If you are a regular visitor to the Yorkshire Children’s Trust website, you will be aware that for several years the charity has offered free respite breaks to families who have children with illnesses and disabilities. A service we have been very happy to initially offer through Haven holidays, with the charity eventually taking the plunge and purchasing their own holiday home in Withernsea.
Just over a year ago, with the help of funding from some great local organisations, the charity was able to upgrade their second hand caravan to a brand new luxury caravan which better suited the needs of its beneficiaries with wheelchair access, wide doors, full wet room and hoist over the master bedroom bed. At the time of upgrading we also took the opportunity to move from Withernsea to Skegness.
Despite the pandemic, this has worked particularly well with the charity providing their essential respite breaks to families either through the provision of a mid-week (Monday to Friday) or long weekend (Friday to Monday) break. The resort were also very happy to support the charity with free entertainment passes for our service users for when the resort was open. Unfortunately, despite trying to help as many families as we can, not everyone has been grateful for our help with a free respite break.
Receiving reports from the resort that they’ve had two of our families causing issues and being abusive to resort staff is both upsetting and disappointing and not only reflects badly on these families, but tarnishes the professional relationship we have worked hard to create with the resort that has gone out of their way to support YCT and their beneficiaries.
To this end, we have taken steps to make our terms and conditions more robust and reminded guests on our website and social media that our free respite breaks do not have access to onsite resort facilities and entertainment. Furthermore any further families that are abusive or aggressive to any team members of either the charity or the holiday park will have their break cut short and the charity will not be able to offer any more support to them.
The new terms and conditions for the breaks that we provide can be read here. We have also created a list of some great local family friendly local venues that our guests may be interested in visiting on our respite holiday page.
