A passport to the community | 1 year on at Lakeside School

In October 2017, Lakeside School in Welwyn Garden City received a new specially adapted Lord's Taverners minibus, thanks to £15,000 raised at that the 2017 Game Fair. The new 16-seat wheelchair accessible minibus has opened up the local community to pupils at the school, and we have been back to see the impact this minibus has had over the past year.

Please watch the film below that highlights the difference Lakeside's minibus has had on the school.

Lakeside School caters for 70 young people aged 2-19 with severe, profound and multiple learning difficulties, and autism. Approximately a third of the school’s pupils have significant disabilities with 20 being wheelchair users.

Headteacher Lynette Johnson said: "We certainly can’t access public transport with our young people, so if we want to go anywhere we’ve got to use our tail lift and we need our own specific transport, so it is the difference. It’s so important that they access their community, we are absolutely driven to get them out there and doing some work experience and getting the community to see them and accept them for who they are.

We are so grateful to the Lord’s Taverners. We wouldn’t be able to afford a minibus of that specification if we were just paying for it as a school ourselves – we don’t have that sort of funding. They can be absolutely certain that they have made a real difference to these young people’s lives."