Summary
Can Do Youth Clubs are an East Lothian youth work provision for young people (10-18 yrs) living with a disability, including severe and complex care needs. The clubs aim to reduce social isolation, promoting age-appropriate activities in a safe, stimulating and familiar environment. Their carers can enjoy regular short breaks knowing their young people are supported by specialist youth workers and young volunteers to have fun, build friendships and feel included in their local community.
What Can Do Youth Club did
In 23-24, Can Do Youth Clubs operated two clubs per week in term time on a Tuesday and Thursday evening from Meadow Park School in Haddington, providing a total of 72 sessions. Over the year 30 young people joined us, having been referred by a health/education professional or social worker. We work with the family, schools and other organisations to build a relationship of trust with the young person. All staff are appropriately trained to take care of any health and personal care needs, leaving the young person free to enjoy their time taking part in a wide range of activities. The young people develop the programmes each term to ensure the activities are what they want to do or take part in.
Over this year, they have included cooking, bingo and quizzes, sensory and messy play, football sessions, trips to the local park and walks along the riverside. We invite providers into our clubs to offer music workshops, encounters with animals and even archery classes. We have themed club nights to celebrate occasions such as Halloween and Burns Night. And we always try to get in trips to the local swimming pool or community cinema.
We provide transport to the clubs – fun for the young people as the assisted transport calls at their door and they travel independently with friends, and essential for parents/carers as it removes the stress and costs of organising travel and elongates their short break.
A recent survey of parents showed that families use this regular, planned evening as a chance to spend quality time with their other children (31%), catch up with household chores (31%), spend quality time with other family and friends such as taking a class or going for a coffee (21%), working (9%) or simply relaxing at home (6%).
It is difficult to pinpoint a particular success of the year, but we enjoy seeing the young people grow in confidence and try new experiences. We are also proud of our small team of young volunteers who encourage and support our youth club members.
What Can Do has learned
We have run the Can Do youth clubs for many years now with the support of Short Breaks funding. We constantly learn and adapt from the young people we support in terms of their needs, for example receiving specialist training where necessary to meet healthcare needs or behaviours.
23-24 has been another difficult year in attracting volunteers. This has a knock-on effect to sessional staffing, as our volunteers tend to follow a development pathway, often leading to employment as a sessional worker. The number of volunteers and sessional workers directly impacts how many young people we can support. Although we are disappointed that we have only provided a service for 30 young people and their families, when our target is 50, we are realising that the success for those 30 should be celebrated, rather than the negative feeling of underachievement of not meeting our target. 50 people - or 25 people each session is the number we are regulated for under the Care Inspectorate, and so has formed our target. However, we have to be realistic in the quality of the service we can deliver. Since the end of 2023 and during 2024, we are carrying out a service review to check we are still providing what families need, and to identify how we can expand our provision to meet an ever growing waiting list.
How Can Do has benefitted from the funding
Without Short Breaks funding, our Youths Clubs would not have operated in 23-24. It covered direct costs of planning and delivering the service, and also meant we were able to attract a similar level of funding from the local authority to meet our specialist youth worker costs.
Having the support of Short Breaks, helped us attract some other Youth work core funding that is allowing us to carry out the service review so that we can look to ways to expand the service going forward without reducing the quality of the provision offered. For example, we could cut costs by not offering transport, or catering for care needs, but this would not help the young people we serve, or the families who find their short breaks essential to cope with the rest of the week.
We are very grateful to have the support of Short Breaks and the resources and expertise that the funding also brings with it.
Project Outcomes
Outcome
Our Can-Do youth clubs will be running twice weekly at full capacity. Offering 50 children and young people the chance to socially interact with peers, try out new activities, have their voices heard on what activities they want to take part in. They will be included and part of a club.
Results
Each club operated for 36 sessions, and attendance shows that 30 young people joined us throughout the year. Therefore, this outcome was achieved in the provision we offered but did not reach the target number of participants. This is due to the challenges we are experiencing in attracting enough young volunteers, and in turn, sessional workers to ensure the clubs run safely, and also the needs of the young people we support. Bringing in new members to our club, has to handled sensitively due to their complex needs. We put the quality of our service before the quantity as we feel this best serves the beneficiaries. We have to accept that providing the youth clubs for 30 members is in fact a success, but due to the high number on our waiting lists, we do feel saddened that we couldn’t reach our target of 50 members. We are carrying out a full service review to address this.
The young people help plan the sessions they want, and we ensure their voices are heard in doing this. As noted above this means we run a variety of activities so that the young people can take part in new and exciting activities one week, often going outside their comfort zone, but perhaps have some chilled down-time the next.
