Short Break Stories

RNIB Activate

A story by RNIB Scotland

West of Scotland Sailing adventure – In July 2013 10 blind and partially sighted CYP sailed from Oban aboard Alba Volunteer for a 5 day/4 night sailing adventure.  Promoting Independence Summer Camp – Broomlee – This 5 day/4 night residential was attended by 15 YP aged 14-18. The focus was on independent living and transition.

It included workshops on developing confidence, assistive technology, cooking skills, independent travel, personal care, employability, preparation for post-16 transition, outdoor activities and loads of fun!

5 weekly Out of School Clubs :- These have been delivered at Knowetop Primary in North Lanarkshire; Uddingston Grammar School, South Lanarkshire; Aberdeen Visual Impairment Service, Aberdeen City; Darnley Primary School, Glasgow; Eyebeez Club, Hamilton. Each club is regularly attended by 10-15 children.

Family Fun Day (Borders) :- We had an Outdoor Adventure Activity Day for all the family on 2nd November 2013. Attended by 20 children and young people with 15 parents and 8 volunteers. The emphasis was on team building and confidence development. Despite torrential rain all the families had an excellent experience.

RNIB Activate provides a combination of Fun Days, Residential Activity Breaks and Evening Activity Groups to develop confidence and personal independence for blind/partially sighted young people.

Activate aims to improve the health and wellbeing of visually impaired children and young people aged 0-18, increase social and communication skills; encourage leadership development, enhance assistive technology and social media skills and have fun! Carers get a break while such support is delivered and/or receive help and advice and engage with others in the same situation as themselves through peer support opportunities. We engage with a wide range of providers to deliver an imaginative programme thereby promoting disability awareness and wider social inclusion.
Tip 1:
Engage with families at outset to develop a package they want and not what you think they want
Tip 2:
Be flexible and prepare for the Scottish weather when organising activities.
Tip 3:
Listen, reflect, respond and enjoy
West Coast Adventure - July 2013:- We took a group of young people ,with sight loss, on a five day sailing trip from Oban around the Inner Hebrides . All young people improved in their confidence as the week went on and learned a host of sailing, independence and daily living skills.

James, 17 who is totally blind, with a moderate learning difficulty, had never stayed away overnight before. Through regular involvement and group activities he become more open as the week progressed. He joined in with jokes and was keen to discuss politics with another group member. He said no-one had ever let him express his opinions before. At the end of the week he exchanged contact details and now maintains links with other attendees.

Promoting Independence Summer Camp - August 2013 We took 15 blind and partially sighted 14-18 year olds to Broomlee Outdoor Centre in the Borders for 5 days. The purpose of the Summer Camp was to prepare this group at a key transition point in their lives. We worked with them on personal independence; delivered confidence-building workshops; gave advice on personal care; the use of assistive technology; employability skills; post- 1 6 education and cooking skills.

Out of School Clubs - As part of our RNIB Activate initiative, 5 out of school clubs have been supported through Better Breaks funding. 4 school based - at Uddingston Grammar School, Knowetop Primary, Darnley Primary, Aberdeen City Visual Impairment Services. These groups have included the delivery of a wide range of activities such as; Judo, Trampolining, Goalball, Boccia, kayaking, raft-building, sailing, mini zoo, theatre visits, etc.

In addition, RNIB Activates supports a fledgling Visually Impaired Kids Club called Eyebeez supporting 12 children. We fund their activity programme, and regularly attend to engage with participants and their parents. Emphasis is placed on promoting inclusion, increasing confidence and enabling improved motor skills through fun activity and sport

Borders Family Fun Day - 2nd November 2013 Through our initial engagement with CYP and families to establish what they were looking for from RNIB Activate, we were told that many wanted outdoor fun. To facilitate this we ran a Family Event at Broomlee Outdoor Centre which was aimed at 5-16 year old and their families. This was deliberate as we wanted parents to join in the activities, to see their child succeed and for the whole family to have a break.
Many of our parents appreciated the opportunity to have a rest from their caring duties while RNIB Scotland supported their child through our activities. A good example of this is Nathan's family.

Case Study - Nathan -15. Nathan lost his sight completely 2 years ago as a result of a build up of cranial pressure which has also left him with a learning disability and limited attention. He has had a lot of weight gain and finds it hard to stay focused. This meant he needed constant one-to-one support throughout his stay. He also has significant emotional and behavioural difficulties as a consequence of his life-changing experience. Although, Nathan found it hard to fully participate in all activities, showing reluctance to sit in group situations for long, he did manage to join in with Archery and the Flying Fox (much to his delight).

His family has found it hard adjusting to Nathan's condition and the Break allowed them to spend time with his younger siblings. His mum has said that his sister "would just like the old Nathan back". Unfortunately, this will not happen, but by providing such experiences we can assist the family in coping with Nathan and help them achieve some form of respite when things are challenging.
Through RNIB Activate we are able to work alongside a range of organisations. This year we have delivered with Ocean Youth Trust Scotland, Scottish Outdoor Education Centre, Scottish Disability Sport, South Lanarkshire Leisure, Glasgow Life, Adventure Aberdeen, plus numerous other activity providers who have fed into our out of school Clubs.

