CCPS - Chanctonbury Community Playscheme for special needs children

1977:  thirty-five years ago, near Chanctonbury Ring in West Sussex. In a quiet corner of a quiet town, a very special group of people realised that there was - and still is - a desperate need for fun, safe respite care for people with special needs. As this group was primarily made up of mothers who had children with mental and physical disabilities, they knew exactly what their children and others like them needed. These people went on to start the summer holiday play scheme known as CCPS. 

The children and volunteers
play parachute games in
the drama room.

Since that day, many other people have joined the organisation, mostly as volunteers and often devoting many, many years to working with children with special needs. The charity has grown from strength to strength and now runs for four weeks every summer holiday for approximately 70 children every day.


These children, who range in age from 5 to 19 years old, have a diverse range of complex needs. These include well-known conditions like Autism, Cerebral Palsy, ADHD or Downs Syndrome as well individuals with Profound Multiple Learning Difficulties or
undiagnosed disorders.

Kariss's superhuman ability to fit
into 'age 2' clothing!

Every year we rely on a core of people who organise and support the play scheme as well as a group of team leaders and a huge amount of volunteers from local schools. Many team leaders started out with CCPS at 15 as volunteers and came to love helping these special children; many have even ended up as teachers and teaching assistants. We are also extremely thankful to the dedication of a fleet of bus drivers who transport most of our children and some of the volunteers to and from play scheme every day.

Each special needs child has a volunteer 'buddy' for the day and can choose a range of in house activities such as trampolining, arts and crafts, sports and games, sensory play, swimming, playing in the ball pool, soft play area or light room, competitions and themed activities. We also provide trips out into the community such as horse-riding, bowling, go-karting and more unusual activities like power-boats rides, a trip to the funfair and archery. We aim for every child to have at least one trip out during their time with us and for some of these children it is an important time for them to be out in their community with their peers, something they may rarely have experienced.

Daisy learns archery

As you probably know, it is getting more and more difficult to obtain adequate funding for individuals with special needs. Chanctonbury Community PlayScheme is a vital and vibrant part of these children's lives: they look forward to it throughout the year and make friends for life. Those supporting the children do too! My brother and his wife both volunteered for CCPS: they met there and now have two beautiful children (yes I am biased!). So I feel an obligation to help this charity continue its good work, hopefully far into the future past when I can volunteer my summer holidays, and a group of team leaders and I want to raise money for our play scheme. With this money we would be able to update play equipment, buy or rent new supplies for in house activities (we've gotten very excited about sensory environments!) and maybe even buy a minibus to ease our difficulties with transportation.

But we did not want to ask you to donate your money for a usual fundraising event; we wanted to capture your attention and enthusiasm with something that would push our dedication and our bodies to the limits. We signed up for Tough Mudder, a twelve mile army-style assault course incorporating fire, ice, water, heights, tunnels, electricity and an awful lot of mud! We hope that we can inspire you to sponsor us, even if it is just in order to give us horrifying tests (like our swim in the sea). We have already raised £471 and we still have 125 days to go. 

Hoping to hear from you or see you on Facebook or Twitter or you can dive straight in at our JustGiving site! 


EDIT: I apologise for the poor quality/ boring nature of the pictures I have used here. As this is not    promotional material for CCPS itself but rather a fundraising blog I want to obtain parental permission before using photographs that feature the children. This means a lack of cute photos of them all having fun (and we have a lot of beautiful photos!) but I do have an awful lot of photographs of the teamleaders looking bad which I am free to share with you. Message me below if you want to see embarassing shots of the TeamCCPS ToughMudder members and our friends!