Short Break Stories

The Yard Youth Clubs

A story by The Yard Adventure Centre

We have delivered three Fun and Friendship Youth Clubs every week enabling 37 young people aged 12-18 with additional support needs to attend a weekly social club.

The Clubs ran Monday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings as planned and enabled young people to attend a weekly social experience independently of their parents/carers and enjoy building friendships and new fun activities.

At the same time, their parents enjoyed the regular break from their caring responsibilities and had the opportunity to spend quality time with their partners, friends, or with their other children.

The Aim of our project was to deliver three Fun and Friendship Youth Clubs each week which focused on supporting 36 young people aged 12-18 with additional support needs .

The Clubs were to run every Monday. Tuesday and Thursday evenings 50 weeks of the year and would have the dual benefit of providing much needed social and development opportunities for the young people attending, whilst giving their parents and family a much needed break and time to themselves.
Tip 1:
Be responsive to the needs of the group. Originally we envisaged a maximum of 12 young people in each Club, however we need to adapt this based on the needs of the individuals within the Club.

We are intending to expand the number of young people in our girls club from January 2014 from 12 to 14 girls as the needs of the group allow us to increase the numbers without changing the group dynamic.
Tip 2:
Build strong relationships with the parents,carers of the young people who attend. Keeping regular contact and providing informal feedback at the start and end of our Club nights helps the parents build confidence in the service and the staff involved.

Sharing information and tactics with the parents/carers is so valuable to the staff's ability to provide consistency for each young person and also hear their suggestions on what they would like moving forward.

We also asked parents to feedback more formally twice a year and that helps ensure that we are able to listen to feedback and implement any suggested changes within a short time frame.
Tip 3:
Consulting with the young people about ideas and activities and getting them to take a lead in the planned activities. This provides a feeling of ownership which not only makes the activities run smoother, but helps the young people build in confidence and self esteem.

The young people at The Yard feel real pride and ownership in their Clubs and feel actively consulted and a part of the decision making process. This also helps build a stronger working relationship between the young people and the staff and volunteer team.
Our Clubs continue to deliver a wide programme of activities in each of the three clubs which are fun and stimulating. Over the past 9 months we have once again consulted with the young people to ascertain some of the activities that they would like to be involved in. We have continued to run many of the popular external trips such as cinema visits, bowling, meals out, ceramics workshop visit and swimming.

In addition, in house we have had karaoke nights, den building, lantern making, archery, pendulum art, barbecues and camp fires, zumba nights, discos, baking nights to name just a few. Over the summer the clubs also enjoyed new experiences. The young people enjoyed a hot tub experience with mocktails in our solar dome one week, a therapy night and a visit from Edinburgh Leisure who gave a healthy lifestyle talk.

Some of the feedback that the young people have given us is: they love The Yard as they get to see all their friends and the staff. Others stated that it is great to have their own club like their brothers/sisters. Parents have informed us that their children are more social and confident as a result of being able to access our regular clubs.
We know anecdotally and also through more formal questionnaires responses that our parents are so grateful for the ongoing support that they receive from having access to regular respite.

Importantly for parents, they are also more relaxed as they know that their children are safe and happy and that they trust the staff team at The Yard to deal with any situations that may arise in a professional way.

Some of the direct quotes from parents are; 'I have enjoyed some much needed respite', ' Sometimes money is going to waste, but this money is working because, when I drop my son at The Yard, after that I have no worries, this is my relaxing time.',

'It has given me time to spend with my younger son, and other members of the family', ' I can relax knowing that my son is enjoying interaction with others outside our family in a safe environment where activities and supervision will be appropriate to his stage of development. I also get the time to spend quality time with other family members'.
The funding received has resulted in positive outcomes for the young people involved as well as those who care for them. We recently asked families to rate their child's experience at the club from Excellent through to Unsatisfactory. Of the 20 responses to date, 14 rated the experience as excellent and 6 as very good. In addition, we have received very positive feedback with regards to the improvements they have seen in their children.

' My son has become more independent. At the club he gets the opportunity to try out activities, that he wouldn't otherwise get to try, eg bread making, pottery'. My son has been able to practice his independence skills travelling on his own to the club, which has helped boost his confidence'.

