Mencap Summer Holiday
See images from this year's holiday.
Now in its twenty fourth year, the Mencap Week performs a major service to the community by providing a residential holiday for forty children with a range of learning disabilities. The team of eighty volunteers, which fills Wyatt and Kirkeby houses for the first week of August, is made up of current sixth formers and OO undergraduates, led by a team of professionals in the field of special education, all of whom have found their way into their careers through the Mencap Week.
The Week is now an incorporated society and independent charity in its own right. The leaders are its trustees, and it is affiliated to National Mencap and fully recognised for its exemplary safety record and excellence in caring for the children and giving them an unforgettably stimulating part of their childhood.
The beneficiaries are not only the children, many of whom return year after year, but also their parents, who are enabled to enjoy a holiday of their own with the rest of their family, secure in the knowledge that their children are in very safe hands, having the time of their lives. This is provided by the fact that the children are always cared for in groups, with a more than one to one ratio of seemingly tireless ‘elder brothers and sisters’, intent on making their day for them. The other, and possibly chief, beneficiaries are the volunteers, who, by giving of themselves to the limit, regularly feel that they have had one of the most fulfilling weeks of their lives.
This is arguably the strongest collective enterprise between the School and its OOs, and it has played an invaluable part in the careers of a large number of doctors and other health professionals, child psychologists and teachers in special needs education. The commitment of the team is extraordinary, and it has led to a year by year improvement in quality, keeping step with all the frequent legislation in the field, giving the young volunteers an exemplary introduction to child care. It would be singularly hard in the current climate to initiate another such enterprise elsewhere, but the Oundle week is recognised by Mencap as a centre of excellence, where others wishing to enter the field could be trained.
Richard Andrews
Visit the Oundle School Mencap Holiday website.