£500,000 raised to develop Treloar’s swimming pool
Over the last few years, as the complexity of our…
Our amazing Outdoor Learning Centre!
Thanks to the incredible generosity of our donors, we are delighted to say that work on the Sensory Garden, the fully accessible changing facility and the Greenhouse refurbishment for Treloar’s wonderful new Outdoor Learning Centre (OLC) is completed.
Our students are now using the fabulous new facilities, which are now far better suited to their very complex disabilities.
The upgrade
The Greenhouse has had a complete refurbishment so the temperature can now be better regulated to allow students to use it all year round and the doors are accessible through the use of a push button, enabling our students to be more independent.
There is a home for small animals for learning about animal care and management. In the sensory garden there is a water feature, an activity table, a storytelling area, a firepit, raised beds, covered areas, beautiful featured archways and wheelchair friendly pathways to follow.
“It’s amazing – it’s so much better than it was. When it’s raining I can stay outside under the canopy. I really like the garden now, the mirror is my favourite part. I’m looking forward to using the fire pit with my friends too.”
Student Jade (pictured)
What we’re getting up to
Below you can read about the students of M19 who have been growing some vegetables from seed in the Outdoor Learning Centre for the past few weeks.
Caroline, one of Treloar’s Highly Specialist Occupational Therapists, has been teaching the students horticultural skills as she’s quite green fingered!
“The class has been growing seeds in the Outdoor Learning Centre for their Enterprise project. In a few weeks’ time we will be harvesting and selling some of the vegetables at the Summer fete. We are hoping to use the money raised from this towards a trip for the students.
“Due to COVID-19 we haven’t been able to go out or partake in our Community Skills projects for a while, so this is what we’ve been doing instead and it’s quite a popular choice! As well as fun, gardening can be therapeutic and calming for our students and helps to enhance their health and wellbeing.” Caroline
When asking Connor (pictured), one of the students, if he was looking forward to eating the vegetables he said: “We’re selling them for Enterprise, but we’re also going to eat the rewards!”