Big Kids Club
A story by Cornerstone
Cornerstone’s Big Kids Club will provide carers with short breaks throughout the school holidays by operating holiday clubs for young people with multiple support needs.
These clubs will run for a total of five weeks throughout the year and will provide young people with the opportunity to take part in fun activities and socialize with their peers, while the carer has a break.
What Big Kids Club did
The children we have supported in the Playscheme have had much more choice in the activities that have been provided through informed consultation prior to the playscheme. These activities have then been incorporated to our activity planner and sent to all children and families in advance so that they have been able to select from a wider range of more challenging and fun activities.
Parents have enjoyed the fact that multiple choices are available to their children each day to support all the various ability, interests and needs and the variety of activities has been much broader. Parents have enjoyed having the extended hours to be able to enjoy quality time with other family members or just to have time to themselves knowing that their children are safe and being supported to have new challenges and experiences.
What Cornerstone has learned
We have realised the importance of involving children and parents/carers to ensure that the activities, times and format of the sessions are what they need to enable us to deliver an effective service which meets everyone's needs. One of the major issues we have is to ensure that everyone who wants to take part is able to do so and this takes careful planning well in advance.
We have managed to ensure everyone who registered for the Playscheme had several sessions either for full days or half days depending on what they wanted and their care needs. We have learned that a longer day would give us the opportunity for more adventurous activities and this is what we will aim for in 2015/16