Family Services After Action Report Final 29-08-03media.specialolympics.org/soi/files/resources/World_Games/World_… · Family Services HAFP Welcome Centre is open on June 21, 2003

FAMILY SERVICES AFTER ACTION REPORT

Table of Contents

1. Overview ...........................................................................................................6

1.1 Functional Goal ..............................................................................................6

After Action Comments .........................................................................................6

After Action Recommendations.............................................................................6

1.2 Summary of Activity......................................................................................7



1.3 Dates of Operation .........................................................................................8



2. Structure ...........................................................................................................10

2.1 GOC Structure..............................................................................................10

After Action Comments .......................................................................................10

After Action recommendations ............................................................................10

2.2 Venue Structure............................................................................................12


After Action recommendations ............................................................................12

3. Scope & Description of Operations ..............................................................13

3.1 Scope ............................................................................................................13

3.1.1 Functions Provided...............................................................................13

3.1.2 Constituent Groups Provided For.........................................................14

3.1.3 Types of Venues...................................................................................14

2 Family Services After Action Report Aug 2003 mc


After Action Recommendations...........................................................................15

3.2 Description of Operations ............................................................................16

3.2.1 Family Coordinator ..............................................................................16



3.2.2 Family Registration ..............................................................................18



3.2.3 Family Accommodation Reservation Service......................................28



3.2.4 Emergency Accommodation ................................................................32



3.2.5 Family Hospitality................................................................................34



3.2.6 Family Centres .....................................................................................42



3.2.7 Family Welcome Pack .........................................................................45



3.2.8 Host a Family Programme (HAFP)......................................................47




3.2.9 Family Ambassador Programme - FAP ...............................................64



3.2.10 Family Transport ..................................................................................69



3.2.11 Family events .......................................................................................72



4. Policies & Procedures ....................................................................................82

4.1 Policies .........................................................................................................82

4.1.1 Definition of a Family Member ...........................................................83

4.1.2 Family Registration ..............................................................................84

4.1.3 Family Access to Athlete .....................................................................86

4.1.4 Family Access to Host Town Programme............................................87



4.2 Procedures ....................................................................................................89

4.2.1 Issue in Host a Family/Family Ambassador Programme.....................90

4.2.2 Family Registration at Family Centre ..................................................91

4.2.3 Facilitating Family Access to an Athlete .............................................93




5. Timeline...........................................................................................................96

5.1 Milestone Summary .....................................................................................96



6. Budget..............................................................................................................97



7. Appendices ......................................................................................................97

7.1 Equipment Requirements List ......................................................................97



7.2 Forms............................................................................................................99

7.2.1 Athlete Access Request Form ..............................................................99

7.2.2 Arrival Information Form.....................................................................99

7.2.3 Voucher for Emergency Hostel Accommodation ................................99

7.2.4 HAFP / FAP Issue Report Form ..........................................................99

7.2.5 HAFP Home and Car Insurance Form ..............................................99

7.2.6 FAP Car Insurance Form...................................................................99



7.3 Diagrams ....................................................................................................107

After Action Comments .....................................................................................107

After Action Recommendations.........................................................................107

7.4 Job Descriptions .........................................................................................108




7.5 Volunteer Requirements.............................................................................118




1. Overview

1.1 Functional Goal

Family Services is committed to ensuring an enjoyable, memorable and family friendly experience for family members of Special Olympics athletes attending the 2003 SOWSG in Ireland and to providing additional opportunities for families not available to the general public. Family Services volunteers will inform, welcome, assist and make our visiting family members feel special at every stage of the Games.

After Action Comments

Judging from the feedback received from families during the Games and subsequently by email from the Family Coordinators, families were overwhelmed by the welcome received in Dublin and Belfast, and the hospitality shown to them throughout their Games experience. Family Services staff and volunteers provided a very high standard of welcome and service and the challenge facing future GOC s is to continuously enhance the profile of the services for families attending SOWSG.

Family Services as a Functional Area is very much a front of house operation during Games time and positive highlighting of the family experience at every stage of the Games is critical to its success. Thorough planning and preparation is necessary to ensure a high standard of service to families and once the Games began, the entire Family Services team is constantly in demand and must be at the independent stage of putting all this planning into operation.

We aimed to highlight and celebrate the experience of family members at the 2003 SOWSG. We hope that we have left a strong legacy for families at Games and that this will be carried forward to even greater heights by the next GOC. We promoted interaction through our events between the Irish people and international visiting families in order to personalise their stay in Ireland. We know that links have been established and will be maintained between Irish families and families from all over the world, with families having been inspired to develop long lasting personal friendships and support for community involvement in Special Olympics events.

We increased public awareness and knowledge about learning disability and provided a legacy of interest and commitment to the SO family programmes. Most of all we increased awareness of and public sensitivity to the unique relationship between the Special Olympics athletes and their families.

After Action Recommendations

Family members are vital to the athlete s participation in the Games and therefore it is essential that Family Services are empowered with the allocation of necessary staff, resources and budget, and not just paid lip service, to ensure that family activities at


the Games are first class, that family activities are at the forefront of any Special Olympics event, with as many activities as possible planned for the families during the Games, in particular activities that will lead to the greatest long term impact for families worldwide and also beyond a Games event. The families

agenda must be

supported by all the appropriate parties and the legacy of the Games must meet the expectations of the GOC. Families do play a huge role in the Games and we did make a big effort to ensure that other departments did not forget this, as some tended to do!

Focusing on families in general, but in particular the families in less well developed SO Programmes must be an integral part of the Games objectives, as in many cases without the support and participation of family members, the athletes would not be in a position to partake and compete in Special Olympics at all. Therefore it is important that all families feel celebrated during the SOWSG as many have made huge efforts and sacrifices to travel to the Games and will continue to do so at future Games.

1.2 Summary of Activity

Family Services is responsible for planning all the services and activities for family members of participating athletes coming to the Games, to ensure an enjoyable and successful stay, and for providing all the necessary information in advance to help these families plan their trip.


Family Services provided a range of activities for the family members of participating athletes. The aim of the team was to provide a Home away from Home

for these visiting families. From monthly pre-Games information, airport operations, the registration centre, the Welcome Pack, hospitality at each of the venues, a range of evening entertainment and special events, Healthy Athlete seminars, the Host a Family and Family Ambassador Programmes, the Family Services team provided a presence at every stage of the Games.

All of the intended activities were provided for the families - however, this was largely due to huge levels of overtime by all staff members and a large amount of hours given by long time and full time committed volunteers.


The whole area of staffing the Family Services functional area needs to be readdressed. Family Services provided a huge service and range of activities to families attending the 2003 SOWSG, and if a similar service and activities are to be provided in future Games, a greater number of staff members is imperative. The overall expectations of Family Services were unrealistic and there was a huge emphasis on volunteer work pre Games. Whereas their contribution was enormous it was not always practical or fair to depend so much on volunteers for some of the work that needed to be done in Family Services.


Also, as a service to families, a fundamental component of Family Services is to register family information and the next GOC must ensure that an adequate database system is in place at the outset within Family Services.

1.3 Dates of Operation

Family Services volunteers are present at the Airport from June 15, 2003 until June 21, 2003

Family Services HAFP Welcome Centre is open on June 21, 2003 only

Family Registration opens from June 18-21, 2003 in the Family Centre at the RDS.

Family Services volunteers are present at Croke Park on June 21, 2003 for the Opening Ceremony to meet and greet families.

