Summary
We ran another very successful summer holiday at Fettes College in Edinburgh for young people with learning disability and other complex needs, who require a high level of 1:1 care. Our exciting timetable provided on and off-site activities to prompt fun new experiences and independence. Activities reflected our jungle theme including a trip to the zoo and the botanic gardens, t-shirt painting and mocktails. We also provided families with vital respite to sustain their caring roles.
What SuperTroop 2023 Holiday did
Shared Care Scotland’s financial support enabled us to run our July 2023 summer holiday for 15 children and young people aged between 8-18 years old with learning disability, and other physical and neurodevelopmental conditions. By providing high quality 24-hour support, we ensured they had a magical holiday and provided vital respite for their families.
Our 2023 jungle theme included visiting the zoo, t-shirt painting, mocktails and cake decorating. Favourite activities also returned including swimming, going to the beach and a disco. One parent commented “not sure how you manage it but my son has even more fun every year...even though it seems impossible to be better than the previous year”. Fettes College in Edinburgh kindly hosted our holiday once more, providing accommodation, catering and other on-site facilities.
13 holidaymakers returned from previous years, as per our year-on-year respite model. Others were identified through close working with social care and special education professionals. As before, referrals far outweighed spaces available and we strove to identify those we could safely care for, who were most in need of respite. Families used the respite in various ways such as spending time with their other children, meeting up with friends or going on holiday. Several families felt confident enough in SuperTroop to go abroad. One parent summed it up saying “I missed my daughter but I had time be an individual, have fun and not feel like ‘just a carer’.”
The funding provided also paid for a Volunteer Co-ordinator who registered all new volunteers, identified training needs and organised a training plan to ensure the holiday team had a breadth of knowledge and experience. Post-holiday she completed a skills audit to inform future training schedules.
The grant also paid for an Evaluation Lead to conduct the first formal service evaluation of the charity including exploring the perspectives of the charity’s stakeholders with a view to refining and enhancing our work. In addition to this, the monies granted to us paid for managerial costs including Care Inspectorate fees and insurance.
What SuperTroop has learned
Various learning points have been identified this year. We have learnt that with appropriate adjustments for verbal communication barriers (i.e. by using Talking Mats), we can gather meaningful feedback from holidaymakers about the activities on offer at SuperTroop. We have plans to facilitate more of this during the 2024 holiday and refine it to ensure it is as productive as possible. We will continue to seek out ways to explore the views of holidaymakers who can't give verbal feedback or use Talking Mats.
Stakeholders hold SuperTroop in high esteem, plus encouraging constructive feedback from families is difficult. During the service evaluation, families only identified minor and easily implemented suggestions for existing holidays such as providing photos of the volunteer helpers in advance if possible and making sure daily photo updates to parents are not missed. Their more fundamental suggestions were to provide more holidays and extend the age range above 18.
Response rates from Fettes staff were low, but overall they indicated their experience had been positive and some gave feedback about procedures to make their role more straightforward in the future e.g. more information in advance about numbers of volunteers and holidaymakers needing accommodation. Teaching staff were specifically asked about how they perceive SuperTroop to have impacted on pupils who have volunteered with the charity. None of them identified anything negative and their positive observations were themed around helpers challenging themselves, being resilient and taking on responsibility. One said they are “Not always the kids who are top of the class, prefects, or first team players, but my goodness they're good people”.
SuperTroop's trustees indicated they enjoy their roles and felt they have a clear understanding of the charities goals and financial position. Various people reflected the challenges faced in order to move forward, with one saying “I think there is the motivation and expertise to achieve expansion but the practical details still need a lot of work”. Importantly all the trustees felt that if they had any concerns, they could freely raise them with other members of the board. Recognition of the barriers is important for strategic planning in coming months and years.
A focus group discussion with several Fettes College students who were volunteer helpers in 2023 again generated alot of positive feedback. All attendees had found their SuperTroop experience rewarding and commented on it promoting confidence and communication skills. They highlighted that interacting with the parents of holidaymakers was particularly daunting due to the weight of responsibility the helpers felt to make a good impression and appear capable of looking after the holidaymakers. Additional training around this is therefore being delivered in 2024.
