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We recently received a generous donation of £3,600 from the Greater Manchester High Sheriff's Police Trust, which enabled us to purchase 20 LuSu Sports KitBags for our children and young people to use during our CADS events.

Due to COVID19 we have moved our CADS events into the digital world, setting up a Facebook group so those children and young people who participate in the sporting activities don’t miss out. The LuSu KitBags will really help the team at Seashell deliver the new format of CADS to individuals isolating at home.

Hayley Whitehouse is a parent/carer of five children, all of whom have a special education need or disability aged between 2 and 14 years old.

Hayley is a member of the SEND board in Stockport and also a parent/carer representation for PACTS Stockport’s parent and carer forum.

Hayley and her family were part of an initial review of the LUSU equipment bag for families at home. They have had the bag for a few weeks, which we delivered at the beginning of the UK lockdown. We asked Hayley and her family to review the equipment together, with ongoing support from the LUSU team, which includes emails, activity videos and ideas and regular phone conversations.

Hayley’s Review of the LUSU family kit bag

Equipment

The colour and first impression of the kit is that it is bright and is clearly very sensory focused with all the different textures (furry ball, bell inside etc) which is nice as most sports kits available to purchase are just standard. It appears to be quite robust the equipment as its all still in one piece.

Activities

The range of activities you can carry out with the kit is extensive and the fact it is so easily adaptable for all needs is amazing! H (14) really struggles with losing so the fact that he could easily achieve some simple tasks was really good for him and kept him engaged longer as there wasn’t that risk of failure as such.

M (5) absolutely love just being able to hit the ball which was stuck to the Velcro on the pole over and over again, Marshall is generally not overly mobile, much prefers to lie on the couch but the cause and effect of this game kept him engaged as he loves predictability.

We tried the tag game after the video was posted and all the kids loved this and us parents, we have  5 kids all with SEND from ages 2 up to 14 and they have all accessed the equipment and loved it.

We left it in the garden one day so they could explore it themselves and they created their own game of standing the pole over the slide with the Velcro ball hanging down and they had to climb up the steps and hit it on the slide down! (I will post the photos and videos on fb) this really got them using their gross motor skills with all the climbing and sliding but I love the fact that they thought of it themselves and could succeed.

They also enjoyed having the cup on the pole and the ball being on it and hitting and blowing it off then getting it and putting it on (a bit like fetch ha).

They have also played catch with the net and different balls which was easy for them to succeed at as the net is a good size and they all love the big plastic hand, we did try some wearing the hand and bouncing the ball up and catching it, H struggled with this as every time he dropped it he would get frustrated but the younger ones found it quite funny dropping it and picking it back up to start again.

We really do think that the kit is great and so versatile! There is literally so much you can do.