Family Hospitality is present in all competition venues from June 22 to June 29, 2003

Family Services volunteers are present at Croke Park on June 29, 2003 for the Closing Ceremony to meet and greet families


Airport operations by Family Services volunteers actually commenced one day early on June 14th and ran at a hectic pace right up to June 22nd in order to cater for any families who arrived early or late. There were two very well signed Families desks at each side of the Arrivals Hall, with 2-3 volunteers present at each desk at all times, over 2 shifts, from 06h00 to 22h00 hours each day. When Family Services was not present, during the night, for example, families obtained information from the Airport Information Desk.

The HAFP Welcome Centre worked very well for visiting families who were arriving into Dublin Airport on the 21st June. Here they were able to pick up their Games accreditation and Welcome Pack before being introduced to their local Host Family.

Family Registration opened prior to the Games for the four days planned. These four days were absolutely necessary to facilitate the visiting families and to provide a registration service exclusively for the families. They had a point of contact with the Games and were not left to wander around without any information. There was a steady flow of families throughout, and a queue outside on the first morning of registration. Families who arrived early had ample time to get to know Dublin and plan their Games week. In addition the Toyota Family Welcome Centre was open on these days for families to pick up their Welcome Pack and tourist information. Families really did appreciate all the help they received immediately on arrival.

Family Hospitality was available in all competition venues on the dates planned.

Family Services volunteers were present at both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies as well as at the specific family events, namely the Shopping and Entertainment Evening, Race Evening, Parents Reception, Global Family Forum and the Healthy Athlete Seminars.



The Family Services presence at the airport is essential in order to facilitate the arrivals procedure. Even though most families arrived well informed having read the information sent to them, families had lots of questions and this was their first point of contact with Family Hospitality. They will automatically ask about transport and registration. Some families arrived with no accommodation booked or were unable to afford commercial accommodation and Family Services volunteers were immediately able to find them free rooms (mainly in hostels) from the bank of emergency accommodation held by Family Services.

It is necessary to have the HAFP Welcome Centre either in or near the airport, if the main registration centre is far from the airport, as was the case at the 2003 SOWSG. The opening hours for Family Registration were from 9 am until 5 pm each day, mainly due to time limits imposed by venue. However we would recommend having Family Registration open from 8 am to 8 pm for the days before the Games. We would also recommend having as many language volunteers (particularly those speaking Spanish and Japanese) as possible at Family Registration. They do not have to be involved with registration as such but can be available to assist with general queries.

If feasible it is also advisable to have a Host Family Coordinator presence at the Airport specifically to greet the local Host Families who come to meet their visiting families. Both host and visiting families should be informed that there will be a separate desk to Family Hospitality at the Airport and that is where they can meet up. This avoids congestion at the Family Hospitality desks in the days prior to the Games.

The Family Services volunteers at the airport were flexible, cooperative and willing to go that extra mile. The shifts were long and very busy. Most days they only had time for one short break, and in hindsight three shifts would have been more acceptable. They also suggested for the next SOWSG that it would be a nice idea to have pins and pens to hand out to families on arrival as a welcome gesture on arrival.

The 2003 SOWSG did not have a formal presence at a desk in the airport on the days that families were departing after the Games. Rather, some Family Services staff went to the airport to wish goodbye to the families. The families did appreciate this final gesture of help and we would therefore recommend a small Family Services presence during the departure days.


2. Structure

2.1 GOC Structure

Family Services is under the responsibility of the Family Services General Manager. The core team is small and many of the key roles are held by volunteers.


August 2001 Family Services General Manager appointed

August 2002 Families Programme Coordinator HAFP/FAP ` appointed on a part time basis 3 days per week

September 2002 Executive Assistant appointed

April 2003 Families Programme Coordinator became full time

April 2003 Second Executive Assistant appointed

The final Family Services Organisational Chart differed greatly in size from the one originally proposed in the Family Services Project Charter established at the outset of the project in 2001. For such a huge amount of planning, range of activities and services to families during Games time, staffing levels were highly inadequate and led to inordinate amounts of overtime by staff and huge dependency on the good will and time of long term committed volunteers.

After Action recommendations

Family Services General Manager

Staff

Families Programme Coordinator HAFP/FAP

Staff

Event Coordinator x 4

Volunteers

Hospitality Team Coordinator

Volunteer

HAFP / FAP Coordinators Host Families

Family Ambassadors

Hospitality Coordinators

Volunteers

Executive Assistants x 2

Staff


As mentioned previously, the staffing of Family Services needs to be readdressed if the same services are to be provided at the next SOWSG. A full time Families Programme Coordinator and a full time Executive Assistant is essential to run the HAFP and FAP efficiently from the start. A full time Executive Assistant is also essential to deal with all areas of Family Registration. Finally we would also recommend having a full time Coordinator to cover Family Hospitality and Events.

FAMILY SERVICES AFTER ACTION REPORT

2.2 Venue Structure

The organisation of Family Services at venue level is very simple. Each venue will have a Hospitality Coordinator, a Deputy Coordinator (to cover absence of Coordinator) and a team of Hospitality Assistants. The Hospitality Assistants will be multi-tasking (access control, meet and greet visiting families and make them feel special and welcome, provide information, light refreshments and snacks, clean up) in the hospitality area, rather than being assigned to one particular role for the entire shift.

To take the example of a typical venue, such as David Llyod Riverview, this translates as:


This system of management at venue was simple and worked very well in Family Hospitality at the 2003 SOWSG. The Hospitality Coordinators were an experienced group of individuals working with Family Services on a continual basis from October 2002.

After Action recommendations

It is essential to have a Hospitality Committee up and running at least 8 months prior to the Games, and ideally to work with Coordinators who have experience in National Games planning, under the leadership of a committed Hospitality Team Coordinator.

Hospitality Coordinator 1

Deputy Coordinator 1

Hospitality Assistants 4


3. Scope & Description of Operations

3.1 Scope

Accurate, timely information prior to Games, via the Family Coordinators (in delegations where a Family Coordinator has been nominated), and via the monthly Delegation Update where no Family coordinator is nominated.

Registration of family members of participating athletes coming to the Games, via the Family Registration Form. This process provides the necessary data for the Family Accreditation Pass.

Assistance in finding commercial accommodation. The official Family Accommodation Reservation Service is available via a direct link from 2003 SOWSG website.

Information on all above services is sent directly to Family Coordinators and via the monthly delegation updates.

3.1.1 Functions Provided

Family Services meet and greet service at the Airports and at the HAFP Welcome Centre

Family Hospitality in each competition venue, ensuring family members receive special attention, feel welcome and have time to network with other families of Special Olympics athletes, together with free light refreshments and snacks.

A reserved area for family members to enjoy the competitions

Access to awards area for photo opportunities

2 Family Centres

Family specific events, highlighting the importance of family members o Shopping and Entertainment Evening (with athletes) o Race Evening at Leopardstown (families invited) o Parents Evening (parents invited) o Global Family Leadership Forum

A memorable social and cultural experience for visiting families, through interaction with Irish families

o Host A Family Programme (HAFP) o Family Ambassador Programme(FAP)

Emergency Accommodation

Access to public transport ticket at a special rate for duration of Games

Dedicated transport arrangements for family specific events above

Games and tourist information

Ensure each family receives a Welcome Pack on arrival

Support Clipped Wings with Parents Reception

Support SO HQ with Global Family Leadership Forum

Support SO HQ with Health Athletes Seminars for families

Support SO HQ with SO HQ Information Desks in the Family Centres

Family Services Information line and hot desk at Games time


3.1.2 Constituent Groups Provided For

Family Services priority is to register and provide a service and activities for family members of participating athletes.

