Service-learning at retreats for children with special needs and their families

Volunteering, community service, service-learning and other forms of community engaged scholarship form part of a continuum from a focus on service to a focus on learning. Based on the experience of students involved in SNUG (Special Needs Unlimited Group) retreats for children with special needs and their families, this paper suggests that students play an important role in determining the degree to which the focus is on service or learning. Between January 2009 and June 2012, The University of Newcastle’s Family Action Centre ran 15 SNUG retreats with 72 families, supported by 115 student-volunteers. The student-volunteers played a crucial role in SNUG by assisting with daily activities, accompanying families to dental and medical visits, assisting with activities for the children, and generally ensuring the smooth running of the retreats. Unlike most service-learning, there were no explicit links to course objectives, but motivated students created links between their experience and their study for themselves, and/or reflected on what they learnt through assessments tasks set for other subjects. The experience of SNUG suggests that service-learning does not need to have formal links with course objectives to provide students with the opportunity to both contribute to the wellbeing of families and to learn from their experience