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TEENfest
Our residential weekend events for unaccompanied teenagers with TS aged 14-17 years old.
TEENfest 2024
What is TEENfest?
TEENfest offers the chance for teens with TS to meet other teens for a weekend of making friends, mutual support and fun. Many young people with TS have never met anyone else with tics so can often feel alone, isolated and mis-understood. This is an ideal opportunity to really connect with their peers which can help build self esteem and confidence.
Venue
TEENfest Ferny Croft, 21-23 June 2024
Brockenhurst, New Forest
We return to the New Forest and the wonderful Ferny Croft Centre near Beaulieu, Dorset. The weekend will include hours of fun activities plus karaoke, campfires and a pizza-party! Open to TS youngsters aged 14-17 years. This is an unaccompanied weekend for teens only.
REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED FOR 2024
Our previous TEENfest events have been hugely succesful and life-changing for both attendees and their families. One parent wrote to us to say:
‘It was very emotional leaving him at the event. I could see how relaxed he felt just being himself and not trying to supress his tics. It was amazing and overwhelming seeing him with other people his own age. As a parent you just want your child to be happy and he was. These events are a lifeline in more ways than you can ever know. They provide safe fun weekends, friendships, the opportunity to try new things, the chance to be away from family, making decisions on their own. For family members it gives respite but it also gave me hope that he can be accepted into a social setting. I can't thank you enough’.
You can read what our young people take away from their weekend in these amazing blogs:
- TEENfest 2023 by Samuel Boyes
- Charley Matthews talks about her empowering experience at TeenFest, and why her tics volunteered her to do the washing up!
Read this summary from TEENfest 2018 by Pippa, who hosted the event with her colleague, Emma:
Please note that these events are for unnacompanied teenagers. Staff from Tourettes Action will facilitate the weekend event, and on-site activities will be fully supervised by venue instructors.
Terms and conditions
All participants must have a diagnosis of Tourette Syndrome and be aged between 14 - 17 years old.
The cost of attending a TEENfest event is £50 per teen, and will include accomodation, activities and all meals during the weekend.
Please contact us if you have concerns regarding payment as we want to make these events as inclusive as possible.
We understand that participants may wish to keep in contact through social media. We encourage continued friendship and support networks, and advise that both young people and parents read our Top Tips for maintaining safety and wellbeing on social media (right hand side).
Participant selection process and order of priority for allocation:
- As there are significant numbers of people that want to attend ‘Fest’ events, this demand outstrips supply. As a result of this, and to make sure new people can experience the ‘Fest’ events, the Event Manager will oversee a selection process, and will subsequently select participants for each ‘Fest’ event based on the order of priority (below). The objective is to try and have an event with 80% of first-time participants and 20% of returning participants
- Once names are received from the online booking process the Event Manager, as they go through the selection process, must check names against the charity’s ‘blacklist’ of those who have been banned from attending TA events
- Proof of TS diagnosis/awaiting diagnosis will be requested as part of the booking process and will involve the person booking uploading an image in .png or .jpeg format of the diagnosis letter or other correspondence that confirms diagnosis or clinic/service that they are awaiting a diagnosis from
- First time participants at a given ‘Fest’ with TS diagnosis that are on the ‘Fest’ waiting list from a prior year
- First time participants at a given ‘Fest’ with TS diagnosis
- Second time participants at a given ‘Fest’ with TS diagnosis
- People waiting for their formal diagnosis
- They will be asked on booking form to share the clinic/service that they are awaiting the formal diagnosis from
- Ballot to allocate remaining places at random.This ballot will utilise an online name selector that can select names at random from a list uploaded to the software. This provides a quick and fair way of selecting the remaining participants and removes human involvement from the process
- For example, someone who has attended a TICFest before, but has not attended a TEENFest would be considered a first-time attendee for their first TEENFest. An example online name selector - https://commentpicker.com/random-name-picker.php