3.1.3 Types of Venues

Competition Venues

Family Hospitality: Dublin (21) and Belfast (1)

Family Centres: Minerva Suite, RDS and Morton Stadium

Non Competition Venues

Dublin (Belfast, Shannon) Airport

Fingallians GAA Club Swords: HAFP Welcome Centre

Ceremonies

Opening / Closing Ceremony June 21 and June 29.

Family event venues

Blanchardstown Shopping Centre

Shopping and Entertainment Evening

24 June

Leopardstown Racecourse Race Evening 25 June

The Point Parents Reception 26 June

Dublin Castle Global Family Leadership Forum 27 June

Toyota Family Welcome Centre 18-28 June


Family services provided the functions mentioned to families of participating athletes first and foremost, in the venues mentioned. However, at several stages during the Games we provided services to other people who were not strictly included within the definition of a family member for the 2003 SOWSG, but who were very involved with the athlete in other ways. Our definition of a family member was as follows:

The definition of a family member is an individual who is:

The husband, wife, partner of the athlete,

A blood relative of the athlete (mother, father, child, sister, brother, grandparent, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin, a relative related by marriage or a partner of a blood relative),

An individual who serves as the athlete s legal guardian, foster parent, carer,


An individual involved with the athlete in a parenting role.

We simply elaborated on the definition of a family member provided by the 1999 GOC, and added the broader term of partner , as a result of comments received by family members attending the 1999 SOWSG.


The definition of a family member is very difficult to sign off as it is practically impossible to be all inclusive. In the final analysis, Family Services depended on the local SO Programmes and Family Coordinators to sign off people as family members . We recommend that this definition be revised again by the next GOC and maybe include and sign off all close associates of the athlete, so that it is as all inclusive as possible.


3.2 Description of Operations

3.2.1 Family Coordinator

The role of the Family Coordinator is, amongst others, to be the liaison between the 2003 Family Services Department and individual families, and is therefore the main source of information for the families in their delegation, particularly during the preparation stage of the Games. Family Coordinators are vital to our coordination and we rely on their assistance with key areas of planning, such as family registration and information dissemination at local level.

Family Coordinators have been advised to encourage the families in their delegation to contact them first, if they have any queries. In this way the Family Coordinator is aware of the different queries sent in by the families for which he/she is responsible.

The following information is available in the Family Coordinator Guide, first issued at the HoD seminar in July 2002, during a presentation to the Heads of Delegations present:

Job description / main responsibilities of Family Coordinator

Family Coordinator Registration Form

Important deadlines

Sample introduction letter to families

Checklists

HAFP/FAP Application Forms

Useful Internet sites

In addition a special email address has been set up for Family Coordinators and/or family members to contact the 2003 GOC Family Services Department by email: [email protected].


The international Family Coordinators play a very important role as liaison between the Family Services Department and individual families. Initially information was sent out through the official monthly Delegation update

however Family Services made a considered effort to actively recruit a Family Coordinator in each delegation sending families to the Games. As Family Coordinators were nominated, information was also sent out from family services directly to the Family Coordinators for distribution to the families. There were very strict deadlines for these monthly updates in order to meet the translator deadlines. Although it was suggested that family information should not be part of the official monthly updates, nor the HoD manual, the Family Services Department insisted on inserting monthly information for families and having it translated. This was a particularly useful service for the Family Coordinators, particularly those from Spanish speaking delegations, and in retrospect must be continued at the next Games. Our only regret is that we did not have time to have the Visiting Families Handbook translated for Games time.


For some delegations the role of Family Coordinator was filled by a full time member of the local SO staff, for others a volunteer filled this role. Given that this was the case, understandably the level of dissemination of information at local level varied from delegation to delegation and some families complained that the level of information they received at local level was poor. Some delegations were unable to appoint a Family Coordinator due to the fact that the Families in that particular Programme were not highly developed.

Family Services would have benefited from being to have being in correspondence with a Family Coordinator for each delegation coming to the 2003 SOWSG. By Christmas 2002 only 60 appointed Coordinators were in regular contact with Family Services and in the absence of a Family Coordinator we assumed that the HoD was our main point of contact and would distribute the information. We did not know if the information was getting through to the families. In addition, with only six months to go to the Games we were concerned that we were only having communication from a small number of delegations and no

communication whatsoever from approximately 100 delegations in spite of all our efforts detailed below.

Family Services had taken several steps to ensure that information went out to Family Coordinators as follows:

Request for each delegation to nominate a Family Coordinator appeared in each monthly delegation update since Jan 02

Delegations informed at HoD conference in July 02 and Family Registration materials distributed

Communications from SO HQ office to Regional Directors and Regional Managers

Family Services information in official monthly delegation update to all delegations (and directly to nominated Family Coordinators)

After Christmas 2002 we monitored the situation on a weekly basis with SO HQ office, which in turn sent repeated communications to the Regional Family Managers requesting them to cover all Programmes with a Family Coordinator, as they would have had most contact with individual Programmes.

As a result of the combined efforts of SO HQ office, the GOC and Family Services Department, our total number of Family Coordinators for the 2003 SOWSG was 82 from the 7 regions (Africa-15, Asia/Pacific-9, East Asia/China-1, Europe/Eurasia-30, Latin America-13, MENA-3, North America-11) with family members registering from 96 delegations, representing approximately 2050 families and 8500 family members.

As the Games approached individual families in delegations with no Family Coordinator began to contact Family Services department directly, either via the [email protected]. email address or staff email addresses. An ever increasing number of emails were received in the months prior to the Games and it was not always possible for Family Services staff to respond in a timely manner.


Family Coordinators Reception

This was a new event organised for the first time at the 2003 SOWSG. It was organised by the Irish Family Coordinator in liaison with Family Services, to recognise and thank the international Family Coordinators and to thank the GOC Family Services staff for their work in preparing for the Games. It took place on the Monday evening of Games week from 5-7 pm in The Toyota Family Welcome Centre and was a good opportunity for Family Services to meet up with the Coordinators, having built up a relationship over the previous year via email and telephone. It was also an opportunity for all the Coordinators to network, relax and take a break at the beginning of Games week. Unfortunately not all Family Coordinators could attend the event due to other commitments as many of them had a dual role within Special Olympics official delegation and as Family Coordinator.

This was a very informal evening, attended by Timothy Shriver, President. It involved light refreshments, finger food, some speeches and Irish music provided by the Three Irish Tenors. This was the only event entirely dedicated to the Family Coordinators and they highly appreciated it.


We cannot over emphasise the importance of the role of Family Coordinator and encouraging all local SO programmes to appoint a Family Coordinator in order to build relationships with Family Coordinators as early as possible.

Nominating a Family Coordinator for each Programme competing at the Games is critical to supporting families attending the Games. Regional Family Managers who support the 7 Special Olympics Regional offices and know the Programmes better than the Family Services Department must actively work with Programmes from an early stage to designate Family Coordinators. Team USA sent the largest delegation of athletes to the Games. Family Services dealt with one USA Family Coordinator - however a recommendation for future games would be to have direct contact with a Family Coordinator from each state.

Where possible try to channel the flow of information through the Family Coordinator to avoid individual families contacting Family Services directly, as this becomes a huge amount of emails to answer nearer the Games.

The Family Coordinator Reception should be made a regular event at SOWSG in order to recognise the work of the Family Coordinators, introduce them to each other and thank them personally at the beginning of Games week.

3.2.2 Family Registration

The following Family Registration materials have been distributed to family members via the Family Coordinator or the local Special Olympics Programme:

Family Registration Guide

Family Registration Form


Host a Family Programme

Family Ambassador Programme

Family registration is obligatory for all family members in order to avail of the services and special activities organised for family members during the Games. It is also necessary for Family Services to have an ongoing realistic estimate of the number of family members attending the Games. Family details are entered into the Family Registration database, and forwarded to the Accreditation Department for printing of Family Accreditation Passes.

