Tipo de Tiempo del 24-31 de Marzo del año 2013 DATOS OBSERVADOS

7.13 As to be expected from a national demonstration project, delivering the Play 4 All project has not been without its challenges. The programme has sought to establish three new specialist childcare services and to establish a support service to change the perceptions and capacity of mainstream providers and parents and families in relation to children with ASN attending mainstream provision, which is a significant undertaking.

7.14 Consultations with project staff and partners have revealed five key challenges faced by the project:

• attitudes of parents (‘hard to let go’) and providers (‘fear of the unknown’) • travel costs

• recruiting families • achieving sustainability

• the (perceived) requirement of the grant for parents to be in or actively seeking employment.

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Attitudes of parents and providers

7.15 Services can be established in a relatively short space of time, a matter of months, but the Play 4 All project has found that changing attitudes and perceptions takes much longer. The attitudes and perceptions attributed to parents and providers differ considerably but both have served to limit the success of the project.

7.16 Interviewees have noted that parents of children with ASN, particularly children with complex medical needs, are very reluctant to give responsibility for their child’s care to other people. In many cases the parents will have been the child’s primary and sole carers for the first five years of their life and will have had to undertake a significant adjustment process when the child started attending school. Considering another group of people taking care of their child is a further challenge.

7.17 Evidence from studies reviewing mainstream childcare (for example, our evaluation of BIG’s Out of School Hours Childcare initiative16) shows that it takes two to four years to build parent confidence in a service; this is likely to be the case where the provision is caring for children with ASN.

7.18 As noted in Figure 7-1, project staff and providers have found that one of the main barriers preventing mainstream providers from taking on children with ASN is fear, lack of confidence and misconceptions of staff. The project has been designed to overcome this challenge through the provision of training and support workers to build capacity and confidence but changing attitudes and perceptions takes time and is an on-going challenge. 7.19 Staff turnover will mean that the need for training is ongoing and parents will continue to

need support to make the transition to allowing other people to care for their children.

Figure 7-3 – Out of school care service for children with language and communication disorders

This strand provides after school care and holiday play schemes primarily for children with language and communication disorders. The provision is offered at Glenburn School, a special school in Greenock. Various points of good practice have emerged from this strand of the programme, including:

• Before the children join the club get as much detailed information as possible about their likes and dislikes, their learning history, and their specific needs. Projects can then work out which activities are best when they join the group.

• Projects should take on the parents’/carers’ preferences and routines and bring these into the childcare setting where possible.

• Projects can start by putting an autistic child in a small group of two or three, doing a separate activity from the wider group and in a quiet part of the room. Over time the size of the group can be gradually extended.

• It is beneficial for projects to find out each child’s particular interest and include this interest into the activities of the wider group. For example, if a child is interested in animals play a game that gets everyone to make different animal noises or use animals as a theme in painting sessions.

• Lego can be a good way to encourage participation and involvement within small, mixed groups. Take-up of the provision has generally been good throughout the duration of the project although, as with Strand 2 at Lilybank, the number of after school places offered in the final year of the project has been reduced from nine to six (the holiday schemes will continue to offer nine places).

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“Evaluation of the Out of School Childcare Initiative: Final Report to the New Opportunities Fund” – SQW, 2003

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Travel costs

7.20 During the project design stages Play 4 All undertook consultation activities with parents and families of child with ASN and found that transport to and from the childcare provision was unlikely to be a significant issue for most parents and as such transport arrangements were not built into the project.

7.21 However, transport has proved to be a barrier to participation for a number of families. Children who attend the after school provision had to forgo the free transport home from school provided by the council and the project had not budgeted for transport as it had not been identified as a priority.

7.22 The project team have been able to secure the services of the voluntary transport service to take children home from the summer playschemes but during term time this service is too busy with other commitments.

Figure 7-4 - Out of school care service for 12-16 year olds with a range of additional support needs

This strand of the project experienced considerable delays due to the need to adapt the access and facilities at Greenock Academy where the provision was to be based. The service began operation in January 2007.

Greenock Academy is a mainstream secondary school and was chosen as the premises for this strand of Play 4 All to offer the young people attending a sense of independence from the specialist support they accessed during the school day and integration with the mainstream.

