Four young adults from Ecclesbourne Lodge enjoyed a five day holiday in Penrhyn Bay, Anglesey. They stayed in a spacious bungalow with an open plan dining room, large lounge and spacious bedrooms. The beach was 5 minutes away, they visited the butterfly farm and enjoyed a lovely train ride around the mountains. They braved the weather well as there was only sunshine on the Monday, luckily they had plenty of games in house to occupy their time from puzzles, to hungry hippos. They also enjoyed good conversation and quiet time. The young people smiled a lot. They thoroughly enjoyed their time and showed a tremendous amount of independence.
A huge thank you to Laurel, Sean, Kayleigh, Dave O and Dawn for supporting on this holiday and making it a tremendous experience for all of them.
A big thank you to Sam and Mark (maintenance) who have been undertaking a lot of work here since the beginning of the year undertaking a refurbishment of Eagle House. Upstairs they have worked on three of the bedrooms for the young people, this involved taking down walls and completely refurbishing the interiors to a very high standard.
Downstairs they refurbished the kitchen into a modern more practical facility and also created a utility room for the young people to enhance their independent living skills. Their work has been excellent and they worked around the young people causing minimal disruption in the running of the house room and young peoples routines. The young people made them feel welcome and were always keen to see what they were doing and to put the kettle on.
Feedback from the young people and staff on the improvements has been excellent. Sam and Mark are back in the summer to replace some windows.
Two Alderwasley Sixth Form Centre Students and their teachers, Gaynor Wall and Lisa Robinson started their trip to Rotterdam on Monday 6th March.
We boarded the minibus which took us to Hull via Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield for lunch. We arrived in Hull at 4:00pm and boarded the ship (The Pride of Rotterdam) at 5:00pm and put our luggage in our cabins which were reasonable size but quite small compared to the hotel we stayed in later. Once we dropped our stuff in our cabins we then went to look round the ship before heading to dinner, the ship departed at 8:30pm and afterwards we enjoyed the on-board entertainment then went to bed, for me sleeping was easier than it was last time because the ship did not roll about on the waves as much as it did the first time we went in 2015.
The Pride of Hull herself was quite nice, its length was 706 feet and 10 inches which 176 feet shorter than the RMS Titanic and 123 feet and 9 inches shorter than the infamous German battleship Bismarck, it’s a roll-on roll-off car/lorry passenger ferry owned by P&O Ferries along with her sister ship the Pride of Rotterdam and does the run from Hull to Rotterdam.
Day 2:
When we arrived in Rotterdam it was spectacular and a place that since we went the first time round I have always described as “An Industrial Empire” as it is full of wonderful looking buildings because most of its historical architecture was destroyed by the Luftwaffe (The German Air force) in what has become known as ‘The Rotterdam Blitz’ during the Second World War (World War II).
Later on we checked into the Hotel Emma which in my opinion one of the best hotels I’ve ever been in and the rooms are really nice and has a wonderful view of the street and the beds felt like sleeping in heaven. After dropping our stuff we had a look round the city and went to have a look inside the massive indoor food market. We also went to the Maritime museum, inside the museum is a replica of platform of an oil rig and small ships outside.
Then we went and had chips for lunch. Then we went to a pancake shop, later in the day we went to an Italian restaurant for our evening meal, we had pizza and a chocolate pudding for dessert, afterwards we went back to the hotel and settled down for the night and I slept really well.
Day 3
The final day we were in Rotterdam we went back into the massive food market where people actually live in apartments above, we then went to an escape room where we had to escape from a replica section of Alcatraz which was fun, later we then we went for lunch at a pub where I had a club sandwich which had chicken and bacon in it with chips before returning to the hotel to collect our luggage and headed back to the europort to get the ship (this time The Pride of Rotterdam) back to England which set sail at 8:00pm whilst we were having dinner.
Later we had a look round the ship and then went back to our cabins where we played DC Superheroes Top Trumps and Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit. On the way back the sea was quite choppy so standing up was a bit weird but I managed to cope and I even slept better coming back than I did before so bonus.
Day 4:
When we got back to England we were all pretty tired and the trip back was really good. When we arrived back at Alderwasley it was about 12:30pm which was really nice which meant I could get to tell everyone about the trip. Later on we got our respective lifts home where I got the chance to tell my family all about the trip.
Over all I personally thought the trip to Rotterdam was good especially seeing the city in person and indulging ourselves in the culture but the best thing for me was basically everything. I enjoyed it all and while there were some good bits and bad bits (The ship rolling on the waves) but overall it was brilliant.
The SENAD Group have sponsored a community initiative for young people living the Chaddesden area of Derby. Sporting Communities helps young people to engage with sports and through this helps tackle anti social behaviour. They use public buildings and open park spaces to provide activities for young people to enjoy, engage and network with each other. Doing this helps to create a more prosperous, cohesive and integrated community.