All registered Family Members will receive their Family Accreditation Pass when they check in at the RDS Family Centre between 18- 21 June 2003. Family Members must present this Family Accreditation Pass when requested, in order to gain access to family only designated areas and specific Games related events. It will not have a photo identification, but will show the following information:

FAM.

Initial, Family name

Delegation name

The wearer of the Family Accreditation Pass is subject to the rules of the Games and the pass may be revoked at any time at the discretion of the Games Organising Committee

The following information is available in the Family Registration Guide:


Information: HAFP/FAP

Visa information

Family specific events

Accommodation

Travel

Transport

Frequently Asked Questions

Fast Facts about Dublin/Belfast

Deadlines

The Family Registration Forms are reviewed and authorised by the local Special Olympics office / Family Coordinator, before being forwarded to the 2003 SOWSG for processing.

The following is an outline of the Family Registration process:

Registration Forms sent into Family Services

Details recorded on the Family Services Database

Confirmation of Registration letter sent out to families via Family Coordinators where possible.

Data sent to Accreditation


Family Accreditation Passes generated

Accreditation packs received from Accreditation

A4 envelopes labelled with Delegation and Athlete Name.

Pick and Pack Operation to add additional items to the accreditation pack:

o Invitation to Parents Reception o Passes for Race Evening o Welcome Pack tokens placed on outside of envelope.

Coordinate Logistics of the Registration Centre

Develop standard procedures for Family Registration on site

Training of volunteers

The following documents will be generated for Family Registration:


Letter of Confirmation of Family Registration

Letter of Authorisation for collection of Games Accreditation

Standard Operating Procedures for Registration


The amount of work involved in Family Registration is generally both under estimated and under valued. Considerable effort was required from Family Services to first of all recruit local Family Coordinators and then to encourage the forwarding of Registration Forms and in the case of the HAFP, to help with obtaining the Police Certificates of Character.

The slow pace of family registration in general and incomplete Registration Forms forwarded to Family Services caused a lot of unnecessary checking (via email and telephone) and follow up work. In addition the inadequate and user unfriendly database caused major difficulties for data entry, data manipulation and hampered consistency and accuracy in external communications with families.

With respect to the 28,000 family members expected to attend the 2003 SOWSG, this number was established by the GOC at the time of the bidding process. However, it very unrealistic, and at Christmas 2002, having reviewed the situation with SO HQ, the GOC revised it down to a maximum of 10,000 - 14,000, based on historic data:

1995 - 6772 athletes, 7000 family members registered (ratio 1:1.03)

1999 - 6976 athletes, 10 000 family members registered (ratio 1: 1.43)

7000 pre registered and 3000 registered on site (43% increase on 1995 nos)

2003 - 7000 athletes, 28 000 family members expected (ratio 1:4)


Revised number: 14 000 family members (increase of 40% to the family attendance in 1999).

In reality, approximately 8500 family members, from 2050 families registered with Family Services for the 2003 SOWSG (including 42 families who registered for the first time on site), as per the definition of a family member for the Games. This in fact gives a ratio of 1:4, but we feel this ratio was exaggerated by the high number of family members who registered from Team Ireland, and the fact that family members only travelled from 96 delegations, to our knowledge via the Family Registration process.

Family Members by Delegation Delegation No Family Members

Andorra 12

Argentina 12

Aruba 4

Australia 158

Austria 32

Bahamas 15

Bahrain 2

Bangladesh 16

Barbados 14

Belgium 54

Benin 7

Bolivia 1

Brazil 4

Canada 89

Cayman Islands

1

Chile 3

China 5

Chinese Taipei 2

Costa Rica 15

Denmark 13

Dominican Rep.

24

Ecuador 9

Egypt 5

El Salvador 1

Faroe Islands 3

Finland 42

Gabon 10

Germany 53

Ghana 38

Gibraltar 9



Great Britain 434

Greece 15

Guatemala 12

Honduras 39

Hungary 24

Iceland 33

India 9

Indonesia 6

Iran 1

Ireland 3927

Isle of Man 9

Israel 22

Italy 163

Ivory Coast 4

Jamaica 1

Japan 64

Kenya 13

Korea 8

Kuwait 2

Lebanon 8

Lichtenstein 9

Luxembourg 10

Malawi 3

Malta 30

Mexico 62

Monaco 1

Morocco 1

Netherlands 94

New Zealand 51

Nigeria 7

Norway 27

Oman 1

Pakistan 35

Panama 25

Paraguay 1

Peru 30

Philippines 32

Puerto Rico 65



Romania 3

Russia 4

Rwanda 6

San Marino 1

Seychelles 6

Sierra Leone 11

Singapore 9

Slovakia 4

Slovenia 7

South Africa 9

Spain 31

St.Kitts/Neves 16

Swaziland 3

Switzerland 21

Thailand 1

The Gambia 7

Togo 4

Trinidad/Tobago

17

Turkey 2

Turkmenistan 1

Uganda 79

Ukraine 5

Uruguay 3

USA 2375

Venezuela 71

Virgin Islands 1

Yemen 1

Zimbabwe 4

Another time consuming aspect of Family Registration was the Visa application process. Several delegations travelling to Ireland for the 2003 SOWSG required Visas. Although the International Services Department issued an officially stamped Letter of Invitation to support the final Visa request, Family Services had to play an important role in the Visa application process by first of all asking families to request this Official Letter of Invitation, verify the information provided, and then pass the request on to the International Services Department which in turn checked that the athlete referred to was a registered athlete participating in the Games.


When family registration closed, letters of confirmation of Family Registration were sent out to the families. Registration letters were sent via email to the Family Coordinator where possible for the purposes of checking family registration data. In the case where individual letters were sent directly to families, delivery of these letters in some instances proved difficult with several letters taking either a long time to arrive at the designated address (usually Latin America) or occasionally even being returned to the office.

The information contained in the Families Database drove the following areas:

Data for the printing of Games Accreditation for families

Requests to Ceremonies Department for tickets to Opening and Closing Ceremonies

Layout of Registration Centre

Planning and size of Hospitality areas

Planning and amount of Reserved Seating

Numbers attending Family Events

Numerous reports to other Functional Managers within the GOC

Although the 2003 SOWSG did not deliver the number of family members originally expected to travel, this was in fact a positive point from the point of view of tickets to Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Whereas in past Games each registered family automatically received 4 tickets to each event, Family Services was able to obtain a generous allocation of up to 10 tickets per family group for the 2003 SOWSG. We also had ample tickets to ensure the availability of contingency tickets at the Family Centre.

As regards reports to other Functional Managers, the one most requested was the number of registered family members and countries of origin. Even though we gave estimates on a monthly basis from the end of February 2003, the deadline for Family Registration

we were not really in a position to give any sort of definitive estimate until May 2003. This type of information was vital to Venue Managers in order to ensure that sufficient space and facilities were provided in the Family Hospitality areas during the venue planning phase. We worked on the following family numbers per sport:

Total Number of Family Members Per Sport

Athlete Sports No Family Members

11 a side Football 374

5 a side Football 495

Aquatics 953

Athletics 854

Badminton 80

Basketball 631

Bocce 190

Bowling 661

Cycling 168


Total Number of Family Members Per Sport

Athlete Sports No Family Members

Equestrian 408

Golf-18 hole 128

Golf-9 hoe 233

Gymnastics 809

Judo 66

Kayaking 249

MATP 812

Pitch & Putt 324

Power Lifting 248

Roller-Skating 80

Sailing 67

Table Tennis 262

Team Handball 34

Tennis 173

Volleyball 127

Accreditation passes were printed for each of the registered family members. These passes were delivered back to Family Services for verification. The passes were packed in A4 envelopes which listed the name of the athlete and their delegation. They were sorted into delegation order and within delegation by athlete surname. The envelopes were in turn stored in archive boxes for distribution at Family Registration. This allowed Family Services to complete the packing operation by inserting into each envelope the Invitation to the Parents Reception, and the 2 Free Access Passes to the Race Evening, and placing a Welcome Pack sticker on the outside of each envelope.

