Claire Miller’s sons Sam and Harry are autistic. Her 11-month-old baby may also have autism – she’s waiting for a diagnosis. She cares for her children and her husband, who has schizophrenia. She says her family would fall apart without the support she receives from the Surrey-based charity Disability Challengers. “They have been my lifeline. Challengers is the only respite we have from the children,” says Miller.

She drives 100 miles each day during the school holidays to the charity’s play centre. It provides the specialist care that Sam needs, and he feels secure there. His choice was limited after a local children’s home for challenging behaviour rejected the 11-year-old for being too difficult.

From within a cluster of Portakabins in Guildford, Disability Challengers is brewing a quiet revolution. “Disabled young people are one of the most disenfranchised groups in society because they are systematically excluded,” says its chief executive, Ric Law. “It’s the common experience of a family with a disabled child to fight for pretty much everything they need.”

There is no national strategy to provide play and leisure services to Britain’s 770,000 disabled children, but Law believes that his charity offers a template for the country. Disability Challengers spearheads a consortium of four Surrey charities (the others are White Lodge Centre, Redhill YMCA and Link Leisure), which work with the local authority to provide play and leisure to 1,000 of the county’s 4,000 disabled children. Despite the scale of the initiative, there is always a waiting list.

The charity’s main centre in Guildford and its schemes across the county offer one-to-one and two-to-one care during Easter, summer and at weekends. Disabled and non-disabled children can take part in activities such as trampolining, climbing and samba drumming.

For Keiko Conway, whose family support network is in Japan, the facilities offer much needed respite. Conway’s eight-year-old son, Shaun, has a metabolic disorder and uses a wheelchair. He needs constant supervision. “We are so lucky because I can’t be with Shaun the whole day,” she says. “This gives us time to be with our younger son, Adam, and I have time too.”

The pilot scheme, in its third and final year, enjoys a robust relationship with Surrey county council – which funds 50% of its costs – at a time when the government is pushing for partnerships between the voluntary and state sectors. “We and the local authority have developed a strategy to provide a base level of provision of play and leisure services at times when they are most urgently needed, in the school holidays and at weekends,” says Law.

A staff of five act as scouts, snapping up derelict or disused buildings in the area to convert them into play and youth facilities. They have so far borrowed or acquired 12 such places. Law says the infrastructure and capacity afforded by the partnership, through the consortium and with the council, gives it a flexibility and responsiveness that smaller charities cannot replicate.

Andrew Crisp, executive member for schools, children and youth services at Surrey county council, says the partnership has added capacity to the council’s play services, tapping income streams from corporates, trusts and individuals that would not have otherwise been accessible to a local authority. The council was so impressed with the scheme that last year it gave up a lucrative property deal to sell a redundant school building. Instead, it accepted Challenger’s bid for £0.5m less because the charity’s strategy dovetailed with its own.

Last month, the economic secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, launched a review of disability services for children and young people to feed into the comprehensive spending review next year. Balls acknowledged that there was a desperate need for better coordinated local services.

Challengers has got the Surrey MP and shadow minister for disabled people, Jeremy Hunt, onside. He said he would use the charity’s expertise to develop the Conservative party’s national leisure strategy for young disabled people.

Law believes that introducing non-disabled children into a disabled play environment will “civilise” future generations to be tolerant. His vision of inclusiveness will be realised in an ambitious £3m play centre in Farnham, to be completed next year. It will deliver 18,000 full-time places by first catering to disabled children. Once filled, half of the remainder will go to those without disabilities.

“What we have in Surrey is … a demonstrably successful partnership [that] we believe should be replicated in every county in the UK. Otherwise families of disabled children are being pushed to the brink of collapse.”

Anita Pati
Wednesday August 30, 2006

Guardian