'Fit Kids' - Tŷ Coch School
Basketball
Barry Island
Indoor Climbling Activities
RAISE Project Coordinator: Ashley Holland
FITKids was conceived with the idea of providing additional support to young people, making the transition from primary to secondary education.
The geography of where the children live, diversity in social opportunities, beginning of adolescence and the fact that pupils often are placed at YTC at the beginning of the secondary phase, creates adaptation issues at a vulnerable time. This presented us with young people who were often non-attending, with poor social networking and lacking in self-esteem and confidence. They were youngsters with lack of opportunities to access their local community facilities, youngsters who were due to the nature of their disability unable to establish peer relationships within their communities. The initiative was established to address these issues.
We began by ensuring that we could provide an atmosphere of non-discriminatory, non-abusive, non-judgmental, safe behaviour within the initiative. We looked at how we could best enable these youngsters to access available community facilities without prejudice or bias. We produced a clear plan of how we would enable the young people to have equal opportunities, based on their diverse needs and abilities. We discussed activities we wanted to access in the community. It was a hard task at first; our young people had no idea what actually was out there. They had to be given good quality information to encourage them to make choices. We worked together through discussion and information providing, to help the young people ‘see’ what they could experience. The team leaders visited various places; risk assessed the centres, the activities and brought the information back to the young people.
We also brought expertise into the initiative in the form of coaches and instructors. Parents were encouraged to join us. We were offering our young people more and more access with support and using community activities and facilities that many had never before experienced.
The first year proved to be a huge success and we evaluated the initiative against our main objects by using a parent/young person’s questionnaire. The responses were extremely positive.
To sum up FITKids we feel it met the brief it intended too. It has had a measurable impact on the young people involved and standards within the school. There has been an increase in peer and parental friendships; confidence, attendance and health and fitness of our young people.
Visit the website : www.ysgoltycoch.co.uk
Basketball
Barry Island
Indoor Climbling Activities
RAISE Project Coordinator: Ashley Holland
FITKids was conceived with the idea of providing additional support to young people, making the transition from primary to secondary education.
The geography of where the children live, diversity in social opportunities, beginning of adolescence and the fact that pupils often are placed at YTC at the beginning of the secondary phase, creates adaptation issues at a vulnerable time. This presented us with young people who were often non-attending, with poor social networking and lacking in self-esteem and confidence. They were youngsters with lack of opportunities to access their local community facilities, youngsters who were due to the nature of their disability unable to establish peer relationships within their communities. The initiative was established to address these issues.
We began by ensuring that we could provide an atmosphere of non-discriminatory, non-abusive, non-judgmental, safe behaviour within the initiative. We looked at how we could best enable these youngsters to access available community facilities without prejudice or bias. We produced a clear plan of how we would enable the young people to have equal opportunities, based on their diverse needs and abilities. We discussed activities we wanted to access in the community. It was a hard task at first; our young people had no idea what actually was out there. They had to be given good quality information to encourage them to make choices. We worked together through discussion and information providing, to help the young people ‘see’ what they could experience. The team leaders visited various places; risk assessed the centres, the activities and brought the information back to the young people.
We also brought expertise into the initiative in the form of coaches and instructors. Parents were encouraged to join us. We were offering our young people more and more access with support and using community activities and facilities that many had never before experienced.
The first year proved to be a huge success and we evaluated the initiative against our main objects by using a parent/young person’s questionnaire. The responses were extremely positive.
To sum up FITKids we feel it met the brief it intended too. It has had a measurable impact on the young people involved and standards within the school. There has been an increase in peer and parental friendships; confidence, attendance and health and fitness of our young people.
Visit the website : www.ysgoltycoch.co.uk