Family Services also had to develop standard procedures for registration specifically for the training of volunteers working in this area. Family Services also coordinated all of the logistics (flow of people, number of registration tables per delegation, signage, Family Services desk, HAFP and FAP registration desks) of the Registration Centre.

Families had been advised on arrival in Dublin that they would need to check in at the Family Registration Centre. There were three separate registration processes for families to pick up their Games Accreditation:

1. Main Family Registration Centre

The Main Family Registration Centre opened on Wednesday 18th June. During the four days it was open prior to the Games approximately 2050 families registered, together with Host Families and Family Ambassadors. The four days of operation prior to Opening Ceremony were necessary as there was a steady flow of families through the week, and this avoided long queues on any particular day.

Pre-Registered families were checked in by volunteer staff. However, families who arrived without prior contact with Family Services were validated and registered by


Family Services staff directly. Additionally, requests for extra tickets or Games Accreditation Passes were handled by staff members.

There was an accreditation presence in the vicinity of the Registration Centre, and Family Services were provided with a 24 hour return service. This service worked quite well and very often the turnaround time for passes was less than one hour. Further accreditation passes were required in three circumstances

when

additional family members to those mentioned on the Family Registration form arrived and had to be registered, when family member s names had been spelt incorrectly and were re printed, or when families registered at the Registration Centre for the first time (at these Games 42 families registered for the first time).

2. Team Ireland

Following a specific request from the National Special Olympics organisation, all registration information for Team Ireland was handed over to the National Families Committee 2 weeks in advance of general registration. The general feeling from Family Services is that Team Ireland could easily have been accommodated in the Registration Centre and if they had registered along with all of the foreign delegations, they would have had a one-stop experience and would have got into the full international atmosphere of the Games during these days.

3. Host a Family Welcome Centre

A Host a Family Welcome Centre was set up on Saturday 21st June to accommodate visiting families who arrived into Dublin Airport on 21st June only, and who were part of the Host a Family Programme. Shuttle buses transported the visitors from the airport to the registration centre every half hour from 07h00 until 14h30. Here the families met up with their local host family, picked up their Games accreditation, Welcome Packs and most importantly their tickets to the Opening Ceremony, taking place a few hours later.

Database:

Each form when received, or when volunteers were available to do database entry, was then entered onto the database using the athlete s name as the key reference information. Quite often the athlete s name was written differently on each of the forms received, making identification of duplications difficult. In some instances also, families filled in multiple application forms for the same programme. It was not possible without manually scanning the data to ensure that HAFP and FAP applicants had registered as family members. It would have helped to have a direct interface with the athlete data and in addition this would have linked family registration directly with an athlete participating in the Games. We used 3 separate forms for families

data (Registration, HAFP and FAP) and we were working off several separate and unlinked databases.

Family Services databases were created internally in the GOC. We had no success in locating the 1999 Games Family Registration database to see how their data had been


set up. Unfortunately the design and development of the families

database was not

deemed to merit the effort or resources to develop a definitive system from the outset.

We had to make considerable changes to the design of the database in the last few months before the Games. If we had not done so, we would not have been in a position to coordinate our registration information and communicate with all our registered families efficiently - which we should have been able to do from Sept 2002.

We made a huge effort with minimum resources to register approximately 8500 family members, all the HAFP local families, HAFP visiting families, FAP visiting families, FAP local families. The key entry in the database was the competing athlete's name and everything followed from that - delegation, all the family members, programmes applied for etc... Most of our database entry was done by volunteers.

Nearer the Games we were continuously being asked for specific information which demanded its own new query and in some cases report, from other inter dependent functional areas within the GOC. During Games time we required the database to be accessible from our remote operations, i.e. the Family Centre in the RDS for the checking of family registration.


Family Registration Form:

The Family Registration process should be simplified by having only one form for registration. One form eliminates double entry of family information. In some cases the families filled in a family registration form, a HAFP application form and a Family Ambassador application form.

The main Family Registration form should include a section where the visiting family can choose to apply for the HAFP or the FAP.

Deadlines for registration:

These deadlines should be reviewed as Family Services initial deadlines were very early (end Oct 2002 for the HAFP and FAP, end Feb 2003 for Family Registration), as many family members travelling to the Games were not in a position to make their decision to travel at this early stage. In the end, Family Services accepted Application Forms right through until June 2003 in an effort to register as many families as possible prior to the Games.

Visa Application procedure:

This needs to be simplified to make it as easy as possible for the visiting families. In addition, visiting families need to be reminded on a continual basis to obtain their Visas early rather than leaving it to the last minute.

Accreditation:


All visiting family members received Games accreditation, but local Host Families and Family Ambassadors were not accredited. For future games, consideration should be given to accrediting all families, visiting and local, taking part in the Families Programme, thereby treating them in the same manner as all Games time volunteers. This would also ease access into family only areas. Some friends of the athletes and host families turned up without Games accreditation expecting automatic access to family hospitality.

The HAFP and FAP volunteer Coordinators were not included on the general Volunteer Management System as they were not specific Games time volunteers. Once again, for future games these volunteers should be treated similar to all other volunteers and should be accredited and given uniforms in the same way.

Database:

It is essential to effectively manage the Family Services programmes that an adequate data management system is in place from the outset.

Each of the programmes offered by family services must be linked and related to each other within the database (Registration, HAFP and FAP) and refer back to the athlete. Additionally each of the three programmes should be set up in the same manner, to hold the master and detailed information for each application received. The table structure and data entry forms can and should be designed in one standard way to ensure the following:

Facility to validate families against participating athletes

Link Host Family Applications to Family Registration

Link Family Ambassador Applications to Family Registration

Facilitate Data Entry o Consider possibility of accepting applications online o Eliminate duplication of data entry o Family Registration Information o Family Accommodation Information o Link local family applicants to HAFP o Link visiting family applicants to HAFP o Link local family applicants to FAP o Link visiting family applicants to FAP o Ensure relationships between data

3.2.3 Family Accommodation Reservation Service

An official Family Accommodation Reservation Service went has been live on the website since November 2002, eight months ahead of the Games, to enable families to book accommodation as soon as possible. The following types of accommodation are available:


4 star hotel: Large hotels with a standard of comfort and service in well-appointed premises. All bedrooms ensuite. Cuisine meets exacting standards. Comprehensive room service.

3 star hotel: Good facilities with a wide range of services. All bedrooms ensuite. Food available all day.

2 star hotel: Good facilities with a reasonable standard of accommodation, food & services. Most bedrooms are ensuite.

1 star hotel: Hotels with acceptable standards of accommodation and food. Some bedrooms have ensuite facilities.

Guesthouse/Bed and Breakfast (B&B): Generally small family run business. From deluxe to more modest properties, each establishment has a different ambiance and decor. Hotel services not available (e.g. room service/bar/restaurant/messages).

Other accommodation options (self catering, hostels) please see website

The price guide below has been compiled from Bord Failte (Irish Tourist Board) official star ratings and an estimation of rates per room per day. This guide is to be used as a general estimation and exact costs will be confirmed by the reservation service, as costs may differ slightly due to location, size and quality of accommodation available. Please note that all accommodation rooms are ensuite and unless stated include bed and full Irish breakfast, all service charges and VAT.

