000 we could lease the extra space for three years, equip it for our special guests and train and employ more Touch Trust staff. Our plans for this space include not only sessions for the groups already mentioned, but also for elderly people with dementia and Parkinsons disease and anyone who would benefit from relaxation or from raising their levels of happiness and self-esteem.