Five young people are now regularly attending the after school service. The provision has space to use at Greenock Academy where the group can play computer games, listen to music, etc, but the main focus has been to take the group out to access other facilities and opportunities in the Inverclyde area. Activities include outdoor sports (e.g. football on the beach), swimming, snooker hall and the gym. Attendance at the project appears to have been a liberating experience for the young people, enabling them to access services and facilities in the community which they may not have had the opportunity to prior to attending the group. One young man attending the group reported that the group is very important to him as he gets to spend time with his friends and do things like going swimming. He also noted that if he didn’t attend the club he would be very bored at home after school.

Requirement of the grant for parents to be in employment

7.23 This final point, the perceived requirement for parents to be in employment, was not highlighted in our previous annual reports as it has only come to light in recent months. 7.24 Project staff appear to have believed that parents benefiting from the provision and support

offered by Play 4 All were required to be in employment or training, or seeking to enter employment. This perceived stipulation has proved to be a challenge for the project and has restricted the number of children and families able to benefit from the provision. This has proved to be very frustrating for project staff, as they (rightly) believe that many parents are not able to make the transition to employment simply because childcare is available to them; there are often other challenges to overcome including refreshing skills, building confidence, making arrangements for other children, etc.

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7.25 But BIG did not in fact require parents to be in training or employment. It is not clear how this misunderstanding arose. It was not something that was highlighted during the early stages of the evaluation, and was not therefore addressed in good time.

7.26 It is galling that such a misunderstanding, which undoubtedly affected the take-up of places, may have been partly responsible for the current uncertainty over Play 4 All’s future.

7.27 However, it does highlight an important issue, which remains valid. Making the transition to employment is challenging for any parent who has taken time out from employment, and this challenge is even greater when caring for a child with ASN. These are parents who have dedicated their lives to caring for their children and have subsequently drifted, practically and psychologically, from the labour market. As a result they will require much wider reaching support to re-enter training or employment. Play 4 All has been keen to emphasise the important role the project has played in providing respite for families who value time out to spend with other siblings, etc, as well as providing the children with the opportunity to spend time with other children and carers.

Recruiting families

7.28 Although the initial research undertaken by Capability Scotland prior to the development of the project highlighted a need for an out of school service for children with ASN, the project has found it difficult to recruit the number of users that they anticipated.

7.29 Parents/guardians have been alerted to the project through a number of methods: • provision of information through the special schools

• presentations and information at parents’ evenings • providing information to the GP Nurses Support Group

7.30 The majority of parents accessing the project have been self referrals; they have been told about the project and then got in touch. Headteachers have provided the majority of referrals with some also coming from social services. The project has found it difficult to undertake wide scale marketing because of a breakdown of communication with the community at the outset of the project due to a local ASN support group being disappointed at not securing NOQC funding. The group perceived Play 4 All as an outside agency taking local funding. Subsequently the project has had to rebuild relations with the community and felt that wider marketing would not have benefited the Play 4 All project.

7.31 Gaining the confidence and trust of parents is very important and takes time to build. Before making changes to a child’s routine parents want to be confident that the provision is going to be there for the long-term and trust those delivering the services to care for their child as well as they would. Unfortunately building a reputation with parents takes time and now, as the project’s funding is drawing to a close, the project is in a position where staff and provision is trusted by parents but they are unable to guarantee that the provision will continue. (Indeed, at the time of writing it appears that parents have been notified of the project’s impending closure.)

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7.32 We believe that there is scope for further research to be conducted at national level to determine the scale of demand for this kind of provision.

Achieving sustainability

7.33 It was decided at the outset of the project that the costs charged to parents for the out of school service should be in-line with those charged in mainstream services, see Figure 1 for the charges.

Figure 7-5 – Play 4 All fee structure

After school provision (3pm – 5.30pm) - £7.75 per day Holiday Playschemes (9.30am- 3.30pm) - £15.50 per day

An optional extension to the summer playscheme which extends the session to 8.30am- 5.30pm (there has been no demand for this extension in the other holiday periods).

7.34 The provision is heavily subsidised by the project especially the service provided at Lilybank school for children with acute needs who often require one to one care. In order to continue the project will require further funding, as parents would not be able to afford the real costs of provision.

7.35 At the time of writing the future of the project is uncertain. There is also a lack of clarity at present regarding national priorities for the support of children with ASN, and until a clear direction is provided funding is unlikely to follow.