Star Rating Single Double Twin Triple Preference

4 star hotel 150-170 190-230 200-240

3 star hotel 115-150 150-190 170-220

2 star hotel 110-130 115-150 135-185

Guesthouse/B&B 70-115 100-140 60-75 per person

Single = Single Occupancy / Double = 1 Double Bed / Twin = Two single beds / Triple = 1 Double Bed + 1 Single Bed

Accommodation in the Dublin area is difficult to find during the peak summer season. The deadline for booking accommodation is March 15 2003, and due to demand for accommodation early booking is strongly recommended. After this date the Family Services department can no longer guarantee availability of accommodation via the Family Accommodation Reservation Service: www.ovation.ie/html/families.htm

(or access directly via 2003 SOWSG website)

Families can also book accommodation via: Email: [email protected]

http://www.ovation.ie/html/families.htm


During the Games, Family Services will have access to the Ovation accommodation back office in he RDS (set up for Guest Services) and will liaise directly with Ovation should a family have a query or need to find or change accommodation after arriving in Dublin.

Belfast accommodation can be sourced on the following website: www.gotobelfast.com/teamUSA, or directly via the Belfast Welcome Centre:

E-mail: [email protected]


The initial flow of bookings via the Accommodation Reservation Service was slow, in spite of the fact that all communication going out to Family Coordinators mentioned the urgency of booking immediately. There were numerous reasons for this

most delegations found that the accommodation options offered were very expensive, including the booking conditions (it must be noted that the accommodation rates were not considered expensive by Dublin standards). Families were trying to find more moderately priced or cheaper options, or circumventing the system. Therefore many families began to find their own accommodation.

The slow pace of Family Registration in general as already mentioned, had major implications for the reservation of commercial accommodation. Bookings were slow via the Ovation Group dedicated reservation services. The Ovation Group, at the request of the GOC was holding 2500 rooms for family accommodation, and for which the GOC had paid a substantial deposit. All possible actions were taken, as mentioned previously to encourage Family Coordinators to recommend that their families make their reservations as early as possible, as the Ovation Group were obliged to release the blocks of rooms back to the hotel by the end of March 2003.

Time and time again we asked the support of SO HQ to urge all delegations (particularly those where there were no Family Coordinators appointed) to once again make sure that all family members of participating athletes had been informed about the following deadlines, and to stress the urgency of reserving their accommodation.

Family Registration: 28th Feb 2003

Family Accommodation Reservation Service: 31st March 2003

Host a Family Programme: 31st Dec 200

We also sought the help of SO HQ to obtain from all delegations the estimated number of family members expected to travel to the Games.

Delegations were informed in advance by Family Services before the Family Accommodation Service was set up by the Ovation Group, and there was a direct link established from the 2003 SOWSG website. The rate of bookings remained very slow in the initial months, in spite of the monthly updates stressing the importance of booking accommodation. In the end the families who booked via Ovation totalled 355 rooms,

http://www.gotobelfast.com/teamUSA


accommodating approximately 733 people. All other registered families made separate accommodation arrangements or found accommodation via the HAFP.

As a result Family services did not have contact details during the Games for a large number of family members. There were a some instances of where the HoD wished to make contact with a family member, however, unless they were participating in the HAFP we were not guaranteed to have this information, as many family members made their own accommodation arrangements and did not inform Family Services.

Family Services was informed by SO HQ that families were difficult to motivate to make their plans ahead of time. The vast majority of families tend to pull their plans together at the last minute due to financial reasons (families also had to take into consideration the cost of travelling to Ireland), and coupled with world events in the 2003 SOWSG context such as fall- out from Sept 11th, terrorist threats, Gulf War, SARS etc many families were slow to make up their minds and only decided to travel nearer the Games, making their own accommodation arrangements in cheaper accommodation than had been advertised through the web. This presented major issues for the GOC and the accommodation reservation service particularly risks of losing hotel booking deposits. Hoteliers were naturally concerned that bookings were not coming in

as reflected in the monthly meetings held between the Irish Hotel Federation and the GOC.

Although SO HQ got actively involved and drew some comfort from the estimate numbers of family members likely to travel, SO HQ felt that the 2003 SOWSG GOC were actually far ahead of schedule when compared to previous SOWSG, but despite the best efforts of the GOC and the Ovation Group, the GOC had to reduce its room allocations in several hotels. Also, Family Services authorised the removal of a password available only to families so that the general public and anybody coming to the Games could book via the Ovation Family Accommodation Reservation service.

There was not a huge demand for commercial accommodation in the Belfast area for the rollerskating event, many parents choosing to stay in Dublin and travel up and down on a daily basis. Family Services informed families that the Belfast Welcome Centre had the best accommodation site for sourcing commercial accommodation in the city. We did not offer the Host a Family Programme in Belfast.


In retrospect, there should be one Games wide centrally controlled accommodation management service organising appropriate accommodation for every department across the Games from the outset, rather than each department having to source its own accommodation. Even though the Ovation Group were already the accommodation management company for the Guest programme, they only became the official management company for families in July 2002.

We would suggest for future Games that a one-stop service be available to provide flight and accommodation packages, travel, excursions and other general tourist information to families. It would be easier, from a logistical point of view if families


are located in a small number of premises, in the city centre or in close proximity to the competition venues. This was not always possible in Dublin city.

In this way accommodation in hotels could be block booked much earlier, special deals could have been offered to families, and such hotels could have been designated as

family hotels with Family Services volunteers on hand to help with queries and transport.

In reality, due to Dublin s status as a prime tourist destination it would have been difficult to block book rooms in city hotels, and it was not always easy to find rooms in proximity to each competition venue.

3.2.4 Emergency Accommodation

Provisions for emergency family accommodation are being put in place (in dormitory style accommodation in hostels) for those family members who arrive at the Games with no accommodation for the following reasons:

Family Services will endeavour to find reasonable commercial accommodation and if they fail to do so, due to accommodation being fully booked in Dublin city, family members will be placed in basic accommodation, maybe sharing a dormitory.

The HAFP will not

be considered an option for emergency accommodation, as visiting family members will not be placed in a local host family at the last minute, without having gone through the appropriate registration procedures and providing a Police Certificate of Character.

Procedure to follow:

Emergency accommodation will be offered, upon request, to families of the athletes travelling to the Games with little or no means to afford accommodation in Dublin during the Games period, 15th June to 3rd July, and to those who arrive in Ireland under the following circumstances:

Unable to find commercial accommodation, however basic

Unable to afford commercial accommodation, however basic

Arrive with no support, including financial support

Arrival with no accommodation plans

1. Direct to Dublin Tourism Desk, situated in the arrivals lounge of Dublin Airport where staff will assist the family in finding suitable accommodation.

2. In the event that Dublin Tourism have no accommodation or the family cannot afford it, please provide the family with a list of numbers to call for hostel/ budget


accommodation (to be provided by the Accommodation Co-ordinator to the Family Services desk at the airport before commencement of operations). Dormitory accommodation available from 15 per person per night.

Unable to find / afford commercial accommodation, however basic

Contact Family Services HQ. Family Services will advise on procedure. Between the hours of 9

7pm, the family will be directed to this HQ for accreditation and

verification of their status. Further to this, the delegation s Family Coordinator will be asked to vouch for the validity of each case.

If the family members have matched the criteria, Family Services will then contact the Accommodation Coordinator to check what accommodation is available and where. The accommodation Coordinator will advise the hostel of the names, number in party, suitable room type and estimated arrival time.

