Drama and Health Intervention Project
Information about the School
Ty Gwyn is part of the Western Learning Federation that works alongside Riverbank and Woodlands school. Ty Gwyn School is a special school in the Cardiff local authority. There are 222 pupils on roll aged 3-19. All pupils are identified as having additional learning needs. The additional learning needs of pupils are varied, around 36% of pupils are autistic and a further 35% have physical and medical difficulties. The remaining pupils have a variety of learning difficulties including profound and multiple learning difficulties, severe learning difficulties, moderate and general learning difficulties. In addition, a few pupils have sensory impairments.
There are 29 classes at the schools, one of which is a nursery class. 45.8% of pupils are eligible for free school meals.
32% of pupils have English as an additional language which is considerably above the national average of 6%.
Context and Background
The aim behind our Expressive Arts Project was to use the arts, in particular drama, to help to reduce anxiety surrounding medical appointments, real life events and develop life skills for the pupils within Ty Gwyn School.
Many of our pupils have complex learning needs and health needs and they often attend a variety of health-related appointments. This can be a highly anxious time for both pupils and parents alike, as too can appointments such as visiting the hairdressers, dentist and opticians. In addition, everyday activities such as getting dressed and going shopping can also present a challenge for some of our pupils. Supporting pupils to develop life skills is a key priority across the school.
We provide pupils with opportunities to explore the objects they may encounter during these visits. We use drama and other creative activities to prepare them for future appointments.
Description
Our approach was developed in conjunction with psychologists, school nurses and colleagues from the learning and disabilities team. We discussed the challenges that our pupils and families face in attending appointments and how we could make their experiences less traumatic.
We created a bank of activities and resources that were used to desensitise pupils for visits to for example, the doctors, dentists, hairdressers and shopping trips. Activities created included sensory drama scripts, role play ideas, art activities, sensology sessions, sensory circuits, social stories and music activities. The school nursing team also helped to make videos to demonstrate being weighed and measured, taking a temperature and having blood pressure monitored.
The activities are available for all classes to use in a way to best suit their classes.
Some of the resources we ordered included specially made dolls that reflected some of the medical conditions our pupils for example, dolls with nasal gastrostomies, stoma bags, diabetes kits. We also used replicas of some of the equipment used by the school nurses such as height charts and scales, dolls clothes, hairdressers’ clippers, food and shopping resources and much more! The nurses were able to provide out of date, unused equipment such as syringes, feeding tubes and empty medication boxes for pupils to explore during sessions, and we have also had a range of fancy dress clothing kindly donated by staff and parents.
Impact
The drama room has provided pupils with a space to engage in sensory drama, role play sessions and explore a wide range of resources based on what they may encounter during real-life appointments. They can do this in a safe and predictable environment, and we hope that given time a positive change in the level of anxiety will be seen for pupil’s attending appointments.
We have strengthened the relationship with our colleagues in health. This in turn has a beneficial impact on the pupils within Ty Gwyn.
Delivering training workshops gave staff the opportunity to discuss how they may use our approach, activities and resources for pupils within their class and how they too could benefit.
The project is still evolving and there is a lot of scope for growth and the continuation of new ideas. We look forward to and encourage the continued growth that there is within the project and for the continued positive impact it can have on pupils, their families and Ty Gwyn School.