Thank God it’s September!
I always feel sad at the passing of Summer. I always feel guiltily relieved that the
children are finally back at school.
Summer’s supposed to be fun, the season of play and leisure.”
Quality Family Time”. Everyone else
seems to have it all mapped out and organised like a military campaign.
Let’s say 6 weeks school holidays (more or less, give or
take a Bank Holiday). You’re now legally obliged to take your
family vacation/staycation within this time slot, so you book your usual 14
days break. Now you have 4 weeks left of
childhood boredom/ennui to cover. OK, your Mum and Dad have agreed to have the
children for 1 week, but won’t travel at the weekends, due to the weight of
holiday traffic. The children always moan, and say”I’m bored” At least they can
entertain themselves. But whilst Mum and Dad are still able, and apparently
willing…
So now you are down to 2 full weeks, and 2 half weeks yet to
fill. It's even been cleared with the boss to swing some flexible
working over the summer (now there’s the backing of the law behind it) and agreed
that the time will be made up through September.
The average weekly
cost of a summer regular play-scheme is over £114.51 according to the Family
and Childcare Trust and Netmums, and that’s for an average 5 hour day. If you
can be inventive you can avoid having to resort to that. Once you start really
looking around it’s amazing the options that are out there!
The free/half-price day out vouchers have been downloaded from
the Internet (a God-send), and a few trial sporting activity days courtesy of
the local authority Leisure Centre have been booked.
You’ve also managed, often
through gritted teeth, to remain on speaking terms with your daughters’ best friend’s
mother, even though you have nothing but your daughters’ continued happiness in common. The girls will
expect a couple of sleep-over exchanges.
That will leave you with a couple of
days school uniform shopping with the children (could get it on-line?) and
standing in the ticketed queue for new school shoes in the small, understaffed
shoe shop (remember to take your Rescue Remedy and blood pressure pills!)
AND BREATHE
Now, let’s start that again.
Let’s factor in real life for some of us. A totally
dependent child or young person. No words and limited understanding. A danger
to themselves or others.
Six weeks holiday for your profoundly disabled child. At
Special school your child has a 1-2-1 support worker every hour of every school
day because she is unable to do anything for herself.
Your child is engaged with another person (adult) in some
activity, throughout the school year. Not in the long school holidays. Then
it’s all down to you…
As parents of a profoundly disabled child we don’t attempt
family holidays anymore. “Adapted” holiday cottages are never as wheelchair-
friendly as they claim, and ultimately there is no benefit in being away. We
are not tourists, just carers again in an unfamiliar location.
Grandparents liked the idea of being able to help, but they
stopped offering several years ago, after that incident in the park with those
other children.
At least I don’t have to worry about childcare whilst at
work- I had to give up work when my regular child-minder couldn’t cope with the
increasing lifting and handling. She wasn’t prepared to have her house
“wheelchair adapted”. I missed too much time off work because of my child’s
increasingly unpredictable health.
So I’m looking to cover 6 weeks, with very limited options
indeed. The more disabled the child is, the less choice of suitable activities
there is.
What I need is a play/youth scheme where there is 1-2-1
support for my child, where staff are trained for and can anticipate my child’s
unique needs. Someone who she can have fun with, and where I know she will be
safe.
There are some wonderful Play and Leisure providers out
there, specialising in meeting the needs of all sorts of children and young
people with disabilities. £20 per day? That’s comparable with regular play-schemes.
With 1-2-1 support it should be nearer £100 per day! That real cost is highly
subsidised by local authorities and the generosity of the charity’s supporters,
and lots of hard work by the fundraising teams to make up the shortfall.
Or I should say, there have
been some outstanding providers out there over the past few years, who have
increased the quality and availability of Play and Short Breaks for our
children, with consistently growing support from Local Authorities.
Now it looks like it’s “good-bye to all that”.
Sadly, Hampshire’s swingeing budget cuts are set to sweep
away nearly all the support that families of disabled children and young people
have come to rely on, and threaten the long-term survival of wonderful
charities such as Disability Challengers, to name one of very few.
Will we be left with
no options at all for our disabled children in the long school holidays?
I always feel sad after the passing of summer. I always feel
guilty for feeling cheated out of the summers I have missed. Ah, all those
summers that might have been. All that time we might have spent doing normal,
“family” things, like everyone else.
But we don’t do them, because we have never had that “normal”
option.
But now it’s September, and the school uniforms are back on.
Looking uniformal September normal!
Child-care?
No comments:
Post a Comment