'My daughter is eager to go to the club, she looks forward to Tuesday evenings, whereas before it was difficult to get her to attend social events as I think she felt she didn't fit in. She has made friends who she chats about at home and it really made my day to come to collect her from The Yard, and see her sitting gossiping with her friends!'.

The families themselves benefit greatly from knowing that their children are happy and making friends, which in turn also improves their wellbeing.
During every club the planning and execution of activities is focused on each child involved and their specific needs. We have a number of young people who are non verbal and we use observations and discussions with carers/family members to ensure that their voice is heard in terms of the activities which we enjoy.

For example, one young person who is non verbal enjoys playing in our stream and any water based activities, so we ensure that we integrate this into our programme. We tailor the level of support for each young person to ensure that they get the most out of the Club.

In some situations, where additional medical support or assistance is required we have ensured that support is available through a carer.
Our Clubs complement statutory short break provision and add value to the existing services that some of our families receive from statutory providers. However, many of our families receive very limited statutory respite and are often on waiting lists for this to become available to them, it it will become available at all. Our Clubs provide a regular weekly break for families which is so important to their quality of life and their emotional wellbeing.
The feedback we have received from the young people direct and their families is that the clubs overwhelmingly enhance the growth and development of those involved. Having fun and making and sustaining friendships are critical elements of a young person's life, happiness and wellbeing and that is what they get to do at The Yard Clubs.

Friendships help build confidence, self esteem, independence and social skills, which in turn have powerful knock-on effects on home and school lives and on the transition to adulthood.

Feedback from their families included:' Before attending the Club my son had no opportunity to play with his peers other than at home. The Club allows the kids some independence. He has gained so much confidence since starting the Club. 'My son is now socialising with other children & adults now, he is normally very insular and reluctant to communicate.

' The Yard is our daughters social life, her self confidence has greatly increased and she will chat to us about her friends.
One of the lovely benefits of all the groups is that many of the young people are now socialising outwith The Yard, having built up the friendship at the Clubs. This is a great by product of the Clubs and significantly reduces issues of isolation and improves mental health and wellbeing. Many of the young people also stay in touch via texting and social media.

The sheer volume of demand continues to be a challenge, as their really are very few opportunities for young people their age and older to engage in social opportunities. In January we will open up our Girls Club to 3 new girls and 2 more young people will join our Thursday night Club, which will help reduce our waiting list of 22 young people.
The Yard was very fortunate last year to be part of the BBC One show DIY SOS The Big Build. As part of that, we received incredible publicity around our work and many new families from across Edinburgh and beyond got in touch. These were families who had either not realised that The Yard was something they could access or had just not heard of our service. As a result of our appearance we have experienced a significant rise in new families using our service, and this has naturally had a knock on effect on the numbers interested in our youth club provision.

This publicity has reached many new families that we were not already know to. In addition, we have increased marketing of our services, in addition to our contacts within the disability team at the City of Edinburgh Council, we have posters in all GP surgeries in the cities, libraries and other third sector organisations.
All of the young people who attend our clubs have additional support needs. A number of young people have complex needs including learning disabilities, sensory processing issues, autism, non verbal, adhd, epilepsy, tourettes. Our staff are skilled at engaging with children in young people with very complex needs and ensuring the activities are inclusive to all young people within the group.

Over the past year we have developed a shared learning document which explains some of the areas that you need to consider to ensure that your activities are fully inclusive looking at the environment that you choose, providing choice and empowering the young people to be involved amongst just some of the areas to consider.
I think the Shared short breaks stories website is a great idea and will hopefully encourage lots of new partnerships and joined up work in the future.
We have asked the parents to complete a formal questionnaire twice in the past year. We also ask the young people directly to complete a questionnaire. The feedback received from these methods is used to monitor the quality of provision, implement any changes and is useful for monitoring report requirements.

Next year it is our intention to hold two parents nights to provide an opportunity for the parents from the youth clubs to meet each other and also for us to gather their views and opinions on the current service and any suggestions they may have