Looking back at a successful first month of Residential Breaks
While we launched a new set of Wrap-Round services over lockdown, Respite Breaks remain at the heart of what we do. In August, after 16 long months, we finally resumed our traditional service and re-opened our respite houses in Hampshire and Wales. Over the past five weeks, we welcomed almost 80 young carers across both sites for a long awaited weekend break.
Our Operations team did a fantastic job inviting the children back, liaising with parents and organising all the required admin and prep work to ensure maximum safety.
I’ve met with many parents while picking up and dropping off children. They are really happy that we’ve reopened, and equally appreciative of all the measures we’re taking to minimise the risk of Covid exposure to their child and, critically, their often vulnerable family. We have experienced zero push-back, non-compliance or resistance in any form – parents are entrusting their child’s health and their family’s health to us, and they have confidence in our ability to make good decisions in order to safeguard them.
- Steve Robinson, Operations Manager Honeypot House
We found this note on a child’s pillow in Wales showing how grateful they are for the opportunity.
It was an absolute delight to see the children running around and enjoying the beautiful surroundings. Many highlighted how their caring role has been extremely challenging during the pandemic and how having a Residential Break with us means everything to them.
To mitigate risk and comply with travel and transport regulations, we are currently hosting breaks at a reduced size (six to seven) instead of our usual groups of 12-14 children. While trying to fill the spots with older children on our books to ensure they are able to access a final break before they reach their 13th birthday, we prioritised those children we felt would benefit most from an early break.
The team at Honeypot House in Hampshire mainly targeted groups of children from Dorset and Hampshire, with a total of 40 young carers attending across five weekends. To cut down waiting times and to compensate for the reduced group sizes, our Hampshire team also organised two memory making days for another 20 children.
At our site in Mid-Wales, Pen y Bryn, the team hosted a total of four weekend breaks throughout August, with a total of 27 children attending. We are still recruiting new staff in Wales and hoping to resume Outreach days during October half-term.
Sheri, our Operations Manager in Wales, is exceptionally happy with how the new team at Pen y Bryn have worked together, highlighting each other’s strengths whilst creating wonderful activities and play choices for the children. Our two new Children’s Residential Support Workers, Nikki and Leanna, instantly settled into their role and have proved a massive support to Nikita.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the team and am really happy with how it went.”
We have expanded our team in Hampshire to help with the conducting of each break and we are so pleased that they have all performed brilliantly and gelled beautifully as a cohesive team. Our new members of the team have quickly and naturally internalised the best of Honeypot, while also bringing new skills and perspectives – for example Graham, our new CSL, taught five girls to skateboard in just one break – none had skateboarded before, and by the end of an afternoon they were positively flying along!
Our Honeypot Handyman has been working around the clock to bring the site back to, and beyond, what it has ever been. This includes tending to the grounds, and has installed a new slide on the galleon. There are further plans in place to make our young carers’ stay as welcoming and warm as possible. This also includes talk of new pet guinea pigs with a lovely enclosure for them, and new playground activities too!
Now we are looking forward to resuming our Social and Emotional Active Learning (SEAL) Residential Breaks in Hampshire later this month (first SEAL break starts 28th September). Over the past few months, the team has worked on a revised programme to achieve even greater impact – including a more structured pre- and post-break engagement with children, schools and families. All of our services have been revised and modified throughout the pandemic to create the most comprehensive range of support services we have ever offered.
A huge thank you to our incredible Operations Team for driving our mission forward: To help create happy childhood memories and build brighter futures for young carers.