Your future, Your choice
How Sunnyfield disAbility Services delivers Skills For Life with SMART Boards
About Sunnyfield disAbility Services
Since 1952, Sunnyfield has grown in-depth and breadth of support services. Working together with families, friends, caregivers and dedicated staff, Sunnyfield supports a brighter future for people with disability.
Sunnyfield is a member-based, registered not-for-profit charity. Guided by our values of respect, trust, honesty, and innovation, it’s our mission to enrich the lives of people with disability through person-centred active support that creates choice, opportunities, and skills for life.
Day to day, Sunnyfield delivers nearly 2,000 support services for people with disabilities, including children, youth, adults, and seniors. We employ over 1500 staff in NSW and the ACT to deliver accommodation services, assistance with daily life, social and community participation, supported employment, skills development, and support coordination.
The Project
Sunnyfield partnered with Visionext in 2014 to provide support with their audio-visual requirements, and more recently, over the past five years, have supplied and installed over 15 SMART interactive Boards across Sunnyfield’s Community Service Hubs in NSW.
The SMART Boards have facilitated the delivery of Sunnyfield’s Skills for Life programs, which has enhanced the learning and engagement environments for clients with a range of disabilities who communicate verbally and non-verbally. The boards have also provided opportunities for clients to connect and interact with peers from other Sunnyfield Hubs, build fine motor, communication, and social skills.
The Why?
Prior to the introduction of SMART Boards, the delivery mode of many of our capacity building, social, and communication programs was very limited, individualised, and relied on desktop computer stations with paper-based activities.
These individually focused learning environments were suitable for a select group of clients, but it was not a solution that would support us to expand and diversify our programs to a wider range of clients with intellectual or physical disabilities. We needed a solution that was fully inclusive, supported mixed-mode delivery, and allowed learning to come to life to expand a person’s social, communication and sensory skills, strengthen learning speed and development and improve engagement.
Outcomes
Now, many years later, we’re proud to showcase SMART Board’s as a major feature in the delivery of our Skills for Life programs, group-based activities and personalised capacity building programs in over 20+ Community Service Hubs throughout NSW.
We run regular virtual and face-to-face training sessions with Visionext to upskill and strengthen staff capability to promote full utilisation of the SMART Boards into service delivery, and we’ve seen wonderful results across all of our services:
- Increased social engagement by providing opportunities for virtual connections with other Sunnyfield Hubs using ZOOM and the whiteboard for the ‘Pen Pals’ program and local group-based interactive games with peers such as Kahoot.
- Supported the delivery of Sunnyfield’s Basic Literacy program to improve language, communication and literacy skills of many youth and adults accessing our services in South Sydney, Hunter and Tweed Heads.
- Many Sunnyfield team members from across our Hubs are now creating group and individual SMARTBoard activities based on new programs that have been designed to incorporate science, cooking, arts, travel training, goals and routines.
- The SMART Boards are used as part of our suite of Assistive Technology solutions for the Skills for Life programs such as Knowing Myself, Planning a Menu, Following a Recipe, Road Safety, Budgeting and Numeracy.
- Self-confidence and motivation to learn have improved for many clients, who are now eager to choose the SMARTBoard over an iPad or desktop computer.
- Client fitness, balance, and movement skills have improved, as the SMART Board has been pivotal in delivering ZUMBA, fitness circuits, music, and movement programs.
“Overall, the SMART Boards have been an incredible tool for enhancing client learning environments, building confidence and independence.”
Visionext is proud to support Sunnyfield and its wonderful team and clients.
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