THE CHRISTMAS SHOP
the most important gift you’ll buy this Christmas
This year you could send gifts that will truly make someone’s day. Provide vital support for children and adults with physical and learning disabilities, and their families.
How it works:
Browse the online catalogue below
Choose items to buy as gifts and add to your cart
We will post you a gift card for each item purchased, each with an insert explaining the gift
Write your message in the card, and gift to your intended recipient
Your donation will support the project you have chosen - providing real life support to someone who needs it
Feel festive and warm inside - you’ve done a great thing!
A special childhood
You could give the gift of childhood.
Diverse Abilities provides 24-hour respite care for children with incredibly profound disabilities, a lifeline for Mum and Dad to give them rest and a vital night's sleep.
Buying this gift will help children with profound disabilities feel special, with all the sensory play and pampering they deserve at their sleepover.
All children love to play games, but for children with profound disabilities this is taken away.
Buying this gift will deliver a sensory sport session, giving an incredible child a chance to play sport, and receive all the benefits that comes with it. This gift will enable their parents to see their child engage a sport such as football or tennis, something they never envisioned happening.
Siblings of children with disabilities can feel very isolated, due to their caring responsibilities, the anxieties of having a poorly siblings and facing difficulties that their peers do not have to face.
Our STARS siblings group supports siblings through these difficulties, helping them process their challenges, form friendships and develop the skills they need to cope.
Buying this gift, you will be giving an incredible sibling the support that they need.
Diverse Abilities runs a club for babies and toddlers recently diagnosed with disabilities, to support parents as they process their new reality and to learn how to sensory and communication approaches to engage their children. The sessions are led by an experienced special educational needs teacher and attended by therapy staff.
Your donation could pay for a family to access a session of this – helping them feel less alone and able to support their young child’s needs.
Lifelong support
Once people with disabilities turn 18 much of the support they have been able to access simply stops, many families describe it as falling off a cliff edge. Your Christmas gift could fund Diverse Abilities’ provision of therapy and activities for adults with disabilities, part of the charity’s aim to provide a lifetime of support.
The physical and emotional benefits of exercise are well known, but very hard for people with physical and learning disabilities to access.
Buying this gift will bring people health to someone with profound disability in a fun and upbeat way that is truly enriching, through funding an accessible Zumba session.
Nearly half of adults with a learning disability experience mental health problems in their life (source NICE). One of the approaches used by Diverse Abilities to tackle this is providing meaningful time outdoors.
Buying this gift will give someone a day in nature, engaged in gardening raised beds in a beautiful kitchen garden in rural Dorset. The satisfaction and joy gained through this gift will not only bring emotional wellbeing but also through digging, lifting and handling tools important physical benefits too.
Cooking is not only a life skill, but a joy. For people who cannot ordinarily access kitchens, Diverse Abilities operates a specially built adaptive kitchen, where every surface can be adjusted to fit any height wheelchair.
By buying this gift, you will provide someone a cookery and nutrition session in this specialist kitchen, for an adult with physical and learning disabilities to enjoy cooking and to develop skills. Maybe they’ll even cook a Christmas meal for their family one day.
Christmas wishes
Christmas is such a special time, but the pressures and cost can mean enjoying traditions and making family memories can feel impossible for families who must also provide care for someone with profound physical and learning disabilities.
Diverse Abilities works hard at Christmas to deliver fun and memories for these incredibly families.
Children with disabilities should be able to access the same childhood activities and experience that other children their age enjoy - taking a child to visit Santa is one such magical experience. But for children with severe learning disabilities and neurodiversity it can be overwhelming.
By buying this gift you can give a child a Santa visit to remember. Hosted in a setting they know, with a dedicated time slot, no queues or noises and special elves who know each child, the experience will be magical. The child will receive a gift specially chosen for them, and the family will have a photo to treasure.
Ice skating is a magical childhood experience.
Buying this gift will enable a child with physical and learning disabilities experience the wonder of the ice, with a dedicated support worker helping them whether they are on ice skates or on the ice in a wheelchair. This gift not only gives the child an amazing festive experience, but also respite for their family – especially valuable in the busy lead-up to Christmas.
Exciting days out in the lead up to Christmas, and the building excitement, form such special Christmas memories for families.
This gift will fund a special Christmas Eve for a family at our Treehouse family centre. Our staff will create a magical day including entertainers and Christmas crafts and games for the whole family to enjoy, giving families a day out free from worries and supported to enjoy festive activities together. The incredible children and families we support deserve a truly special Christmas.
Your gift will make sure an adult with disabilities isn’t lonely this Christmas.
This donation will ensure that they have a support worker with them throughout Christmas Day, and overnight too, keeping them safe and making sure their Christmas is a special as they deserve.
Attending the Panto is expensive and difficult for adults supported by Diverse Abilities, with special transport arrangements and carer costs.
Through buying this gift you will put a huge smile on the face of someone with physical and learning disabilities, as the gift will cover the costs involved in making a Pantomime accessible. It’s behind you!
Can’t decide? Want to make a bigger impact?
Your generous support this Christmas will help across all the projects on this page; providing vital respite care, creating sensory sport sessions for children at Langside School, supporting the mental health of SEN siblings, bringing support to families facing a new world, creating fun and upbeat exercise sessions at The Beehive, allowing adults with disabilities to enjoy time outdoors, teaching cooking skills, helping us host a specialised Santa’s Grotto, make memories for families on Christmas Eve, allow adults to socialise together over a hot and tasty meal, enable children to go ice skating, adults to go to the panto, and provide 24 hour care throughout the festive period.
Everyone we support we be so truly thankful for this gift this year, it will make a huge difference for all our specialised services, and we cannot thank you enough.
Your donation will be used to provide vital care through directly funding Diverse Abilities’ work.