Annual Report 2003-4
Director's Report
for the period 1 Sept 2003 to 31 Aug 2004
This has been a really excellent year for Children's World, with a great deal of high-quality work taking place. More than 12,000 child-sessions were undertaken in schools and special schools, and feedback from children and teachers has been extremely positive.
Tours
As usual we undertook three major tours for children with special needs in Somerset and (what was) Avon -
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a Drama & Creative Play Tour for children with severe learning difficulties & complex difficulties;
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a Drama & Video Tour on the theme of "Behaviour" for children with moderate learning difficulties & emotional & behavioural difficulties;
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and an integrational Puppetry Workshop Weeks Tour for special schools and their neighbouring mainstream schools.
All three six-week Tours were extremely well received, with schools' staff saying they felt their pupils had benefited a great deal from the workshops. (We were also commissioned, for the second time, to undertake a Workshop Week for two Liverpool special schools and their neighbouring mainstream school. This Week went extremely well, and we have been re-booked for a third visit in 2005. If we can find some more well-paid out-of-area commissions of this sort, it could really help Children's World's finances, and we are exploring this possibility.)
Mainstream Schools
Now that more and more children with special needs are being included in mainstream education, and now that more and more children generally seem to be displaying behavioural difficulties, we are undertaking even more workshops in mainstream schools under the PSHE umbrella, particularly addressing
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Bullying
- Peer Pressure
- Team-Building
- Problem-Solving
- Integration
- Inclusion
- Transition.
All our workshops, whatever their specific theme, are "fun!", and they aim to bring out the best in children, raising their self-confidence and self-esteem, and encouraging respect for self and others.
Out of Schools
Due to our busy term-time touring and the constant need for preparation, monitoring & assessment, less out-of-schools work was undertaken than in previous years - but, as well as staging workshop days for
Scope and the
Downs' Children's Association and a free Children's World 23rd Birthday Party for about 400 children, we ran two extremely successful summer events -
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our 5th Bristol Children's Festival
- our 23rd Glastonbury Children's Festival
which provided huge amounts of performance, participation and fun for more than 10,000 people, while raising much-needed funds for the our special needs workshops.
A Great Year
So, all in all, a great year! We are particularly pleased that so many schools and outside agencies, including Social Services,
Scope and the
Somerset Children's Fund, are calling on Children's World's services and commissioning us to undertake specific workshops on their behalf. It has taken a long time for Children's World's work to be fully appreciated. We believe that the Charity's work is unique and we are absolutely delighted that, at last, Children's World's work is receiving the respect it deserves.
Plans for 2004-5
We look forward to the year ahead with eager anticipation, and expect to develop both the quantity and the quality of our work even further. As well as the 3 regular Special Needs Tours that we will undertake in the coming year, we have been commissioned to run an ongoing Inclusion Consultancy with children from a mainstream school and its adjacent special school which are planning to merge, and we have many bookings for our Anti-Bullying Workshops. More & more schools and groups are asking us to devise workshops to address specific problems they have, and we find this challenge very exciting & rewarding.
CD Package
At long last, we are on the verge of publishing our "Inclusive, Interactive CD Package", and we will be distributing 400 copies, free of charge, to both special schools and mainstream schools with high percentages of children with special educational needs, in early 2005 - we hope that they will prove to be of real value.
Do please try to find the time to read the following reports on the different areas of Children's World's work - and do please find time to read the many extremely positive quotes from schools' staff, and others, explaining why they believe Children's World's work to be of such importance to their children.
Arabella Churchill,
Director, Children's World |
Giving