Short Break Stories

Barnardo's South East Scotland Locality - Disability Services Outdoor Activity Breaks

A story by Barnardo's Scotland

Our project has so far delivered eight activity days, two residential breaks and is in the process of delivering activity days leading up to a third residential break which will take place in February 2014. We are also planning our siblings group break.

One of the groups was planned in conjunction with West Lothian Council through their supplemental funding. We had several young people join us for the day trip element and not the overnights, so the breaks were designed specifically to meet their needs.

The aims of the project are to provide social opportunities to children and young people with disabilities through accessing residential outdoor activity breaks in Wiston Lodge. Parents and carers would receive positive breaks from care through having free time to spend in whichever way they chose during the planned activity days and residential weekend breaks. We aimed to offer these breaks to young people nearing the transition period as well as a group of children and their siblings.
Tip 1:
Ensure that you are offering a service that families want - use every opportunity for consultations including informal feedback from conversations with parents to develop your project plan.
Tip 2:
Be imaginative in planning and listen to the service users for ideas.
Tip 3:
Be creative in service delivery - flexibility is key.
A has attended two day visits so far that are leading up to the residential break early next year. This is the first time that he has had the opportunity to attend an outdoor activity break centre and he has loved the experience so far.

A's mum watched as he marked on the calendar his trip with his friends, and packed his own clothes for the outdoor activities. She described waiting for him to come back from his adventure as an opportunity that she doesn't get to experience much. When A got off the bus he wore a "huge smile" and chatted excitedly all the way home. A told his mum about his favourite activities - "puddle jumping was FANTASTIC!...And spaghetti bolognese was yummy". He can't wait for the residential weekend to come around. A is looking forward to the next adventure and his parents to the stories from it.
Parents who receive the service provided through the outdoor activity breaks do not receive overnight respite, so the project has made a big difference to their family life. A lot of the young people who access the breaks do not have any funded respite so these day trips and overnight stays provide valuable breaks from caring for parents and carers involved.

C has loved the residential breaks. Initially, during our parent consultation, his mum felt C lacked the independence skills to enjoy the residential aspect. Through working with us C, and his mum’s, confidence was raised to allow him to stay overnight, and he has enjoyed every second spent at Wiston Lodge. Mum has thanked staff for “convincing her to try it!” C likes the fact it’s “like the cowboys”. C attends our youth group but receives no other service, so his family would otherwise never have experienced overnight respite.
Our partnership with Wiston Lodge has led to us sharing skills and learning with their staff group. For example, some of the instructors have been learning sign language some of our children use. In advance to our groups attending we send profiles of the young people to allow staff to learn their likes and dislikes. Through discussions with our staff the instructors provide ideas to offer choices of activities to the young people that are suited to their needs.

The instructors are now more confident with supporting our young people. N has really enjoyed “trying new things” and with support from the instructors she was able to achieve things like climbing the pole, despite being afraid of heights. Her mum could not believe it, but said “she had a really good time and is very keen to go back”. Staff are keen to work more with us in the future.
The funding has allowed us to provide positive outcomes for the families and children who received the breaks, through offering social opportunities and activities to the young people, and significant breaks from care for parents and carers.

We have had an overwhelmingly positive response from all families involved in the project, and the staff and instructors have had a fantastic time watching the young people learn new skills, experience new things and making new friendships during their visits to Wiston Lodge.
We aim to offer choice through every stage of the project, from planning to delivery. We plan the breaks alongside families and make sure we can meet their needs in doing so - for example, some families have only accessed day trips rather than residential breaks as it suited them better.

We also personalise each break to the likes and dislikes, needs and abilities of the groups attending, which means that every visit is different as they decide what they want to do when there. This is the case down to the meals that they eat - dietary requirements and preferences are fully catered for. The more involved the young people are in the planning, the more they enjoy their time at Wiston Lodge.
Families who have been accessing our activity break project do not normally receive funded overnight respite. This funding has allowed us to offer them the opportunity to have breaks from care that they would never have been able to access without it.
The funding has given young people the opportunity to attend breaks that have helped them to grow in confidence, learn new skills and take part in new activities. They have shared experiences with friends and gained stories and memories to share with their families.
We came across several different challenges in the form of families unable to take up places at the last minute which meant we had to make changes to groups and invite other young people along to ensure the opportunity went to use. We have also had to make changes to plans due to adverse weather conditions meaning that groups had to leave early or be cancelled rather than risk being snowed in. Every visit brings unanticipated benefits through each young person building achievements in their own way.
We targetted families with young people nearing the age of transition, mainly those who access our youth group which is a non respite service. We knew from consultation that transition can be a difficult time, and also that many of these families receive no other funded respite and therefore were grateful for the opportunity.

Through our joint planning with West Lothian Council and their matched funding we were able to offer the opportunity to some families who were not previously known to us. We are continuing to work on a strategy to ensure we can do this further in future breaks.
Every young person who attended the break has multiple support needs in the form of learning disability, Autism, visual impairment, hearing impairment, physical disability or behavioural needs. Our service users all meet the above criteria as we are a disability service provider.
We are incredibly grateful for the funding that we have received that has allowed us to plan and deliver the outdoor activity breaks with Wiston Lodge.

We would like to thank Shared Care Scotland for their support throughout the planning and application process and for allowing us to be part of the lucky group of successfully funded organisations. The positive experiences that our families and young people have shared are down to this fund, and many people have benefited as a result.
Every visit to Wiston Lodge is evaluated by the young people who attended in a diary sheet format so that they can self evaluate about what they have learnt along with describing what they did. We have tried different ways to further evaluate, including inviting parents to attend a family day at Wiston Lodge, consultation evenings with our youth group and their parents, and a creative session with young people. In this session we used photographs of previous trips to talk about memories, discuss favourite activities and what they liked and disliked, and they chose pictures for an album to show others about what to expect from future breaks.