ENJOYING AND ACHIEVING
Everyone at J&R Care believes that enjoying what they do is particularly important to a child achieving. All children are encouraged to become involved with local clubs and groups outside of the home and we encourage friendships made in these environments.
Staff and children are involved and engage together in discussion, consultation and decision making, in relation to the overall running of the home and more specifically meet each day to plan leisure activities and appropriate free time.
The particular interests and talents of individual children are considered within the individual Placement Plan which includes ways in which the child will be supported to pursue their interests and talents.
Children are helped and encouraged to engage in leisure and other activities that promote a positive involvement with the cultural, ethnic, religious and language heritages to which they belong. This is also seen as an opportunity to celebrate diversity and help other children from different backgrounds to learn about difference in positive and enjoyable ways. Examples include supporting children in attending church (where appropriate) attending cultural festivals in various locations (i.e. Notting Hill Carnival/Museum trips etc).
Staff engage in leisure and other activities, alongside children, whenever it is appropriate to do so as we believe this is key to developing positive relationships with the child.
Any activities that children engage in always take into account the safety of the child. Any high-risk activity that the child chooses to pursue, for instance rock climbing or horse riding is supervised by a qualified person. Additionally, parental consent is gained beforehand.
The recreational use of videos and computer games are age appropriate. Therefore individual arrangements are made in order to allow access to videos for older children that are not appropriate for the younger ones. Such arrangements are made through individual and group discussions.
With ever increasing access to the internet, the home seek to reduce the risk of harm from children accessing websites. The staff work closely with the placing authority over the use of the internet and work with the child depending on their level of age, understanding and responsibility.
As part of our commitment to enriching the lives of the children with whom we are working, they are afforded the opportunity to attend group residential activity trips. These have in the past included camping trips to Wales, including mountain walking, White Water Rafting, Sailing courses, cycling and water and adventure activity experiences. We have also worked with PGL activity holidays and other experimental holiday providers to ensure the children are included and not disadvantaged by being in care. All these activity holidays are within a contained environment and staff enjoy and participate with the children.
We can also, depending on the needs of the child, prepare and deliver bespoke activity and adventure respite holidays. For more information on this service, please contact us directly to discuss requirements so we can see if we can help. |
