This page gives you details of organisations that can offer help with organising holidays for families with children who have special needs.

Tourism for All has a lot of information on all kinds of family holidays, and also holidays for children with special needs without their parents. The 3H fund run subsidised group holidays for physically disabled children and Break provides holidays in Norfolk for children and adults with learning disabilities. Happy Days is another charity that organises holidays and days out for families with children with special needs aged 3-17.

Contact a Family has a list of holiday ideas, as do RADAR and MENCAP, including activity holidays for disabled children. The classified section of Disability Now magazine always has lots of adverts for holidays, and there are regular features about good places to go if someone in your family or group has a disability. KidsOut helps disadvantaged children to have fun days out. Their helpline is also good at signposting to related information.

More and more travel agents are able to provide better information on facilities for disabled people, as they begin to realise there's a big market out there. The website www.disabledgo.co.uk also provides up-to-date information on the accessibility of public venues and holiday accommodation throughout the UK.

You will need to double check that your child's needs will be catered for, and it may be worth asking the company to confirm these arrangements in writing. It's remarkable how many people still think that an entrance up half a dozen steps is accessible for a wheelchair user! You should also make sure that any holiday insurance you take out is appropriate - in the small print you will probably find that 'pre-existing conditions or illnesses' are not covered. If that's the case, there are policies which are better and you can find out about them from Tourism for All or RADAR, for example. You can find details of some smaller holiday companies that specialise in disabled care in the leisure section of our useful contacts.

“It has taken me quite a bit of time to adjust to the need to do all this preparation, but then it's been worth it because it's made our holidays easier and I'm less stressed.”

If money is very tight, it's worth applying to the Family Fund for a grant towards a family holiday. Again, Tourism for All, RADAR and Contact a Family have useful leaflets listing organisations that may be able to help with funding. Many national organisations like AFASIC and SENSE organise holidays, or offer useful advice. You could ask your local support group for their ideas, and you can find these in Useful contacts.

If you want to travel abroad and you have a child who is dependent on oxygen, you can download this really useful factsheet written by a local parent, Sonya Pettigrew.

Taking oxygen dependent children abroad (.pdf - 2284kb)
Author: Sonya Pettigrew
Description: A parent's guide to travelling overseas with oxygen dependent children.
Date: 6 May 2008