Fun in the sun for Tigh Abaid

As the nights begin to draw in, Holly Earl, Senior Residential Support Worker reminisces about a summer to remember at Tigh Abaid .   

“We kicked things off at the start of the summer by having a house meeting with the young people so they could decide what they wanted to do. To ensure everyone had their say, the team used each young person’s preferred communication style such as PECS, social stories, Makaton, and for some of our young people, they were happy to sit at a computer with us and look at places they wanted to visit.   

One of the young people said they wanted to go to the beach, so a day trip to Skegness was organised.  The young people enjoyed the rides, chose their own souvenirs from the gift shop, and played in the sand all day.      

For National Afternoon Tea Day, one of our young people made scones, she got the ingredients by following the pack instructions. To help develop her speech, we were singing as she was adding and mixing the ingredients together. She can lack confidence when speaking and talks very quietly so we encouraged her to sing really loudly, which was a huge achievement for her. Baking was great for sensory as well because she was rubbing the dough in between her fingers and squelching it with her hands. We were really impressed with her scones!    

Everybody in the home got involved in the tea party preparations, some of the other young people made sandwiches and went to the shop and chose nibbles. We really enjoyed sitting in the garden on the picnic blanket listening to everyone’s favourite songs.  It was a great opportunity to bring us all together and enjoy the great outdoors.   

We also arranged a movie night, using PECS the young people decided what takeaway they wanted and which film they wanted to watch. They chose a BIG selection of pizzas from Dominos and enjoyed a screening of Shrek. It was such a simple idea, but it was such a big hit.   

In celebration of Pride we did loads of activities including making rainbow art displays and naming all the rainbow colours as we went along. We also did some social stories explaining how it’s ok for people men to like men, and women to like women.   

We planned a birthday party for one young person who was turning 11. He is verbal so we had a conversation with him to try and expand his sentences to find out how he wanted to celebrate.  From decorations, to music and what cake he wanted, he made all the big decisions for his big birthday bash. After his party planning he ended up speaking longer sentences and specifically asked for red balloons. I don’t think we’ll be in a hurry to listen to the Crazy Frog song again anytime soon, but his birthday party was a huge success as he was flapping his arms and playing with all the balloons.  

We rounded off the summer with a very long walk around the National Trust site, Clumber Park, and rewarded ourselves with a picnic at the end.”