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 A club open to anyone who owns a Piper-built boat |
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A club open to anyone who owns a Piper-built boat |
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Special Boating by Les Symonds |
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For the last 15 years, Sally and I have worked in the Snowdonia National
Park at a residential special school which houses young people between the ages
of 11 and 19. Our school’s speciality is two-fold, in that we cater for both
learning disability and high levels of challenging behaviour. Indeed, for a
young person to end up in our care, he will have already exhausted his home
authority’s in-county provision and will have developed levels of disruptive or
aggressive behaviour that they can no longer cope with. A natural progression to our early Boatcraft was that we moved to a canal-based environment, principally for safety reasons, but also so that we could run the activity throughout the year and not be subject to the limiting factors of wind and tide. |
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In December of 2007 we were featured in the ‘Me and My boats’ element of
a national magazine, but this article concentrated on the way in which Sally and
I had progressed to narrow boating, just touching on the work that we do with
our students. This time, we want to concentrate on how boating has played a
significant part in the lives of some of these young people. We pride ourselves
in the fact that every student in our care, despite some very challenging
behaviours, has been on at least one boat trip, whilst others visit the canal
several times each season. |
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I should state at this point, that, working with young people in care,
we’re bound by issues of confidentiality. The names of each of the
students photographed for this article have been changed, and parents
have consented to the use of their photos and of my telling their story.
He
loved the activity and, as his behaviour gradually changed, he even made
it into the restaurant at the marina. This was amazing for a young man
who hadn’t been to a café for five years, who had never been to a pub or
restaurant, and who lacked the sort of social contact that we all take
for granted. Boatcraft was even used as a way of familiarising Gareth
with staff from his new adult placement, who came on a boat trip with
him one afternoon and it was amazing to see two relative strangers
sitting on the foredeck with him, without a care in the world. |
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As a
way of helping these young people to change their behaviours and adapt a
lifestyle through which they can access the wider community, we strive to enrich
their lives with ‘normal’ experiences that many of us take for granted: that’s
where boating comes in. We first introduced Boatcraft to our curriculum thirteen
years ago, when we owned a splendid old, wooden bass fishing launch with an
inboard Stuart Turner petrol engine. We would organise trips on a tidal estuary
and we soon realised that this activity held something special for the troubled
minds that we were working with.
Gareth came to us a few years ago; he was a big lad even then and he had
learnt to use that bulk as a means of getting what he wanted.
Essentially he was a sociable person, enjoying meeting people and
communicating with them. He has virtually no speech and he found it
difficult to express his excitement in an appropriate way, so he either
slapped or spat at people – if you were unlucky, you were subjected to
both. Sitting out on the foredeck gave Gareth an excellent way of waving
to people as they passed by, and of calling a muffled ‘Hello!’ to them,
without the anxiety of close contact that caused him to resort to the
inappropriate behaviour that usually accompanied such a greeting.
Next
we meet Martin, who came to us when he was 16. He had formerly been
living with support staff, but with no other people of his own age,
isolated from the community due to high levels of aggression. Martin
lived with us for nearly three years, during which time his aggression
diminished and he began to access the community on a daily basis. His
aggression had been so intense that he once demolished a whole set of
toilet cubicles with his bare hands, even smashing the toilet cisterns.
Martin learnt to communicate with staff about his anxiety and fears and
as a result, he too began to visit cafes and restaurants. On the day of
his first visit to the canal he accompanied staff, walking along the
towpath towards Otter, but when he arrived at the boat he attempted to
walk past in an attempt to shun the activity. 
There are many such stories of our students overcoming tremendous
difficulties in their efforts to play a more meaningful role in society,
but few can be as rewarding for us as the story of Ian. Ian’s learning
disability was not as profound as many of the students we work with;
however, his behavioural difficulties were such that he had been placed
in secure care with us. He showed a great interest in working with us
when we restored Otter, volunteering to undertake many of the less
pleasant jobs, like scrubbing back the rust and cleaning the engine
bilge. Not only was Ian good at getting the work done on the boat, but
also he became skilled at driving and operating a boat in general. This
we discovered before we bought Otter, when we were still using an old
Dawncraft cruiser for Boatcraft. Ian appeared to be so skilled at
driving that we booked him onto a two-day Inland Waterways Helmsmans’
Certificate course, which he passed with flying colours. In deed, we
believe that he is the first learning disability student to achieve this
award.