Airport Staff should use this information to complete the Hostel Voucher. The hostel will NOT accept any families without this Voucher.

Transport to and from Emergency Accommodation / and Airport

Family Services will organize a taxi using a special account set up for this emergency run. The family will receive an official voucher stating that they are entitled to free accommodation for certain dates, to be produced on arrival at the hostel. If the rooms have not been allocated by 5pm each day, the hostel may release the accommodation for sale.

The Accommodation Coordinator can be contacted by all hostels and will remain on-call between 15th June and 1st July in relation to the emergency beds arranged. Any other commercial accommodation queries should be directed to the handling agents (Ovation Group)

The above procedures may be subject to change during the Games. The Family Services Department is very grateful to all the hostels involved for their support of the 2003 SOWSG. Thanks to their help, we will be able to grant the wishes of many families otherwise unable to afford accommodation on arrival in Dublin.


Family Services worked directly with the newly appointed GOC Accommodation Coordinator to secure free accommodation for each night of the Games

between 50 and 90 beds in hostels were available per night. Additionally the Accommodation Coordinator had negotiated budget style accommodation in a city centre hostel, at 15 per night, for bed and breakfast, compared with a regular charge of 18.

This is an essential service to have in place, particularly at the Airport, as family groups and individuals will arrive at the airport either without a place to stay and/or without the money to pay their own way.


A simple procedure was defined for validating family members and for allocating free accommodation to those really in need of it.


We cannot over stress the importance of having an ample supply of budget style and free accommodation available during the first few days of the Games, together with a small cash fund for those families who will run out of finances.

We also found out that some families who were staying in free Host a Family accommodation were not adequately resourced to cover their food or transport outside of the host home and early in Games week we set up an Emergency Fund to assist these particular families, upon request and on a case by case basis, providing them with transport tickets and cash (25 per person per day) to help them buy food until the end of their stay.

3.2.5 Family Hospitality

Airports

Family Services volunteers are present at 2 desks in Dublin Airport (Belfast, Shannon if necessary) Arrival Halls, in liaison with Airport Operations, to meet and greet families on arrival, assist them with luggage, and facilitate their passage through the arrivals area.

It must be noted that if families arrive on the same flight as their athletes, they will be separated from their athletes on arrival, within the Arrival Piers. Families will clear immigration within Piers and go through normal procedures. They will be directed into the arrivals hall like all other passengers, and will claim baggage in terminal as normal. There will be a SO Help Desk situated in the Baggage Hall and it has been agreed with Aer Rianta that some luggage trolleys will be made available (without having to insert a 1 coin).

Two SO Family Services desks will be situated outside baggage claims in the normal meet and greet area for passengers arriving. Dublin Tourism has been made aware of extra customers passing through the airport on these dates and families needing currency exchange service will be directed to the Bank of Ireland Bureau de Change which will offer commission free facilities.

Family Services are present from 15-21 June inclusive, and we expect the busiest days to be 15-16 June and 20-21 June, with a scaled down operation during the intervening days.


Airport operations was one of the most vital aspects of Family Hospitality as this was the visiting families first point of contact with the Games. A key component of the operation was the availability of a range of information to pass on to visitors. Family Services volunteers helped with lost luggage, general tourist and Games information,


directions, accommodation queries and finding accommodation, ground services, currency exchange facilities, taxis, public transport. This service proved to be incredibly welcome and useful.

As Family Services were the only 2003 SOWSG presence landside for most of pre Games week, with two well signposted Families information desks, they were extremely busy, not just with visiting families and family related queries, but with members of the general public also. In addition, these desks also became the focal point for host families to meet their visiting families. In fact, because Family Services was the only Functional Area represented in the arrivals area of the airport (Guest Services had a presence in the last few days prior to the Games, but did not have the same volume of queries), we became an information service for all visitors to the Games.

This was a hugely appreciated service and it was the visiting families

first impression of Ireland and of the Games. In some cases it was difficult for the families as they were separated from their athletes in the Arrivals Piers which were airside. The volunteers excelled themselves in this area, most of the team were either current or ex-air hostesses. This was most useful as they had an existing network of support within the airport. They also knew the system and in the case of current employees were able to go airside and resolve certain issues

e.g. lost or missing luggage, as some of the family bags had got mixed up with the athletes bags. Otherwise, Family Services volunteers were not issued with a pass to go airside.


It is essential that other Functional Areas provide a presence at the Airport in the week before the Games, and it would be ideal to have a SOWSG general information desk in the Arrivals Hall

if not Family Services will have to deal with all queries of guests, coaches, officials and even the general public.

HAFP Welcome Centre 21 June

Families arriving on Saturday 21 June and taking part in HAFP will be directed by Family Services volunteers out of the Arrivals Hall toward the Atrium area of the Airport, where the shuttle bus service which will transport them to the HAFP Welcome Centre at Fingallians GAA Club, Swords, where they will be linked up with their local host family. These buses will run from the coach park directly behind the Atrium, on arrivals level. Two Dublin Bus buses will be in operation, with Dublin Bus drivers. The first bus will leave the Atrium at 7 am (to cater for the 6 am flight arrivals), every ½ hour thereafter, and the last bus will leave at 2.30 pm (to enable time for families to get to Welcome Centre, meet host family and get to Opening Ceremony in time). The journey to Fingallians is approximately 20 minutes long. Families have been informed to arrive by 12 pm on Sat am at the latest. The local host families will be directed to the Airport to meet families arriving from 2 pm onwards.


On arrival at the HAFP Welcome Centre the families will enter by the Main Entrance where Fingallians Volunteers will assist them with their luggage. Only the shuttle bus will be allowed pull up in this area. Facilities are available for luggage storage manned by Fingallians volunteers and allocated on a ticket basis while the families are registering and meeting with their Host Family. Tea /Coffee, sandwiches will be provided for visiting families while they are registering. The Host Families will enter in the main Bar area where they will be met by the Volunteer Coordinators

Tea

/Coffee, sandwiches will also be available for the Host Families in the bar area .

Once the visiting families have registered they will be escorted into the main Bar area where they will be introduced to their Host Family by their Coordinator. When introductions are completed the families will collect their luggage from the storage area. They will be escorted to their car to make their way back to host home or to the Opening Ceremony.

Car Parking facilities are available for the Host Families and will be supervised by Fingallians Club volunteers.

The last shuttle bus will leave Dublin Airport at 2.30 pm for Fingallians and once the visiting families on this bus are matched with their Host Family the Family Services team will transfer to Dublin Airport for any further arrivals that we have been notified about in advance.


The HAFP Welcome centre was specifically set up to facilitate visiting families participating in HAFP who were arriving into Dublin Airport on the 21st June only, i.e. the same day as the Opening Ceremony, as we had anticipated a certain amount of congestion on that day. This may not be necessary for future Games but the parking facilities were more comfortable for all our Host Families and the relaxed atmosphere of the Meet and Greet

away from the busy Airport was much appreciated by everyone. The Welcome Centre was staffed the HAFP Coordinators and visiting families were able to pick up their Games accreditation, tickets and welcome packs and meet up with their host family in one location. Fingallians GAA club provided an excellent Welcome Centre to the visiting families, including hospitality, refreshments and a full Irish breakfast for everybody.

Once the last bus from the airport at 2.30 pm bus had arrived in Fingallians, and the visiting families arriving on it had met up with their local host families, the Welcome Centre closed down, and operations were transferred back to the Atrium at the Airport. In reality some of the last visiting families arrived around 5 pm and their local host families made arrangements to take them directly to the Opening Ceremony.


