Our recent church-based respite event: Roles, Layout, & Schedule

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I kicked off this respite-related series on Monday with the three questions you need to consider before launching church-based respite care events, and then I followed up yesterday with explanations and examples of safety measures you could use.

Today I'll share a little more about our specific event, and tomorrow I'll share some ideas for what we might do differently at our next event on December 10. And stay tuned next week for a series of posts based on the research our Access Ministry intern did this summer as she gathered information for us (and now YOU!) about 20+ church-based respite care events taking place around the country.

First, here are the nuts and bolts of our last event:
  • Day: Saturday 
  • Time: 4-7 pm
  • Food: Pizza and juice boxes or food brought from home (served at 5:15)
  • Location: Our church
  • Cost: $5 (might be free in the future but we haven't decided)
Next, volunteer information and training basics:
  • We asked one adult Sunday school class to commit to help us for this event (and we'll ask a different class for December), and we recruited from our high school Sunday school classes as well. Additionally, I identified some people who I knew already and asked to join us from beyond those two groups.
  • We initially planned to train volunteers on the Sunday prior to the event, but we shifted our plans to have training beginning at 3pm on the day of the event. (This did require a little extra work for us, because we had to collect background check forms in advance of training, whereas we could have collected them at training in our original plan.)
  • Some volunteers expressed an interest in helping in a specific way, and we were able to accommodate those requests.
One of our primary tools for volunteers, as well as our planning resource, was a two-side page with the layout of the physical space on one side and our schedule on the other:
Access Respite Map and Schedule

Because several families had to cancel the day before the event due to illness or unexpected out-of-town company, that file shows some more rooms closed that we had originally planned. Below is our original layout, before we made those changes:

Three notes about the layout:
  1. Instead of having a set schedule, we created several spaces that kids could rotate through with volunteers stationed at each exit so no child could escape. We did have picture cards we could use with the parents at check-in to create a more defined event schedule for those children who required that, but otherwise child-buddy pairs and siblings just utilized space based on their own interests. 
  2. I renamed the "low-functioning class," calling it "separate class" on the final version. While "low-functioning" is a helpful term in school settings, no person has a diminished function in the body of Christ, so we choose not to use that phrase if we can avoid it.
  3. To create this layout, I used the file that our church uses for fire exits and other building plan needs. I used a photo-editing program (for me, it was Photoshop Elements, but any program would do, even a basic one like Paint) to delete some parts that we didn't need and add dots and text.
In order to communicate the finer details of each role, I listed the roles in a document (found here - it's nothing fancy!) and cut them into strips. Then all I had to do was hand the appropriate slip to each volunteer. Here's a list of the roles we had and the wording I used to describe each role on the slip they received:
  • Registration: I didn't have a slip for this one, because I trained them separately. So that I could recruit some fantastic - but busy! - ladies to serve here and so that our other volunteers could be in place from the beginning, these volunteers only came for the beginning portion to check families in. Instead of a slip, these ladies were given the Access Respite Check-in Cheat Sheet.
  • Bathrooms: "Hang out in front of the bathrooms to assist buddies so no one was alone with a child in the restroom."
  • Door: "Hang out in front of your assigned door to downstairs so that no child goes through the door unattended. If a buddy-child pair uses your stairwell to go to the playground, please stand in the stairwell until the buddy & child have gone outside so that no adult is alone with a child."
  • Big room: "Help as needed. Stay in there so no one is alone with a child. Run the computer/movie."
  • Coloring/puzzle/play room: "Help as needed. Stay in there so no one is alone w/ a child. Clean as needed."
  • Music/game room: "Help as needed. Stay in there so no one is alone with a child. Clean up as needed."
  • Wii room: "Help as needed. Stay in there so no one is alone with a child. Clean up as needed."
  • Sensory room: "Help as needed. Stay in there so no one is alone with a child. Clean up as needed."
  • One-on-one buddy: "Enjoy the event with the child!" (Also, remember that we provide buddies with a notecard of child info in addition to this.)
  • Floater: "Help as needed. Rotate through areas."
  • Food: I didn't have a slip for this role - which was filled by the same volunteer who hung out in the elevator for us in the beginning - because I trained her myself prior to the event.
For all of the roles except one-on-one buddy, I included the note below so that they could use downtime wisely and not feel like it was wasted time:

If you find yourself alone, take time to pray for the event, these families, other families with special needs who are unchurched, and Access Ministry as a whole.

I didn't include leadership roles above, which included our med team, but hopefully this can provide you with some framework to start from.

~+~
Final notes: I know the level of detail found in this post won't translate perfectly to what you'll do at your church, given the layout of your facility, the size of your event, and the number of volunteers you use. However, I hope it can be helpful to give you some ideas to begin thinking about the details of an event for your church.

Here are two other posts you might find helpful about respite events (not from my blog, but from the blog of Jackie Mills-Fernald at McLean Bible Church):

Come back tomorrow for what we'll plan to do differently in December, and visit again next week to learn more about how 20+ other churches run their respite care events!