Grow and Achieve Together offer a range of support to young people, one type of skills training which we offer is Travel training, which involves us helping to make a young person as independent as possible when travelling on public transport e.g. bus and train. The ways in which we do this is by making them comfortable with planning and commuting the journey, we do this by gradually stepping back during the journey, so that the young person is able to travel their route by themselves, meeting the travel training coach at the end of the journey.
One factor which is important to know is that every young person has an open channel of communication with the Travel Trainer, along with the fact that there is no set amount of time frame it can last, as some people may take a shorter time to learn these skills, but it may take longer for others. There is also the fact that after a young person may finish travel training, they will have the choice to learn new routes so that they can develop their skills further and eventually be more independent.
-Helena Poulson