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7.11 The Play 4 all project was designed to provide an offer of affordable, year round out of school childcare provision to support families of children with ASN to access employment and training opportunities. This has been achieved through the creation of a comprehensive new service model. Where possible children are supported in existing mainstream out of school childcare services. Where this is not possible due to the child requiring higher levels of personal support, specialist services are available at three local schools. In recognition of these four strands, the project was named Play 4 All. It provides:

• a new, inclusive service to support children with ASN in accessing current mainstream out of school care services, incorporating provision of support to the child and family to integrated and also to local provider to increase staff training and confidence to support children with ASN into the mainstream (see Box 1)

• a new, specialist out of school care service for children with complex, predominantly physically related support needs. This service is offered at Lilybank School, and commenced in March 2005 (see Box 2)

• a new, specialist out of school care service for children with language and communication disorders, who may present challenging behaviour. This service launched in May 2005 at Glenburn school (see Box 3)

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• a new, inclusive out of school care service for 12-16 year olds with a range of additional support needs and their peers. This service runs from Greenock Academy and began delivery in early 2007 (see Box 4).

7.12 The four strands have offered after school care during term time (3pm – 5.30) and holiday playschemes (9.30am – 3.30pm, extended to 8.30am- 5.30pm in the summer holidays) providing continuous, year round provision.

Figure 7-1 Strand 1: Supporting Integration in Mainstream services

This strand has addressed the challenge of supporting children with ASN to integrate into mainstream childcare provision through two routes:

• building the capacity of mainstream provision

• providing specialist support workers to assist the child, family and provider to integrate into the provision

Through the project Inverclyde Council have funded a range of specialist training courses for providers to build their awareness of and capacity to support children with additional support needs. Training has covered issues including: autism, safer assistance, ADHD, epilepsy, medication, mealtime assistance, food hygiene, health and safety, child protection, disability equality training and CALM (Crisis, Aggression, Limitation and Management). In 2006/07 152 instances of training were recorded, comprising staff employed by the project and staff from mainstream childcare providers. This represents a significant contribution to the development of the childcare workforce in Inverclyde. Whilst training is an important aspect of building the capacity of the childcare sector to provide integrated support to children with ASN, it can only go so far in overcoming the barriers faced by mainstream provision. The Play 4 All team and indeed one of the childcare providers we have visited during this review have both found that the main barrier to integration is fear and a lack of confidence. The Play 4 All project has tackled this by employing support workers who provide support to the child, family and provider. The worker is the first point of contact following a referral or enquiry identifying the child’s needs, suitable provision, training opportunities and additional resources which may be required. The support worker will attend the provision with the child for the first few weeks or months, supporting the child in their new surroundings and supporting the mainstream staff with practical skills such as toileting or medication but also showing them that there is nothing to be afraid of.

To date six children have been supported into mainstream provision in this way. This has included children with learning difficulties, autism, Downs Syndrome and language and communication difficulties.

56 Figure 7-2 Strand 2: Out of school care service for children with complex, predominantly physical support needs

This strand provides after school care and holiday play schemes primarily for children with physical support needs. The provision is offered at Lilybank School, a special school in Port Glasgow. Being a special school the out of school provision at Lilybank has access to an impressive range of equipment, toys and facilities specifically for children with complex physical needs.

The provision originally offered nine places but has reduced this to six in the after school provision in the last year. The provision currently supports four children with high medical support needs in the after school provision and they received requests for 8 of the 9 places for the Easter 2008 playscheme. The project has been disappointed that attendance has been lower than originally anticipated. Three main reasons have been identified by project staff for this:

• Alternative free services - the school itself is now offering free after school activities which parents choose to access rather than paying for the Play 4 All services

• Transport - has proved to be a significant barrier which has frustrated the project, as transport had not been identified as an issue by the initial focus groups. Whilst the project runs a pick-up and drop-off service for the holiday playschemes using the voluntary transport service they cannot cover the costs of transporting children home after the after school provision ends. The voluntary transport service is not available during term time after schools as it is used for adult services. Children who stay for the after school provision forgo the free transport service offered by the council to take children home after school ends at 3pm.

• Parents’ confidence – some parents find it hard to ‘let go’ of responsibility for their child, having established their own care routines at home and investing time and emotion in meeting the needs of their child.