Students from Bladon House School have been learning to sail at Burton Sailing Club. The six week courses are backed by £500 of Sports Across Staffordshire Sportivate funding.

Over the past two years the sailing club has successfully developed a bespoke scheme for working with children and young people with Special Educational Needs, providing a range of activities where they can safely experience sensory and emotional stimulation and have fun.

The course has significantly helped to develop students communication skills and increase their confidence and independence.

Our wonderful catering team at Pegasus School have achieved a five star rating on their hygiene inspection last week.

The inspector noted that the standards have become much more challenging and she rarely hands out five stars – so well done to Darren, Sheela and Yvonne!!

The SENAD Team are celebrating being granted a NAPPI Centre of Excellence Award after demonstrating that their NAPPI training exceeds the rigorous requirements of the BILD Code.

The SENAD Group have been working with NAPPI for the past three years and now use NAPPI across four of the groups schools and all transition services, adult residential provision and community support services.

What is NAPPI and how does it work?

NAPPI stands for Non Abusive Psychological and Physical Intervention.

It gives us a pro-active approach to promoting positive behaviour. Our aim is to reduce and eliminate the need to use physical intervention wherever possible.

All staff are fully trained in NAPPI. Proactive and preventative approaches are always used in dealing with problematic behaviours, but at the same time we challenge the young people and adults to ensure they are fulfilling their potential. NAPPI helps us to develop approaches to manage challenging behaviour in a reactive way to keep the individual and others safe from immediate harm. It also helps us to manage the positive aspects of a person’s life and reduce challenging behaviours by providing enrichment across three main categories; Caring Community, Productivity and High Quality Relaxation.

Using NAPPI all students and residents has a Red, Amber and Green Lalemand scale, which is a holistic behaviour support plan.

The Red scale gives a consistent way of dealing with a resident’s behaviour and clear guidelines on what should and should not be done. We do use specific trained NAPPI physical interventions to ensure people are kept safe. However every intervention, and in fact every incident, is closely monitored by the Registered Manager, as well as the onsite NAPPI trainers. We believe in a transparent approach so all incident records are shared with parents/carers and any other significant person in the person’s life.

The Amber scale focuses on the person’s stress factors, those factors of an individual’s life that can cause them to move towards challenging behaviour. By recognising and understanding these, we are able to support the individual to manage stress in a more positive way.

Challenging behaviours have a function, to seek or avoid something either sensory, tangible activity or attention. By assessing the functions of behaviour our approaches and responses become more person specific and proactive.

The Green scale focuses on those areas that make a person’s life worth living. By providing meaningful activities, we can enrich a person’s life and build their self-esteem. The best way to stay safe is to build a strong relationship with those around us. The time to build relationships is when people are doing well; the best way to extend that time is to enrich their life.

For more information about NAPPI please visit nappiuk.com

The sun shone, the band played, friends, family & members of the local community came and enjoyed themselves during the afternoon.

One student received his nationally acclaimed art award from our local MP, Bill Wiggin.  Two other young people received recognition for all the hard work & effort they put in to making a Disney themed float, prizes presented by our local Community Support Officers. And one lucky lady, Ann won the grand raffle prize of a hot air balloon flight.

The day was a huge success not only for our guests but for the young people and residents who reside at West Midlands Learning Campus.

A big thank you to all the volunteers who gave up their free time on Friday & Saturday to ensure the day was a huge success and a special ‘thank you’ to all the local businesses who kindly donated gifts for our Grand Raffle.

On behalf of everyone at West Midlands Learning Campus ‘thank you’ for sharing your day with us; we hope you will join us again soon.

Young people at Bladon House School have been enjoying a PJ and Movie Night and a Bank Holiday trip to the seaside. Both activities were requested by the young people at their House Meetings.

House Meetings are held regularly and offer all the young people living in the house the opportunity to have a voice. Young people are supported to have their thoughts and opinions heard by their Key Worker. All sorts of topics can be discussed including activities and trips they would like to do or things they would like to change in the home.

These meetings also used to remind young people of important messages such as which staff are in the safeguarding team or what to do if they are worried.

Members of Ecclesbourne Allotment Committee and students from the University of Derby have been busy fundraising for money to put towards their Garden Grooves Summer Festival, which is taking place in July this year.

A cake sale, organised by Derby University students, Claude and Jack, was held at the University’s Kedleston Road campus in April. The sale raised £118. Students and residents were supported by Pegasus Schools Catering Manager, Darren and their Support Workers.

A fundraising football tournament was organised by a Pegasus School student committee member who worked with University of Derby Student, Gareth. The Pegasus School team competed against three teams of university sports students. Pegasus won one game 5-0, before narrowly losing the semi-final 3-2. A Pegasus student won the Golden Boot Award for the most goals scored, as well as player of the tournament.

Winslow Court are having thier first Art Exhibition (Winslow Court & Herefordshire Community Homes).

The exhibition will be held at:
Oxenham Art Gallery, 39 High Street, Leominster, HR6 8LZ,

On Saturday 9th May 2015, between 11.00am & Midday.

The exhibition will then run until Wednesday 20th May 2015.

For further information & directions, please visit: www.oxenhamart.co.uk