We know how challenging it can be supporting a child with special needs. Our programs allow you as a caregiver, guardian or parent and others in the family to have a break – all while developing a young person’s abilities through interactive, hands on fun. Throughout the last 10 years running programs for youth, we’ve found that nature is the perfect vehicle for self development! Aside from our own experience, there is a HUGE amount of research to back this up.
A core part of what we do is facilitating friendships and strengthening bonds between participants and our activities are specifically designed to facilitate new connections, improving social skills, confidence and independence of participants. This gives our young people a chance to develop resilience and contribute to overcoming anxiety or other challengers. Ultimately, this supports young people to reach their full potential and grow into a happier person and be better equipped to face life’s inevitable future challenges.
We provide experiences that are hands-on, engaging for youth and are generally nature-based. We specifically do this ins a group environment so that our youth have the opportunity to grow with others, develop social skills, independence, confidence and resilience as well as experiencing something new and possibly falling in love with a new nature-based activity!
The vast majority of our campers and repeat campers and that is a testimony to how much fun the kids have, and the truly lifelong friendships that our camps forge!
With almost 10 years of experience facilitating nature-based programs for youth, our safety processes are second to none. Not only do we have a minimum 1:2 support staff to participant ratio, but we also have an additional ‘Program Coordinator’ who is a spare adult person, and we have a camp chef.
Our accommodation is almost always exclusively for our usage only (meaning no public stay on site with us) and we have a very high standard of staff supervision. Our risk management process and contingency planning is high level, for all activities and the tour in general. We even have staff with specialty training for certain medical considerations if required.
Our programs sign-up and registration process has been designed specifically for busy parents/guardians and support workers. We are ultimately here to provide guardians a break, and therefore the last thing we want to do is create more paperwork for you.
We have tried to make our sign up process as easy as possible and always welcome feedback to help improve it too!
Group Settings – A group setting has a huge rang of benefits compared to an individual mentoring or individual respite experience. Not only do we still have great support, but our camps offer:
- Interaction with others in their age group, which allows friendships to be formed, and social obstacles to be overcome > it’s the perfect supported environment to practice these skill set.
- If one of our support staff gets sick or injured during the program, we have extra/spare staff available at all times. This risk minimisation is not possible on 1:1 individual programs, additionally, this allows us to have 24/7 supervision (yes, even night shift).
- Our campers interact with multiple support staff, and some may find great common ground with not just 1 support worker, but possibly more.
- For home-schooled kids specifically, this provides a perfect substitute to a ‘typical school program’ that most children their age get to experience.
Note: 83.33% of our programs sell out before the ‘registration cut off date’, so make sure to book in advance if there is a specific program you wish to go on.
What is it like to be in one of our Programs?
Catering
We have a dedicated chef for each program, that is fully mobile. Paired with our small group sizes, this allow us to cater to individual dietary requirements (or preferences) incredibly well. With over 10 years of experience serving youth food – we know the crowd favourites and are super adaptable for even the most fussy eaters. A standard full day includes Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Dessert and a ‘grazing menu’ (snacks throughout the day). Any diet requirements can be handled, as long as we are notified through the Participant Registration Form.
Managing Risk:
Risk naturally occurs in every person’s daily life. While on program, our job is to control and manage that risk through considerable contingency planning and following our stringent safety policies and procedures. All participants have some form of medical considerations, and given that we are doing hands-on, nature based programs that are physically interactive, we have strict safety policies in place. Our team have been delivering youth programs for over 10 years – we are extremely experienced at reducing risk, while encouraging kids to break through their comfort zones in a supported environment.
Participant Progress Reports - for Accessible Adventure Plan Reviews:
Our programs provide a range of opportunities for participants to build skills in self-care, self management, community and social engagement, physical mobility, and much more! To assists you with your Accessible Adventure plan funding reviews, our team will provide you with a ‘Participant Progress Report’ after each program. This will detail the participant’s progress towards their NDIS goals, as well possible challenges to work on. This report is often helpful when it’s time for funding reviews!
