Residential activity school trips!

[mamalino]

Just looking for advice from anyone with any experience of this? DD1(Yr 4) is due to go on a weekend residential trip with school. She has a severe hearing loss and wears hearing aids. ATM there are no plans in place for additional support for her but DH and I feel she will need 1 to 1 specialist support at times eg when instructions are given to group and when not wearing aids eg in water. We would normally use sign language to help in these situations eg when we take her swimming.

I suppose our question is who provides the support, the centre, school or local sensory support service? We have spoken to school and support service who say they will provide written info to help the instructors to communicare with her and a school teacher will be there to supervise (all children), but the children will be in groups of 12 with one adult team leader. Don't think this is enough.

Any advice gratefully received! Just off to work but will check back later. Thanks.

Sorry I don't really know with regards to your specific questions, but my neice has delayed development and autism, and when she went on a school residential in year 6 (this is a good 7 years ago now btw) my BIL went as an adult volunteer, but working more specifically with his DD - but I think the school had asked for parent volunteers anyway so I'm not sure if thats a possibility for you or not?? Sorry I don't think that's really very helpful, someone slightly more with it might come and say something useful soon

does she have any support from a lsa at school?
if so would it be possible for them to attend to support your daughter....

please(as much as you want to)do not volunteer to go with your child-push the school/lea/special advisory teaching service to come up with a support worker for your dd.
If they fail to help you- then i would look aat making comment re disability and inclusion policies

only after exhausting all options would i then volunteer to go as this will totally change the trip for your dd as she will not be the same as her peers and they will treat her differently(harsh but true sadly)

good luck

Thank you for replies! No, we would prefer not to go as it would definately cramp her style!

No direct experience of this but I would've thought that health and safety issues would mean your dd needed extra support.

If it's the kind of activity holiday I'm thinking of, surely there will be times when they may need to call out instructions when she's at a distance, eg up a climbing wall, while abseiling down etc.

And then there's the issue of night times. I'm presuming that your dd is like me and takes her HAs out at bedtime. If an alarm goes off or something else happens, she would need a named person to be responsible for making sure that she is aware of what's happening - not someone who is also responsible for an extra 11 children at the same time.

Would you be able to contact the centre yourself and ask what experience they have of visitors with hearing loss? Maybe even visit the centre yourself before the trip?

It's all very well providing written info but the advice would need to be specific to the place where they are going. I would say it would be difficult for an inexperienced person to realise just how much difference certain factors can make to a person's ability to hear, eg echoey rooms, wind outside, traffic noise, other people talking etc.

My disabled dd went on residential school trips in primary school. The school told me that the LEA inclusion policy was such that it(the LEA) would be obliged to pay for the help she needed in order to participate fully in the school curriculum so the funding appeared for her TAs to go too. I would just say make your request in plenty of time as naturally these things take for ever. Do you have a LEA Teacher in charge of Physically Disabled Children in the whole area? We do and it was she who got on the case to sort it out. Good luck.

Just thought I would update.The school are liaising with the Sensory Support Unit so we will see what happens! We have already asked the Centre if they have staff experienced with working with deaf children/BSL users and are awaiting a response.

Fingers crossed and thanks for your help.