For many years, Growing Hope has been equipping churches on how best to support children with additional needs and their families, to ensure they feel seen, heard and have a sense of belonging. We offer accessibility training and audits for churches through personalised consultation and can train volunteers to run peer support groups for parents and siblings.
"Growing Hope’s Accessibility Award has made our church’s work more visible to others, particularly on Sundays in our worship. We’ve been able to offer new families with children of additional needs the much-needed support they need, and parents know that their child is well supported in one of our children’s groups."
Activity
You will be helping families with additional needs to process what this means for their life. Specifically, you will be running When Dreams Change (for parents) or Siblings Group (for siblings).
You can also invite Growing Hope experts to advise on how to improve your welcome of children and young people with additional needs, or to receive an Accessibility Award.
Time
The projects can take place at any time, bookings tend to be required one-three months in advance.
Cost
• Church training: £350 + travel
• Accessibility Award: £500 + travel
• When Dreams Change (support for parents) facilitator training: from £390 for two people
• Siblings Groups (support for parents) facilitator training: from £442 for two people
Partnership
The Siblings Group is a fantastic resource that churches can offer to schools. Sometimes schools can refer children to Siblings Groups. There may be other opportunities for the church to partner with local SEND groups.
Support
We are asking for this MicroGrant to provide training to churches. We’re also looking for volunteer trainers – we would provide the training.
For When Dreams Change and Siblings Group, we will provide comprehensive handbooks, and for Siblings Group all equipment needed to run the course, including puppets and a scooter board.
Resources
None, however, once they have completed training, churches will probably want to invest in accessibility resources such as fidgets, sensory tent, therapy balls etc.
People
Each When Dreams Change course and Siblings Group needs to be led by 2x trained facilitators. For accessibility training, we’d encourage church leaders to invite as many people within their congregation as possible to ignite culture change. Welcome is a whole-church business.
Replications
Growing Hope: Enhancing welcome for children and families with additional needs has:
Replications
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