Aims

The Desborough Playden aims to provide an Out of School social play club targeting children with additional needs. Desborough’s provision is specifically aimed at children aged from 5 to 12 who have a disability. These disabilities can be very wide ranging. Currently children attending the club include children with the following conditions:

• Autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs)
• Language and communication difficulties
• Downs syndrome
• Fragile X
• Cerebral palsy
• Aquired Brain Injury
• ADHD
 

The Playden provides care for 15 children in two sessions every Saturday. Morning sessions last from 9.00am to 12:30pm and afternoon sessions from 1.30 to 5pm. Children are able to attend either or both sessions. Children can attend every week, once a fortnight or once a month, depending on suitability or the family. Because of the conditions of the children attending the club staff supervision is at the ratio of 1:2.
The aim of the Playden is to offer the children an opportunity to attend regular sessions where activities are very much based on social integration and play development. All of the children benefit from the routine that the Playden provides and though many have taken a long time to settle in, they are all beginning to enjoy their time. They now join in with group activities and for the more able, real friendships are being formed. When initially they came to the Playden they looked forward to playing with the toys, now they look forward to seeing other children.

Objectives
 

Many families with a child with special needs experience social isolation. The objectives of the Playden is to offer many benefits for them. These include:

• Enabling parents to spend time with their other siblings in activities, which would be impossible to enjoy if the child with special needs was with them.

• Giving parents a time of respite. Caring for a child with special needs is a 24/7 job and there is much higher incidence of parents with children with special needs separating or divorcing than the national average. Many parents use this time to spend time together.

• Providing care for parents who need to work at weekends and find it extremely difficult to find appropriate care for their child. Playden is OFSTED registered and so is able to offer a full day session for a child, whose parents need that help.

• Enabling siblings of children with special needs to spend time with their brother or sister especially if they attend a different school. In other circumstances, siblings find it difficult to mix with their brother or sister because of peer pressure from their own friends, who might not understand their difficulties. In these situations the Playden is able to offer siblings a place so that both children can enjoy time together in a safe and secure environment.