School holidays
Three days a break, and we invite the competition.
A school holiday program for pre-teens and teenagers across Newcastle, Maitland and the Hunter. We ask two other providers to bring their participants, because your young person's social life matters more than our market share.
Why we do it this way
One provider is a small world.
Most holiday programs are one provider and their own participants. That is a fine way to fill three days and a poor way to make a friend, because the room only ever contains the people who already happened to sign up with the same business.
So we open ours. Two other providers bring their young people along, and everybody gets a wider group to find someone in. It is an unusual thing to do and it is deliberate: we would rather your young person came home having met someone than have kept the room to ourselves.
A wider group than ours
Two other providers bring their participants. Your young person meets people they would never otherwise meet.
Somewhere to actually go
The break stops being two weeks of waiting for term to start again.
The same workers they know
The crew running it is the crew from the term time group, so nobody arrives to a room of strangers.
Through the term as well
The group does not stop at the school gate.
The holiday program sits alongside our term time social group, which runs Wednesdays and Fridays. Most families do both, and the young people carry the same friendships across.
Questions
What families ask us first.
- How many days is it?
- Three days each school holiday period at the moment. If demand grows we will add days rather than add numbers to a day.
- Why do you invite other providers?
- Because we do not have every kind of young person your young person might click with. A wider room gives them a better chance of finding their people. It costs us nothing and it has never once looked like a bad trade.
- Do they need to already be with Pal?
- No. Plenty of families use the holiday program first and go from there, and plenty use only the holiday program.
- What ages?
- Pre-teens and teenagers, the same cohort as our term time group.
- How is it funded?
- Through the social and community participation part of an NDIS plan. We support plan managed and self managed participants.
Let's have a chat.
A phone call, a coffee, or a meet and greet at your place. No paperwork until you actually want to go ahead.