3rd Prescot Guides and Rangers

3rd Prescot Guides and Rangers is part of Girlguiding UK 

We are a Girlguide/Ranger unit for girls with special needs. The unit opened April 2017 in Prescot  in the middle of the borough, where we can be part of the local Guiding community. The project has impacted over 40 girls some of whom have been Brownies but Guides had never worked out for them.

The girls are aged 10-21, all with special educational needs. Many would be unable to go to a mainstream guide unit due to complex medical and personal care needs. 

The staff are all volunteers who work in a special school and parents are happy to bring their daughters as we are aware of the girls needs. As some of the girls are very socially isolated we started the unit to give the girls experiences similar to their mainstream peers. The unit is thriving and we never thought it would be as successful as it is. Giving them a social activity where they can meet up with their friends after school as many are not involved in other after school activities.

We meet weekly on Thursday evening during term time and the girls are all proud of their uniform.

The girls are engaged and participate fully in the Guiding movement, including:

• badge work
• community work
• Guiding events
• team work within patrols, etc.
• They are currently working on the new programme with desires to achieve their Gold Award.
• We also give the girls opportunities to take part in all Guiding events. We go to the Big Gig, a Guiding concert in October and many of our girls had never been to a concert. We undertake residential's, this is an opportunity that mainstream girls take for granted but our girls have few residential experiences and almost never get to go on a sleepover with their friends. We go to a festival called Merseymoot with other Girlguide Rangers, again our girls had never attended a festival. We take the girls to the woods for various activities such as scavenger hunts, cookouts, to complete trails etc. We have recently taken part in a survival skills day with rest of our county. 
• We are involved in the local community and are supporting Baby basics a charity supporting new mothers who are struggling to meet the financial and practical burden of looking after a new baby. These may include people seeking asylum and women fleeing domestic violence and trafficking. We make up Moses baskets of essentials for these mums.
• We are also involved in the local community where we meet where we have fostered a link with a local care home for the elderly. On World Thinking Day the girls make up bags of sweets and toiletries which they take to the home and distribute to the residents. We run a Bingo for them in the summer and carol singing at Christmas.

We have to differentiate most of our activities to meet our girls needs as some have no speech and many cannot read or write but we manage to foster independence skills and life skills, build positive relationships and encourage the girls to have a voice and be involved in planning the programme.  Hence the the girls decided that they would like to go to Disneyland Paris.  Most of our girls do not go on family holidays and would not get this opportunity without Guides.  Unfortunately our trip has been postponed due to Covid 19 and has been rescheduled for the future. 

At present we are full but are happy to chat to young ladies and their parents and add any prospective young ladies to our waiting list.