Respite Ministry

One of the most popular programs of the Special Needs Ministry here at SCC is our Respite Ministry, or FunZone as many know it. We have FunZone on the 2nd Saturday of the month, September through May. It's basically a four hour time slot (5pm-9pm) when parents can drop off their special needs children and siblings while they go out and enjoy some time to themselves.



When I describe FunZone to someone who has never participated in it, I describe it as "organized chaos". We open up the entire 1st floor of the Preschool Building and allow the children to just play. We have special areas set up with crafts, games, and Wii but generally they're allowed to come and go through the activities as they wish. We have a movie that starts half way through the event but, other than special programs coming in, we don't have a set schedule. We feel these kids are structured so much of the time, this is a good time for them to just be free. You'll read below that they are paired one-on-one with volunteers so we don't just let them roam free alone.



There are several different aspects of FunZone. When you're setting up a respite ministry, you have to decide what works for your church, your families, and your volunteers. There is not one way to do it, just some basics you might want to consider when planning a program.



1. Dates: We have set FunZone to ALWAYS be on the 2nd Saturday of the month. This makes it easy for families and volunteers to plan. The 2nd Saturday won't ever conflict with Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years. It occasionally lands on Valentine's Day (which is a HUGE blessing for the parents and but not quite the blessing for the volunteers/staff), generally always lands the weekend starting Spring Break, and might land on Easter weekend. We have cancelled FunZone in the past because it has landed on Easter weekend. I'm not sure if we'd do that again but it is something to consider (both the participation of the families and the ability to get volunteers).

2. Time: We have always had a 4 hour FunZone. If you're a parent, you know that it generally takes you at least an hour to decompress well enough to start enjoying yourself. We want to give the parents as much time as possible without putting huge burdens on our volunteers. We've found that four hours is the perfect compromise. It makes it worth it for both the parents and the volunteers.

3. Volunteers: We pair up our special needs children and siblings on a tight ratio. We generally have a 1:1 ratio but might stretch to a 1:2 ratio for siblings if we are short on volunteers. We have found it is important for the safety of the kids to have one volunteer who is just there for them. Since our FunZone concept is "organized chaos", having a 1:1 ratio keeps everybody safe and still allows them to have a lot of fun and attention.

4. Meals: Since we start FunZone at 5pm, we find it necessary to feed our volunteers and allow the children to bring dinner to eat. We try to have the volunteers and kids go directly to the Meal Room when they arrive so we can get dinner out of the way and cleaned up rather than having it drag out. The volunteers are fed by our Women's Ministry Bible Studies and the kids are instructed to bring their own food. With so many allergies and picky eaters, we have stayed away from feeding the kids. It would just be a nightmare for us to try to sort everything out so we find it's easier this way. If a volunteer is assigned to a child who will not eat, ate before they came, or tends to not ever sit still, we'll use our floaters to help "relieve" those volunteers while they take a break to eat.

5. Invitations/Wait List: As a church, we decided that our goal is not to be a babysitting agency for special needs kids but to be a church that ministers to the family as a whole. When we decided this, we made the decision to make FunZone by invitation only. You'll get an invitation to FunZone if you have participated in a ministry of Stonebriar Community Church in the past 2 months. This gives enough time for families who have sick kids but also encourages people to be involved. We want this to be something that we can minister to the families though. If families just drop off and pick up every 2nd Saturday of the month, we're not able to make a connection and that was going against our values. Even with the invitation only system, we do still almost always have a wait list. We have made the commitment that safety of the kids is more important to us than letting everyone have a spot. This month, in fact, we have 32 kids on our wait list right now for FunZone on Saturday. I'm not worried because God always provides. We put the word out and volunteers come. I don't think we've ever had to turn kids away.



You might be asking, "Why would you do a program that takes so many volunteers, so much effort, and is so crazy?" The answer is easy....it's all for the parents. To see the drastic change in the face of a parent at drop off compared to pick up is amazing. Some will rush in with the kids barely noticing that their spouse is beside them. When they come to pick up, they'll be holding hands and looked like they just had a week long vacation. In that moment, everything is worth it.