PUPILS and staff at St Paul’s Primary School in Beechmount have raised a whopping £3,000 for AutismNI by participating in Superhero Week during Autism Awareness Month.
 
Handing over the cheque, Key Stage Two Autisim Specific Class teacher, Mrs Róisín McNeill said that she was completely overwhelmed by the generosity of the school community.
 
Speaking to the Andersonstown News, she said: “We took part in Superhero Week in aid of AutismNI which formed part of Autism Awareness Month.
 
“We decided to participate as it is a charity that is close to our hearts and close to the hearts of the community as well. You don’t realise how many people are affected by or know someone who is affected by autism.
 
“We were blown away by the response to this fundraising effort. The children loved it and the fact that they were dressing up as superheroes tied in with our message that autism isn’t something that shouldn’t be spoken about.
 
“It is something that should be accepted and it is something to be proud of as it is part of these children’s identity.”
 
St Paul’s Primary School have recently established two Autism Specific Classes for Key Stage One and Two. These classes allow children on the autism spectrum who would have difficulty in a mainstream setting to remain at the school by providing a tailored space that is safe and nurturing for their needs.
 
Explaining the need for these classes, principal Sean McNamee said: “This year we started to offer autism specialist classes within St Paul’s. There is no other provision in West Belfast and we had typically been bussing children across town to attend specialist classes when mainstream schools haven’t been most appropriate for them.
 
“The classes have up to eight children with three adults. There is a lot of intensive support. As well as that, it allows them to be in a mainstream setting and allows them to be included in other classes Covid permitting.
 
“This also means that these children can prepare for the sacraments with the other children, they can take part in assemblies and such but their needs are met within small group sizes.
 
“The other thing is, this allows us to develop our own expertise within the school and support other children who have autistic traits within classes and who are coping in mainstream education. It allows us to offer additional support to our staff and those children as well.”

Thanking the school for their fundraising efforts, Rachel Gribben from AutismNI added: “This money means such a great deal for us. It has been such a difficult time for charities and during the pandemic the autism community have found it quite difficult and quite challenging so our services have been needed more than ever.
 
“But unfortunately we couldn’t do as much fundraising as we had hoped and a lot of our events got cancelled. This money means a great deal to us and will mean that we can continue to provide our services to the autism community across Northern Ireland.”