Also working in partnership with SENAD and Sporting Communities are Pattonair Logistics, based in the City. The funding received from SENAD and Pattonair will enable Sporting Communities to run their project for 20 weeks. The project is being championed by Chaddesden Ward Councillor, Jonathan Smale.
Pictured left to right are representatives from Pattonair, the Sporting Communities Team, Councillor Jonathan Smale and Jenny Fearn Group Marketing Manager and Richard Atkinson Financial Director from the SENAD Group.
For more information about Sporting Communities visit: www.sportingcommunitiescic.org
Alderwasley Hall Sixth Form Centre Student, JM was one of three Level 3 Horticultural Diploma students asked to take the presentation of an engraved hand fork presented by The Derbyshire National Garden Scheme to the Broomfield Colleges Gardens & Plant Centre to mark its 20th year of being in business.
Aran Hall School have achieved an overall judgement score of ‘Good’ on both their current performance and their prospects for improvement in their recent education Inspection. The inspection, which took place in April, was carried out by Estyn, the Welsh Inspectorate for Education and Training in Wales.
The school based in Dolgellau, Gwynedd provides education, care and therapy for pupils who have a range of learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorder and associated significant challenging behaviours and sexualised behaviour. Prior to joining the school most young people have been out of education for long periods of time and have experience previous placement breakdowns. The school works with young people aged 11 to 19 years and offers 38 to 52 week placement’s, to meet individual needs.
The inspection report looks at key questions:
1)How good are the outcomes?
2)How good is the provision?
3)How good is the leadership and management?
The report confirmed that the pupils make outstanding progress in managing their behaviour. They gain the confidence to try new activities, increase their engagement in learning and develop their communication and social skills, enabling them to take part in activities within the wider community.
The inspectors also commented that the school provides exceptionally high levels of care, support and guidance for its pupils.This includes effective procedures to support pupils’ medical and therapy needs. Staff are highly trained on working with young people on relationships, managing risk and behaviour.
The school was also rated excellent in its work to develop strategic partnerships with external agencies that enhance the pupils learning experience and life skills development. This includes the development of partnerships with parents, helping to develop and maintain young people’s relationships with family and friends wherever possible. There are also highly effective links with higher education institutions that support training and development of the schools innovative behaviour management programme with other schools.
Brian Jones, Chief Executive Officer of the SENAD Group joined delegates at the Conductive Education Professional Education Group (CEPEG) 12th annual conference which took place at the Curve Theatre on March 11th. The conference, titled Conductive Education is our Superpower! was hosted by Leicestershire’s conductive education centre Steps and attracted 150 delegates from across the UK.
CEPEG is a professional group that supports the development and practice of conductive Education throughout the UK. Conductive education, which derives from the Peto Institute in Hungary, is a non- medical based developmental aid, which promotes independence for those with conditions like cerebral palsy and is not routinely offered by the NHS. Cerebral Palsy is the most common form of childhood disability affecting 30,000 children in the UK. Conductive Education is one of the few developmental opportunities available, but is not widely known about within the medical profession and society as a whole. There are around 13 Conductive Education centres in the UK, including Steps.
Brian delivered round table discussion titled ‘The acceptance of Conductive Education in the wider world.’ the discussion explored why conductive education remains relatively unknown despite being present in the UK since the 1960’s.
The Right worshipful Lord Mayor of Leicester Councillor Stephen Corrall opened the conference Steps Patron Rosemary Conley CBE gave the welcome speech.
For more information visit –www.stepscentre.org or www.cepeg.org.uk
Susie Bateman, Work Experience Coordinator at Rowden House School has developed an excellent work experience programme. She has made strong links with local businesses and farms to create a broad portfolio of placement options for the students to choose from.
Susie works closely with the students supporting their choices and facilitating each work experience placement.
The work experience gives students an opportunity to transfer their learning into the wider community, making a positive contribution to the area in which they live. It also enables members of the local community to learn more about Rowden House School and see how positively the students can react to a stimulating and enjoyable activity.
A Rowden House Student was invited into the School Kitchen for National Pizza Day. As part of his daily living skills scheme of work he had to plan a meal for a specific event. Silver class devised a list of different toppings for the pizza and designed posters for the site.
We arrived in time for lunch. The view from the restaurant enabled us to see the main memorial, which was a circular monument situated on top of a small hill. From here we could plan our route around site.
The main monument housed incredible bronze sculptures that dominated the floor space. It was sobering to see that half of the memorial wall space was left blank, awaiting the arrival of future casualties in wars to come. This monument was dedicated to service men and woman who have died in conflicts since 1945.
We passed trees that had a disc on them dedicated to a fallen soldier. An entire avenue was dedicated to fallen Police men and women and another large memorial was focused on the great debt that we all owe to the Polish people during WW2.
CF mentioned that on a previous visit he saw a German army unit on full parade performing their own respect ceremony for the fallen and they visit the memorial once every 10 years.
After visiting many more of the memorials we decided to warm up with a drink before heading back home.