Case study
S is very wary of animals and has always opted out of animal encounter activities in the past, becoming distressed if animals are near. To help S this time, leading up to the visit of the animals to the youth club, we tapped into her interests of drawing and colouring in. She told us about her cousin getting a pet rabbit and so we encouraged the drawing of rabbits. We contacted the animal provider to see if a rabbit could be brought in on his next visit, which he agreed. The session started with him introducing the rabbit to the young people, and S was very happy engaging with it. She was given praise and attention, encouraging her to stay for the rest of the session, and meet the other animals. This was a significant change from previous visits and something the youth workers will continue to support her with in future sessions.
The whole group took part in archery session as one of the young peoples’ chosen activities. However, the provider felt that the young wheelchair users didn’t have the best experience because the equipment was not 100% suitable. This made the provider assess the equipment they used and we were thrilled when they returned with a purpose built platform that could be moved up and down to the size of the wheelchair and made the experience better for all. This is a great example of providers being willing to change and adapt to become more inclusive.
Outcome
Carers will benefit with having time out with their caring role. Carers will have time to interact and engage with family, friends etc. Carers will have time to reset and take part in a hobby they enjoy or just enjoy the respite youth club is offering. Carers will be able to take a break from the normal caring routine and have improved wellbeing because of this.
Results
Carers have benefited by having a regular time each week where they know their young person is fully cared for. We operated 72 sessions over the year – 36 for each young person. As we provide the transport to the session, the short break time is almost 4 hours on an evening, and it means parents do not need to work out how they can get their young person to the club. Unlike many other local services for young people with additional needs, the parents do not have to attend, or be on stand-by to take care of personal care needs. This all helps to build a reliable period of short respite into the normal weekly routine. We strive to ensure there are no changes to sessions at short notice as we appreciate this is disruptive to both the young person and family, often having much more effect than the one night missed. For example, plans had to be changed at short notice recently when the school facility we use could not be opened, instead, because of our relationships in the local community, we were able to take the young people to the community cinema. This meant there was no disruption to the carers short break.
Case study
We have recently carried out a survey of parents to find out how the value the transport provision to the youth club and how they use the regular short break youth club provides. Reponses were:
We have recently carried out a survey of parents to find out how the value the transport provision to the youth club and how they use the regular short break youth club provides. Reponses were:
30% said their children would not attend at all without transport, while 70% said it would be difficult for their children to attend had transport not been provided. 92% of families said they could not access any other weekly provision without having a family member/carer present.
We also asked families what they used the time for when they knew their children were being safely transported and cared for at Can Do services, and therefore tackling the inequality they face as a family. They said it enabled them to:
• Spent quality time with family and/or friends 21%
• Relaxing at home 6%
• Spent quality time with my other children 31%
• Working 9%
• Catching up with household chores or DIY 31%
Some direct quotes were:
"I like to go out for tea with my friend when R is at Youth Club. Very relaxing."
"Spend time with other children, means I can fully focus on them for that night."
"I attend my weekly fitness class with friends."
"Catch up with work e-mails in peace."
Outcome
Parents and families will have improved wellbeing knowing that they have a regular short break from their caring routine. This should help to improve their own health and wellbeing which in turn helps to sustain their caring routine.
Results
We believe this outcome was achieved by providing all the sessions we promised, staffed with specialist youth workers to take of the young people. We build a relationship of trust with the family so that they feel comfortable that their young person will be both fully cared for and have fun. This means parents and other family carers can have a meaningful break to help sustain their caring routine.
Case study
We often hear from our families, that life before attending youth club could be very difficult, chaotic and stressful, impacting on the mental health of the young person and the family as a whole. They say other local services that offer activities for young people with additional needs, are not fully accessible as they do not take care of health and personal needs, meaning a family member also needs to attend, and thus offering no respite at all. In fact, often becoming more stressful for the young person and family, so they don't go. Some feedback we have had from parents this year highlights why Can Do Youth Clubs are different:
“I feel at ease when N is at Youth Club, trust the staff and know he is being well looked after and cared for.” “Youth Club gives me that time to reset and get through the rest of the week.”
Outcome
The child or young person will be enjoying their weekly youth club and the parent/carer will have reduced stress or worries
Results
This outcome was achieved for the young members and their families that were able to access our services this year. We offered a full program of 36 sessions per young person, including a variety of activities decided by the young people themselves. Taking care of transport, health and care needs has helped reduce the stress and worries of carers, allowing them to make the most of their short break.
However, as mentioned, we fell short of reaching our capacity of 50 members, mainly due to being under-resourced in terms of volunteers. This is something we are addressing in 24-25.
Case study
We received some feedback from a parent about their son at youth club which helps us see the positive change to wellbeing that the clubs make:
“Having cognitive difficulties can limit social interaction and lead to isolation. Can-Do’s Youth Club has been of amazing and invaluable benefit to my son, providing a unique and safe opportunity for developing friendships and social skills. The staff are excellent and the Club has provided a wide range of activities my son simply lights up when the Youth Club nights come round. I am certain that it has contributed significantly to his development as a person and, without it, the fabric of his life would have been noticeably poorer”