The idea was born in 2016 from Stephanie Wheen’s work as a children’s physiotherapist in Bristol. With her sessions fully booked, she tried to get disabled children to do more physical activity in the community but said poor access, attitudes and equipment that was the wrong size meant children’s needs were not being met. “It was completely heartbreaking because these children need exercise more than anyone,” Wheen said.
Research by the charity Scope found half of UK playgrounds are not accessible for disabled children, and children with disabilities are twice as likely to be obese as non-disabled children. Wheen and a team of volunteers began running pop-up play sessions in Send schools, bringing in three lorries of specialist equipment. Some children walked, held themselves upright or rolled over independently for the first time. Families travelled up to eight hours to attend, and Wheen said the pop-ups had a thousand visitors in the first four weeks.
Proving high demand, the charity bought a 60-year-old former service station by the Severn Bridge, north-west of Bristol, using a £2.2m loan. Over £10m has been raised to finish the project, with £400,000 still needed. The centre, on a 4,000 square metre site, took three years to design and will have 10 spaces including a music room, gym, trampoline and climbing area, dark and light sensory rooms, and a fully accessible outdoor play park.
“Playgrounds are notoriously not inclusive,” said Fran Garland, chief operating officer. “You see people sat in wheelchairs watching their siblings … waiting for them to come back.” The two-storey soft play area with a slide has two hoist systems making it fully accessible for wheelchair users. A party room will have DJ equipment that can be controlled by eye-gaze technology. There will be a cafe, a shop selling nappies and feeding tubes, and a lending library for equipment.
Families will be able to book sessions based on their child’s needs: Butterfly for complex medical needs, Leopard for sensory needs, and Gorilla for those who find socialising challenging. Parents said the centre would be life-changing. Bethan Campbell-Watkins, whose five-year-old daughter Malaya has autism and learning difficulties, said she struggles to take her to regular play areas. “People stare when she’s dysregulated … saying things like ‘Why can’t you control your child?’ She also has no safety awareness and places often aren’t secure. So I’m not exaggerating when I say Gympanzees is life-changing for families like us.”
Kelly Cotter’s son Adam, 15, is non-verbal and uses a wheelchair. As he grew older, she could no longer manoeuvre him at play areas. “We’ve always just tried to give him the best life chances … our choices became very narrow, and then they didn’t exist. So the size of this is just mind-boggling.”
Once open in spring, Wheen expects up to 200,000 visitors a year. She wants to open 12 more centres across the country. “We want every child to be within an hour of Gympanzees. It is unacceptable, really, that this is the situation – what other child has to travel so far just to play?”