Cameron Opens Norwood Centre
David Cameron drew on his experiences caring for his disabled son Ivan when he officially opened a new Norwood residential centre, which he described as "a model of best practice".
At its capacity, the Ravenswood-based Tager Centre in Berkshire will accommodate 16 autistic adults with high support needs, offering individual flats and private gardens as well as communal spaces to enable interaction. Residents will also be able to benefit from services available to the wider Ravenswood community.
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"Anyone who's had a disabled child or disabled relative knows that one of the biggest worries you have is wondering will there ever be anywhere other than home where they will get the love and the care and the attention and the therapy that they really need? And when you find somewhere like this, where there's not just adults and friends who are going to help look after them, but there also is hydrotherapy and physiotherapy and all the things that can make life so enriched, it really lifts your spirit, and it's wonderful to know that places like this exist.
"In the case of my son, tragically he's not with us anymore so he's never going to grow up, but I'd have loved to have known that there are places like this."
Of the total £2.4m cost of building and equipping the centre, £1m was provided by Romie Tager QC and his sister Dr Helen Tager-Flusberg to commemorate the lives of their late parents, who helped found what later became the Ravenswood Foundation, and their late brother Henry who lived at Ravenswood.
Norwood Chief Executive Norma Brier said: "The centre offers an opportunity for each person with a complex autistic spectrum disability to find their own unique way to define their goals in life and develop ways of reaching them so that their lives are improved and above all enjoyed."
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