WAVE in the news
National Lottery Funding!
Challenge Group continues to provide a safe, welcoming weekly space for families raising children with additional needs. Each session offers supported play for children and siblings, and emotional support for parents and carers. The group remains free to attend, ensuring no family is excluded due to financial pressure.
We are delighted to share that Challenge Group, one of our WAVEmakers, have successfully secured National Lottery funding for 3 years. This funding will help sustain the group, cover essential costs, and strengthen the support the group offers to families experiencing isolation, stress, and complex challenges. It has also enabled them to remain open during school holidays — something families have told us is especially valuable, as holidays can often be an intensely isolating time.
Celia, one of the leaders of the Challenge Group, writes, "We are deeply grateful for this support and look forward to building on the group’s impact in the months ahead."
Here is our latest Annual report
Take a look at WAVE’s activity in 2023-2024.
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Co Founder Celia Webster recognised in New Years Honours list
Celia started WAVE’s Challenge Group in Muswell Hill after struggling both to findways for her young daughter with learning disabilities to interact with other children,and to meet parents in the same situation as she was. You can listen to her talkingabout this here.
At the Challenge Group, families support each other throughadjustment to the arrival of a child with additional needs. It provides a friendly, caringand relaxing ‘we’re all valued equally’ environment which parents have described asa lifeline.
Celia says, “I am accepting the award on behalf of the Challenge team and the widerWAVE for Change team and would love for it to encourage people to set up similargroups in more parts of the country”.
Celia has been an integral part of the wider WAVE for Change charity since itsinception 15 years ago. She is passionate about our work, encouraging and enabling places where people of all abilities can mix together as equals in social and/orworship groups.
We are so pleased to see Celia get the recognition she deserves, we are proud to see her and WAVE’s work celebrated and hope this award will inspire others to create more opportunities for mixing tohappen up and down the country.
We’re delighted that the co-founder of WAVE for Change, Celia Webster, has beenawarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours List.
We're featured in
PREACH Magazine
WAVE’s founders Bernice shares her experiences of creating WAVE Church that is inclusive of everybody - as published in Preach magazine, Issue 32 on Disability, www.preachweb.org
We welcome our first patron
Commenting on her announcement as the first Patron of Wave for Change, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dame Sarah Mullally DBE, said:
“Bernice came to see me when I first became Bishop of London and told me of her experience of the challenges of integrating a child with learning disabilities into her community. She spoke passionately of the need to encourage and enable people with and without learning disabilities to mix socially and have fun together in the heart of our communities. That’s why I’m excited to become the first Patron of Wave for Change and become a champion for inclusion and helping people with and without learning disabilities to feel more valued in their community.”
Listen to WAVE co-founder Celia and her daughter Maia discuss the ethos behind WAVE, and how it aims to bring people together, and by doing that help change the way they think and their attitudes.
The Salty Mums Podcast
Celia shares the joys and challenges of parenting a child who has a learning disability. Celia gives a deeply honest and moving account of discovering life was going to take a different path when she discovered Maia’s disability, the isolation of having a child who is “different” at times, but also how much joy Maia has brought to her life.
WAVE on BBC Radio London news