Our skills audit showed that there is a breadth of skills in the Senior Team. Recruitment and training flow charts were devised to ensure that new volunteers taking over such tasks would be easier. The audit also highlighted where gaps might be if people were to leave which is crucial information for future recruitment and it generated conversations about whether any other skills or training would be advantageous. A new Crisis Management training session is therefore being timetabled in 2024.
As a holiday team, we can deal professionally and appropriately with a medical emergency. During the 2023 holiday, one of our holidaymakers unfortunately injured himself and required hospital attendance and treatment. Our first aid and medical team responded promptly and our Families Coordinator kept in contact with his relatives throughout. Other members of the Senior Team took on additional roles during that time to free up the people dealing with the emergency and they offered reassurance and support for the whole team. The parents of the young person who'd been injured were extremely complimentary of the way it was handled, didn't feel the need to return early from their holiday abroad and said “everything went through as if he was one of your own children”.
How SuperTroop has benefitted from the funding
The wealth of information collected during the SuperTroop service evaluation was an extremely positive outcome of this grant funding. It confirmed that there is only one other similar service in Scotland so there is still a significant unmet need for our type of respite provision. It also demonstrated that not only do families highly value SuperTroop and are extremely complimentary of our service, the volunteer team very much enjoy being part of the charity and feel they develop as individuals as a result of it. We can also now show from the data that our staff partners at Fettes College are supportive of SuperTroop too which is vital for the logistics of running our holidays. The constructive feedback received will be used to optimise our service and knowing we have a solid base to build from is so important for the longevity of SuperTroop as we look to the future. Being able to present objective data from the evaluation will be a huge advantage for securing future funding from grant applications and corporate sponsorship, something we aim to explore in earnest in the coming months.
Having a Volunteer Co-ordinator enabled our training needs and roles to be reviewed and streamlined, thereby ensuring processes are more coordinated going forward particularly when new people join the team. The Skills Audit has mapped out the different strengths and experience of members of the senior holiday team, hence we have identified what we feel is important in the team and can clearly see which skills will be missed, should people leave. This allows us to respond and plan ahead to maintain our high level of service.
Furthermore, without this grant, key managerial costs such as Care Inspectorate fees, insurance costs, external financial auditors fees, subscription to our online training platform etc. would not have been covered, leaving the whole holiday in jeopardy.
Project Outcomes
Outcome
16 children and young people with disabilities and complex needs will have participated in a wide range of exciting activities in different places, in the company of their peers and with 1:1 support.
Results
15 children and young people with disabilities and complex needs were provided with 1:1, 24 hour support to participate in a diverse timetable of activities. Most of the holidaymakers have significant communication challenges, but by using the Talking Mats visual communication tool, several were able to tell us which activities they had enjoyed. Amongst them, the nightly sing-song, swimming, t-shirt design, trip to the beach, going to the zoo and time at the park were particularly popular.
Having been on multiple holidays now, true peer connections are being made and one parent said of her daughter, I “never thought of her having friends before – it is quite emotional". Holidaymakers also enjoyed making connections with each other and their volunteer carers through things like playing football and putting on make up.
Unfortunately, shortly before the holiday, 1 young person withdrew as it was felt their medical needs could not be safely met by SuperTroop at that time.
Case study
As a group, most of our holidaymakers have no other form of respite and no holiday opportunities tailored to their bespoke needs. 5 of the 8 parents who responded to our anonymous post-holiday survey said no other respite was available. Therefore, this is a group of young people who miss out on opportunities to try new things, go to new places and become more independent.
As ever, we introduced new fun things to the timetable such as a trip to the zoo so that we continued to broaden the horizons of returning holidaymakers. 2 of our holidaymakers were new this year and so have never experienced the magic of any of SuperTroop holiday activities in this setting.
100% of parents in our survey, stated that their child had fun at SuperTroop and 75% said their child had tried new things. Parental comments from this year's post-holiday questionnaire and service evaluation included “After the first year, as soon as he [their son] realises where we are, there’s this big grin appears on his face” and “He had the best time, he didn’t want to come home”.
