An account from SENAD Community ( Coventry) Team Leader, Ian Lineker who supports one of his Service users to go on holiday…

For the last 15 years we have been supporting a service user to go on holiday. We have been to many places over the years, the United States, Africa on safari twice, Spain too many times to mention, and Turkey but to name a few.

Our routine is that we support him to go to the travel agency in January, he picks where he wants to go and he arranges to pay the balance of the holiday. We ensure that the travel agent has included all that he needs at the hotel, such as a walk in shower, entertainment in the evening and plenty of space/local attractions to walk around during the day.

This year he decided he wanted to go back to Lanzarote, we went last year and knew the area well. The weather was a bit poor for the first week and we spent a lot of time exploring the local area. In the evening we had a walk out to different bars and enjoyed the entertainment. We had a lot of late nights….and late mornings.

An example of a typical day (or not as the case may be) is when we were out one day and he decided that he would like to go on a bike- the four wheeled type. So we did, it was really hard work but really enjoyable and we met some really nice people on our journey.

We also visited a place called Texas Rancho Park in Lanzarote, which has of different animals that he really enjoys. We had something to eat and spent the day exploring the park using a wheelchair. He enjoyed getting in and out of the wheelchair to see the different animals.

We also visited a very large sea life centre twice. He liked handling different things and spent some time chilling by the pool watching the world go by.

Although I was concerned this year as his mobility has deteriorated over the years, there were no incidents of falls and it was a lovely holiday, in fact he enjoyed it so much he has already started planning his next one.