Discovering the unknown

When Angie Anderson, Service Manager of FitzRoy Silver Birches in Richmond, realised that the four young men she supports had never been to the rugby at Twickenham just a stone’s throw from their home she wanted to make it happen.

We were all a little wary of taking Adam, Rothko, Omid and Joseph to a noisy event like the rugby. Some of them are on the autistic spectrum, and some have epilepsy, so we weren’t sure what problems we might run into. However we thought we would give it a try, because if we never went, we would never know.

I contacted the Rugby Football Union hoping we could get some free tickets to go, and they sent us eight tickets for the England V France match. We organised a boys night out, which included getting individual support for each of them.

Everything went off without a hitch. They all went out for dinner before kick-off at 8pm, and didn’t return till gone 11pm! Everyone had a fantastic time and thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and food. Now we know it was a success, we can plan to do something like this again in the future.