Outcome
16 families/carer groups will report confidence in our service and the psychological and emotional benefit of a meaningful week of respite.
Results
15 families / carer groups benefited from a meaningful week of respite. Of the 8 parents who completed our anonymous post-holiday survey, 100% said that SuperTroop had afforded them time to spend with friends and family and private time to spend however they wished.
6 went on their own short break or holiday, with 3 saying they'd been abroad.
5 specifically commented on their ability to spend time with their holidaymaker's siblings. Comments included "We did lots of activities that our daughter would have never managed to do." and "getting space just to relax at home without having to worry about time and medications was fantastic".
Case study
One parent described how they were able to take their holidaymaker's sibling to Europe for a few days and they enjoyed activities their daughter wouldn't manage to do. They specifically commented about "making memories" with her brother "whilst we knew our daughter was having a great time and being very well looked after". The only other respite this family has on offer is when other family members can help, but they do not want to burden their family too much and they don't live nearby so there are also logistical challenges.
Outcome
Carers will not only experience a week of respite but will also report feeling better supported to sustain their caring role and evidence of independence on the part of their children.
Results
100% of respondents to our post-holiday survey felt safe and secure with SuperTroop. 88% strongly agreed that they'd had a chance for meaningful relaxation too.
Comments included "You really miss them but enjoy recharging your batteries during that time and feel able to keep going!" and "She comes back each time just a little bit more confident. She also likes to talk about her holiday and her friends, so she feels like she has a life away from me."
Case study
In addition to a learning disability, one holidaymaker has a serious medical condition which has prevented her from attending other respite services due to the monitoring and medication required. Her mother told us she was reassured by descriptions from the Holiday Director of how her needs would be met and said that not only has she felt secure with SuperTroop, her daughter told her that she feels "safe" because she has confidence that SuperTroop can manage her physical health needs. She said that other people can be fearful of managing her daughter's condition and so the burden of care on her is significant. She said "it's been quite intense" and she feels "SuperTroop's really made a difference, because it gives me that time to look forward to where I know I'm going to have time to do whatever I want". She went on to say " it has been a kind of wee bit of a life saver".
This holidaymaker's mother also said that her daughter has really enjoyed being part of SuperTroop as they live somewhere small and opportunities for meaningful peer connections outwith school are extremely limited and she gets lonely. Her mother has noticed she has been more independent on returning home for example choosing her clothing, needing less prompting during showering and tidying her room more.
Outcome
16 children and young people will have participated in various excursions and new and exciting activities, met new friends, developed greater independence and most importantly really enjoyed themselves during our holiday week
Results
100% of family respondents to our post-holiday questionnaire strongly agreed that the 2023 SuperTroop holiday respite had improved their well being. Parents said things like "We looked forward to it all year. Knowing we would get respite and he would have an amazing time is priceless" and that during the holiday “it's incredible to sit there having dinner and not have an ear out waiting for something terrible to happen”.
Feedback from holidaymakers who were able to participate in our formal service evaluation this year was also extremely positive. They both indicated how much they like SuperTroop and that they want to return next year. One talked about how the volunteer helpers on the holiday are her friends and she enjoys doing things like putting on make up with them.
Case study
The parents of one of our teenage holidaymakers who participated in our service evaluation this year spoke of feeling apprehensive in the run up to the first of their son's 5 SuperTroop holidays, but that he'd had a wonderful time. They said they've had "nothing, but a positive experience" and noted they feel extremely grateful to have the week of "down time" that SuperTroop offers, particularly because they could spend time as a couple, something that is otherwise difficult due to their caring role. They shared that "we felt we could breathe this year and reset which is so important, especially with the rest of the school holidays ahead!".
Their son clearly enjoyed showing the evaluator his diary and photos from previous years. He has to cross a particular bridge to get to the holiday each year and he refers to it as the 'SuperTroop bridge'. His verbal communication is extremely limited, but during the visit he repeatedly signed 'bridge' and using the Talking Mats tool he indicated he'd enjoyed the vast majority of activities on offer.