Short Break Stories

Wowee Zowee

A story by Action For Children

Children who do not regular access overnight respite care have been offered a range of outward bound type experiences to build confidence, self esteem and self image whilst giving main carers a short break.

Youngsters who have had significantly more sheltered lives are now taking part in high quality, high value activites with an increase in their own feelings of achievement and self belief. Families are experience meaningful support which is not in the traditional manner of over night residential care.

Reduce the impact of disability and meet parent's needs to allow their children to access meaningful main stream opportunities thus diminishing the true impact of the disability. Build capacity within mainstream services to support inclusively disabled children.
Tip 1:
You need to be ready to go, to have a vision, to wish to bring about change and be committed to changing the face of short care breaks.
Tip 2:
Be prepared for a major increase in your workload and have a plan to address this, either through good local support or by good time management.
Tip 3:
Getting staff in place quickly is a major challenge. It may take up to three months to employ a new member of staff and this is a challenge when you receive word in March and are expected to start in April. Speak to HR in plenty of time.
Small friendship or potential friendship groups have been participating in a range of outward bound type activities. This has raised confidence. It has increased self-esteem for each young person taking part. The outcome has been higher aspirations for our youngsters and their families. Young people have involved in having their views heard and have helped to plan the range of activities on offer. Spending time outwith traditional disability services has encouraged our youngsters to feel better about their lives and their part in society. Individually planned this has meant that our young people have had fun, been excited and feel rewarded.

Case Study Jim had been having problems at school. There appeared to be a downward and self fulfilling role of issue after issue which meant suspension and the inevitability of exclusion. Home life was following a similar path and tensions were rising. Jim fell between stools, other youngsters scored higher to access residential support whilst his behaviour driven by ADHD proved challenging to mainstream support. Jim has been supported by Wowee Zowee to work in a small group of four and to go to a wall climbing activity for a number of weeks. He has found a positive way to channel his energy and discovered that concentration can at times be a good thing! He has seen himself achieve on his own terms and has a real sense of self achievement. He has demonstrated the ability to build up positive relationships with the staff team. Last session he pushed himself forward to assist and chum a young person who was struggling with some aspects of the activity. Jim spent his time with this other child supporting him and encouraging him. It was lovely to see and shows how far Jim has developed in the short time we have been supporting him.
A major issue around disability is that parents feel that they are not so able as others to provide the same opportunities as others. Parents feel that their children don't access the same activities as their neighbour's children. We have addressed this feeling by ensuring that our youngsters are going to a mainstream resource that any child would be enjoy.

Case Study: Ben's mum felt he went to a club every fortnight but in a year had been out only twice and both times were to visit a local shop and buy a packet of his favourite crisps. Mum felt the horizons were limited and expectations low. Since attending our Better Breaks funded provision he has been off climbing walls, swimming, tobogganing and is soon to go horse riding. Mum feels she is seeing her son get the same chances as everyone else and is more content in her role as a parent.
Parents felt their life was defined by their child's disability. Every six weks or so they would organise a part of thier life around an overnight respite break. Their friends didn't do this. It was artificial and produced it's own stress. Our parents admitted that sometimes respite just wasn't worth it. The told us the impact this could have on their other children as well.

Wowee Zowee has demonstrated a more mainstream type of break. Carers see their child head off once a week to a valued fun activity, similar to their siblings going off to Cubs or Brownies. It has a natural rhythm which fits better with the stress and joys of real life. Parents have said it feels good.

Case Study. Knowing that her child is off each Tuesday night to his Better Breaks funded ski-ing activity has allowed Tina to arrange to spend more regular quality time with her other son. This has helped this relationship tremendously as it builds week on week rather than happening once every six weeks when everyone is too exhausted anyway.
Our provision works in partnership with colleagues from the Council's Outdoor Leisure Resource . They had little practice of working with youngster's with a disability until we began working together. Now their staff have demonstrated that their skills work well with our kids whilst, not arriving from a disability perspective, they have higher expectations of our kids. All round then this has been and continues to be a win win situation.
The impact of disability is reduced. Parents have better outcomes and feel more supported in a way which makes sense to them. Opportunities have expanded and the youngsters self belief and self esteem has developed.
Our youngsters were involved in planning the programme and have been involved in directing the programme to meet their likes and wishes. Youngsters have demonstrated that short breaks can fit a different model to the traditional overnight one. More asks are coming our way for outreach only bespoke provision. This has been a remarkable change and one that continues to demonstrate our commitment to listen to our children and thier parents.
Statutory short break provision is based on a residential model. This is not such a model.
Self esteem, self image and self belief has all grown inour youngsters. There are more smiles, laughs and chats than before. Our youngsters are building up a valued bank of good childhood memories which will have a lovely impact in later life.
Major challenge has been the logistics of running a widening range of services to a good quality whilst introducing new ways of working and a significant change programme. In other words doing it all. The workload continues to grow , for example we know have a 9 month report to do, whilst we still work flat out to run two 356, 24/7 services and introduce new models of support. These models take time to introduce to parents. children and staff. Having a staff pool that is flexible enough to accommodate te need to run new services within weeks of getting an award is a challenge. Finding the time to evaluate properly is a challenge.
We asked Social Work to re-visit families who had not been accepted for overnight care through the referral group and to give us names of other families who were awaiting a service but who wouldn't necessarily require an overnight one. As culture changed and this way of supporting families became better known more and more referrals and requests for outreach type support came our way.
We only work with youngstes who have multiple support needs. We support youngsters with complex health issues, with behaviour issues and with significant communication disabilities.
The Better Breaks fund has helped to completely change the face of respite care and we are grateful for their funding without which we would have struggled to make much progress. The fund has been innovative and really gone out of it's way to be inclusive, involving and inspiring.

We have really enjoyed working with the Shared Care Scotland team. It would be nice if the early attitude of allowing folk to get on with it could be maintained in face of a growing requirement for more reports, more evaluation and more paperwork.
Staff are tasked with capturing as much soft indicators as possible and writing this up as well as taking pictures and discussiong withparents the difference made. We are seeing a change in the type of support being asked for and this re-assures us that we are achieving the goals we set out to realise.