High Intensity Outside School Hours Care Initiative for students with disabilities

The High Intensity Outside School Hours Care Initiative delivers outside schools hours care (OSHC) to children and young people with disabilities and their families at Victorian government specialist schools for free.

OSHC for students with disabilities

Children and young people with disabilities often require more intensive and different supports to participate fully in outside school hours care (OSHC) than their typically developing peers. This includes young people in their teens who need OSHC because of their disability, but cannot attend mainstream services, which are for primary-aged children only.

High Intensity OSHC services run with high staff educator to child ratios, which means that the service is able to meet the needs of all the children who attend ensuring safety and quality programming and activities. High Intensity OSHC staff undertake additional training and have programming and resource support that enables them to cater to all children with disability who use the service.

A survey found that 81% of Victorian parents and carers of children and young people with disabilities have experienced difficulties in finding appropriate OSHC services.

Parents raised this issue with the Premier in 2017 during roundtable discussions, and the OSHC Demonstration Program was launched in response. The program was intended to pilot a model of service delivery to fill this gap and provide an evidence base to inform the future provision of these services.

Following the success of the OSHC Demonstration Program, the High Intensity OSHC Initiative will make OSHC services available to 30 specialist school communities by 2026. In Term 1, 2024 the first 20 High Intensity OSHC services began operation with more services to open, 5 in 2025 and 5 in 2026.

Expression of Interest for 2025

Victorian government specialist schools are invited to register their Expression of Interest to join the High Intensity OSHC Initiative in 2025.

As part of the High Intensity OSHC Initiative, your school community will access the benefits of the program including:

• enabling parents and carers to increase participation in the workforce, leading to financial benefits, health and wellbeing benefits to parents and carers due to being able to access respite care
• children and young people with disabilities accessing enriching activities and new experiences similar to what peers in mainstream schools have
• increased social and educational outcomes for children and young people using the OSHC service.

School selection will take into consideration:

• the level of demand within the school community
• the capacity of the school to support a service, including the available space to deliver OSHC
• ensuring OSHC is delivered at a diverse range of schools across Victoria, catering for the needs of children with different types of disability.

The Expression of Interest period is open from Monday 15 April to Friday 7 June 2024. Schools will be advised of the outcome in Term 3 2024.

Services

Children and young people are involved in a diverse range of activities, including incursions and excursions. They are given opportunities to engage in a range of social and life skills activities with the support of higher staff to child ratios, with an average of one staff member for every two children or young people.

The funding enables providers to purchase specialised resources and deliver professional learning and training to educators, to ensure the services and supports meet the unique needs of each child and young person participating.

Watch the OSHC Demonstration Program video on Vimeo to see the services in action.

As part of the Fighting for students with disabilities and their families commitment, $121.7 million has been allocated to increase the provision of OSHC in specialist schools. This will enable a continuation and increase in the existing High Intensity OSHC Initiative from 5 to 20 specialist schools in 2024, 25 in 2025 and 30 in 2026.

In 2024, High Intensity OSHC services are running at the following schools:

• Ballarat Specialist School, Lake Gardens
• Bendigo Special Developmental School, Kangaroo Flat
• Concord School, Watsonia
• Diamond Valley Special Developmental School, Greensborough
• Emerson School, Dandenong
• Jackson School, St Albans
• Kalianna Special School, Bendigo
• Lake Colac School, Colac
• Marnebek School Cranbourne, Cranbourne East
• Melton Specialist School, Melton
• Monash Special Developmental School, Wheelers Hill
• Nelson Park School, Bell Park
• Officer Specialist School, Officer
• South Gippsland Specialist School, Leongatha
• Sunbury & Macedon Ranges Specialist School, Sunbury
• Warringa Park School, Hoppers Crossing
• Wayi School, Craigieburn
• Western Autistic School, Laverton
• Yarrabah School, Aspendale
• Yarraville Special Developmental School, Yarraville

Program evaluation

Findings from the evaluation of the OSHC Demonstration Program undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting found that inclusive OSHC programs provide a wide range of benefits to participating children and young people, their families, their schools and the community. These include:

• parents and carers can increase their participation in work, training or study (48% of those surveyed agreed that the program had already enabled them to increase their participation, with a further 44% stating that they intended to if the program continued).
• an increase in family wellbeing, with parents/carers having more time to take care of themselves and/or their other children.
• participating children and young people are exposed to a wide range of experiences they may not have been able to access otherwise, including opportunities to access and form connections within the community.
• children and young people can build and embed social and life skills.
• children and young people experience improved social and emotional wellbeing and positive educational outcomes.
• Victorian communities becoming more inclusive of all people living with disabilities.

IncludED@OSHC

The learnings from the OSHC Demonstration Program helped to inform IncludED@OSHC – guidance, resources and tools to support the delivery of high-quality inclusive OSHC.

A suite of online resources is available now for OSHC providers, educators, schools, leaders and managers.

Please visit IncludED@OSHC to find out how you can make a difference in the lives of children living with a complex disability.