We have delivered sighted guide training and visual impairment awareness sessions to many of these. We hope this will make it easier for these groups to feel more able to address the needs of CYP living with sight loss in the future.
The whole purpose of RNIB Activate is to not only expand the life experiences of our Children and Young People, but to ensure that families are best able to support the young people in their care.

Our activities aim to enable our CYP; to help them cope with sight loss and to prepare them for independent adulthood. Similarly, we believe firmly that parents/carers need effective and efficient support to create a positive, nurturing home environment. Respite opportunities scaffold this.

Our activities are fun. They allow visually impaired children to come together, provide peer support, try something new and to gain essential life skills. For carers; they can have a break, develop a deeper understanding of sight loss or meet other parents. Our ' menu' allows for all of this to take place.
From the outset, we have engaged with parents/carers and CYP to find out what they want from RNIB Activate. From that we created a package of activities and events that they can attend. For some it may be the regular activities of our Out of school Clubs; for others it is Family Days or Residential weekend breaks.

The CYP themselves told us they want adventure and new experiences, which has led to the Sailing Adventure. For others the desire for greater personal independence has resulted in our fantastic Summer Camp - which is life-changing for many who attended. We evaluate each event, during and after to gauge client satisfaction.

These are either through Log Books, which are dynamic during the Sailing and Summer Camp; or Questionnaires which measure satisfaction. Participants are encouraged to tell us what they would like us to do next.
We are very aware of the role of statutory providers. All our activities are delivered outside of school time or during school holidays, which families greatly appreciate. It gives the children and young people something to do and frees up carers to either rest, concentrate on siblings or if they choose meet other parents with similar challenges at our residential weekends.
We believe we are good at this. The purpose of RNIB Activate is to bring children and young people living with sight loss together with others to develop in confidence, try new activities, and to prepare for independent adult life.

Our Summer Camp focused on personal independence, travel, self confidence, positive approaches to vision impairment, assistive technology, etc, etc. The statutory sector does its best to meet the educational needs of VI learners, however peer situations make this type of individualised preparation easier to do outside of school.
An unexpected challenge was caused by the member of staff responsible for this project being taken into hospital for an operation which was organized after the project commenced. The schedule that we had planned for activities, back in April, had to be changed as there would be not be a member of staff available to lead activities during December and January.

Through a bit of reorganization and pre planning we have now agreed to deliver extra activities between February and March 2014. This will include a Family Day in Inverness and a residential break just in case there is inclement weather at that time of the year.
Using our Education and Family Services database we are able to identify families from across Scotland who may benefit from Activtate or who have been identified to us by self-referral or through statutory partners as needing extra support.

Furthermore, through direct engagement with specialist Teachers of the Visually Impaired, we have been able to reach out to particular young people and children who would benefit from our Breaks and activities programme.
We have planned a Family Fun Day in Aberdeen in March 2014. This will cater for children and young people with Complex Needs as well as a visual impairement, who live in both Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire.

These children will be identified by our database or through direct contact with specialist Teachers of the Visually Impaired in these areas. We will run a Fun Day at a special school, assisted by a number of partners including Teachers, North East Sensory Service, PAMIS, NDCS.

We have also delivered a one day activities workshop for children with sight loss who have additional multiple needs at our centre in Bishopbriggs that support children with learning difficulties and sight loss. The kids attending this centre were referred to the activities workshop.




I have found the partnership with Shared Care Scotland extremely beneficial to the families of visually impaired children right across Scotland. As a national organization our overview of regional children's services has improved considerably as a result of RNIB Activate - which you have funded.

We are connecting more effectively with our families and consequently ensuring they are being well supported. Our families have felt ignored and children were not being provided with access to leisure activities. By creating new opportunities we have been able to enrich CYP's lives and help develop a positive approach to dealing with blindness; amongst the carers and the CYP themselves.

I have also appreciated the flexible approach adopted by Shared Care Scotland as we at times have had to 'tweak' our delivery in response to the needs of children, parental request or geographical challenges.
We are using a variety of techniques to measure impact. On our sailing and Summer Camp, we asked participants to complete a nightly logbook. Staff used this at the end of the day to monitor happiness, strengths and areas that needed focused on the following day. We were then able to target Young People who needed additional input in a dynamic way. At the end of the week were also able to track progress and to gauge effectiveness of delivery. We have also got some new ideas for next year.

All of our Family Fun Days are assessed through questionnaires/post-it boards at the end of the day to measure enjoyment and success of activities and to continue the engagement with Families to see what they are looking for from future events.

Our out of school clubs are monitored on our behalf by group leaders. They regularly report to us how the children enjoy the events we support.

"The relaxation session at the end of the presentations was really good and gave me some good techniques to reduce stress at home."

Service User

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