Additional Needs Provision

Mactaggart Leisure Centre wants to ensure that every child has the opportunity to experience water, have fun, learn to swim and increase their physical activity. To this end, we have implemented “pods”, awarded free swim passes to ASN families, have built a bespoke learn to swim programme and encouraged older children with additional needs to volunteer at the centre.

 Pods

We currently run three pods a week. Two of these comprise the whole pool and one is half of the pool. These pods are reserved for children with the most severe additional needs. For these children, being part of a public session, with a busy, loud pool hall is impossible and these pods are the only way they can experience the pool in a positive way. The half pool pod allows public into one half, with the pod side reserved for the child. This means they still get some interaction with the public but always know they have the safety of their own pod. It also means the pool in general is going to be quieter as less people will be able to get into the public pool. These children all seem to love these pods. It becomes a part of their routine and they get to know the staff on poolside, leading to increased social interaction.

Free Swim Passes

Families with ASN children can apply for a swim pass that entitles them to one free swim per week. Families with ASN children often experience more pronounced financial hardship as quite often, in particular on Islay, at least one parent has to give up work to care for their child. These passes mean there is no financial barrier to these families with regards coming to the pool for fun, activity and relaxation.

 Learn to swim

Children finding themselves on the higher functioning end of additional needs quite often need extra help during learn to swim lessons. We have two ways of helping these children. We have started to put on extra swim teachers with extra training in ASN learn to swim to act as a learning support for certain children. These children can then remain part of mainstream lessons and have the extra support available when they need it. For those children that do continue to struggle, we have specific ASN sessions running on Fridays. These are one to one sessions with a trained teacher which are designed to give a boost to these children to get them back into mainstream lessons.

 Older Children

We can offer a small number of volunteer places for ASN children and adults. For example, we currently have a young adult who helps with our 50+ soup and sandwiches session. This helps to get her out of the house, boost ability in tasks of daily living, increase social contact with people outside of her family and provide something to do. Her help also frees up the project manager to be able to do other work, so is a very appreciated volunteer every week.

Case Study

This case study has been written from a conversation with Child A’s mother. Child A is 7 years old and is currently going through the diagnosis journey for Autism. This presents mainly as hyperactivity and speech delays.

We were unaware of the ASN sessions available at the pool. Our NHS family support worker let us know about Mactaggart Leisure Centre’s ASN pool sessions and referred us into the project. From there, the project manager got in touch for an initial conversation. He asked us some questions about Child A and from then suggested that a pod on Wednesday early afternoon would be the most suitable session the pool could offer.

At first Child A would not go into the pool at all. He didn’t seem scared and he loves the bath and the beach so we thought this might be due to the new environment. The pool is quite echoey and can be loud at times which may have put him off in the past when we went to a full public session. This continued for the first few weeks. Eventually Child A allowed me to approach and I got him to sit on the steps. This lead to him being lifted partially off the steps until eventually he was comfortable being lifted completely and being cuddled by me.

Fast forward to now, and his confidence has soared. He now goes into the pool by himself and is happy floating out of his depth with armbands. In fact, he now does not like me coming near him to hold him as he wants to float by himself! He will venture to the 1m mark and is able to lie on his front and kick his legs. He will also float vertically and “bicycle kick” to move around. Before he was constantly aware of other people in the pool but now he doesn’t seem phased at all if there are others around. Child A is in a pod with two other children with the same condition and we think that has helped. He is now fine with the noise in the pool hall.

Both the support worker and the project manager believe Child A is ready for the next step. He is going to be placed on the waiting list for a Friday afternoon, where the pool have one to one ASN learn to swim sessions with a qualified swim teacher. The eventual goal is to assimilate Child A into the mainstream learn to swim programme and get him swimming confidently. This will be done carefully and at his own pace. This will come with added benefits of Child A having to interact with other adults and give the parents some much needed respite.

We have seen Child A’s confidence grow since starting the pool sessions. When he comes into the village he gets really excited because he realizes where he is going. It is a highlight for his week and also helps us with breaking the week up. He races to get changed! His condition means he has a short attention span and finding things to keep him occupied can be challenging.