While the HAFP Centre worked very well it would be ideal to have the HAFP Welcome Centre in the Airport grounds in order to avoid transporting families to another


location, as many of them arrived tired after long flights. We would like to have been in a position to provide free HAFP T-shirts, hats, pins etc for all Host Families and visiting families, but our budgets or sponsorship did not extend this far

perhaps this

would be a good idea for the next SOWSG.

Competition Venues

Families have access to a dedicated hospitality area, in each competition venue where they can experience the welcome and hospitality of local volunteers, relax, meet other families and be offered tea, coffee, light refreshments and snacks. Family Hospitality volunteers are available to provide family related information (evening events, transport arrangements) and families will also be able to obtain general information (Games/schedules/results) from the Information Services desk, which will be located as close as possible to the Family Hospitality area in each venue. Family queries which cannot be answered at the general Information Services desk will be directed automatically to the Family Services Hospitality Coordinator who will be responsible for following up.

It is important to note that there is no day care provided in the Family Hospitality area in the competition venues, and parents are not permitted to leave their children unattended in this area.

All registered Family Members wearing Games Accreditation have access to the Family Hospitality area within each venue and will be asked to present the Family Accreditation Pass for access to this area. Hours of operation will run in conjunction with competition times and are tentatively set at 9 am to 5 pm. Families have special reserved seating at all competition venues aimed at providing them with the best possible view of the competitions and awards presentations. This seating area will in a roped off area that will include access control to check Accreditation Pass to ensure, as far as possible, that it is a family only area.

The level of access of family members within a competition venue will be determined by their Family Accreditation Pass (FAM). As mentioned already, this pass gives family members access to the general spectator area, the family hospitality area, the family seating area and the awards area.


Overall, it was generally agreed that Family Hospitality was a well managed service, and a friendly and welcoming place for family members to meet and relax. The Coordinators and volunteer teams did an excellent job. The level of volunteer morale in all of the Family Hospitality areas was excellent with a 100% volunteer attendance. All functional areas assisted each other when necessary. Family Services interacted mostly with Information, Delegation, Catering and Language Services. Family Services was also delighted to have an ATLAS (Athlete Team Leadership and Support) volunteer and mentor in several of its Family Hospitality areas.

Family Services volunteers welcomed and interacted extremely well with the families and got to know them and their athletes better as the Games progressed. Family


Services volunteers provided all types of assistance. They were sources of emotional and informational support, ranging from problem-solving to getting back to families with answers to queries and making families feel at home as much as possible. In addition they also got many opportunities to watch competition and awards with the families. Many visiting families paid tribute to the fantastic team of volunteers in general in Family Services Games wide.

One of the main messages we had aimed at getting across during training, not just to all volunteers, but also to other functional areas was that Family Hospitality in venues was not just going to be a tea and coffee making service, but much more rewarding and relational as mentioned above.

The only major issue in Family Hospitality was the follow up of the Athlete Access Request Forms. The procedure was rather long and it took quite a few days before all families and coaches became fully aware of the procedure and made contact with their athletes smoothly.

A mobile phone is an essential tool but unfortunately due to lack of resources Family Services was only able to provide a mobile phone in the larger venues (5 phones).

The Family Hospitality volunteer Coordinator Committee (24 key people) was a key resource for Family Services. Their involvement over an eight month period prior to the Games, in monthly Hospitality Committee meetings, was vital to the success of the services provided. Most of the committee had worked on National Games and this experience was invaluable to the effectiveness of this committee and the training and motivation of the volunteers in Family Services.

This team was led by a volunteer Hospitality Team Coordinator, who was an experienced volunteer since National Games. She took over a huge amount of work from the full-time office staff as she became the key contact point for volunteers in this area (total of 220 in 23 different venues), dealing with their queries, assigning them to venues and rostering (1 daily shift in Family Hospitality, 2 shifts in Airport Operations), and troubleshooting, pre Games and during the Games (transfer of volunteers if Family Hospitality area was not busy, for example).

The Hospitality Team Coordinator was also highly involved in delivering training to the volunteers in liaison with the Family Services General Manager, and in sourcing supplies, furniture, fittings, equipment and extras (children s furniture, toys, play activities, baby care facilities, magazines, posters, maps, decorations, entertainment) for the Family Hospitality area. Family Services were fortunate in having a very committed and capable volunteer in this role. Some local schools and organisations provided flowers, welcome posters and donations to buy snacks for families

At Games time the Hospitality Team Coordinator was not rostered in a particular venue in order to be free to monitor Family Hospitality and visit Family Services volunteers in all competition venues. This was a lot of work Games time and could have been better divided between full time staff and other key volunteers. It was an essential support service for volunteers and the best way of reporting venue information back to the Family Services General Manager.


It is essential to have the Family Hospitality Committee active 8 months in advance of the Games and to find key volunteers who will stay with Family Services long term. Once this was in place monthly meetings took place and these worked very well with a motivated group. The Coordinators got to know their team of volunteers early and were able to build up relationships over time. The role of the Deputy was very important. Either Coordinator or Deputy could attend meetings and filter information down to the team. We had a series of monthly meetings, each one containing a certain amount of training and information on the entire scope of Family Services for the Games. Therefore the Family Coordinators were very well versed in the role of Family Services and were in a strong position to highlight the needs of the functional area during the planning stages for each venue.

The Coordinator was also a part of the Venue team. This ensured integration of Family Services into the venue at an early stage. The early formation of the team of Coordinators ensured that Family Services had adequate representation at venue level meetings.

During Games time consideration should be given to the range of refreshments available in Family Hospitality. The emphasis in the 2003 SOWSG was on traditionally Irish light refreshments such as tea, coffee and juice but there was also a huge demand for cold drinks and water due to the unexpected warm weather in Ireland. While the limited choice of snacks available in the Hospitality areas may have suited a large proportion of families the full range of cultural tastes (Eastern and Western) was not catered for due to lack of budget and resources.

Although it was logical for Family Services to source snacks and refreshments via Catering Services, the Family Services budget allowance within the Catering budget needed greater priority. During Games time the relationship between Catering and Family Services varied at different venues and the relationship was based on trust and a verbal arrangement of what would catering supplies would be provided, rather than a written agreement. It is important that the standard of service is consistent across venues.

Signage for Family Hospitality at venue level was often inadequate. This resulted in low numbers of families availing of the service in certain venues the first day or two. Family Services volunteers put up some home made posters and did everything possible to advertise and make people aware of Family Hospitality.

A Guest Book in each of the hospitality venues proved to be a very popular concept and was a good source of feedback within the hospitality areas. Also the Games Gazette was made available in Family Hospitality each morning.

As Family Services provided several different forms of hospitality, this had to be reflected in the cross training of volunteers. Although all volunteers working in Family Hospitality received the general job specific training, a variety of different modules were provided for the Airport, the HAFP Welcome Centre and Family Registration.

In addition to all of the above, Family Hospitality volunteers also managed the Athlete Access Request procedure, which was difficult to follow up in the week prior to the


Games, as the athletes were still in the host towns and families wanted to meet up with them as soon as possible. This procedure became easier once the athletes started competing in the venues.

The Family Services Hotline was set up during Games time as a support service both to volunteers and all visiting and host families. It was very busy all the time and we only had one person rostered for each shift.


It is essential to recruit the team of Hospitality Coordinators early and have a key volunteer to lead up this team and help with the recruitment and training of the volunteers. This enables Family Services to start planning and hold regular monthly meetings.

This is a most important committee to set up as early as possible and when it works well, an excellent service is guaranteed to families during the Games. It will pay dividends regarding team work and communication between Coordinators during the Games as they will have worked together for a long period of time towards a common goal - that of providing the best hospitality service to families at the Games.

As mentioned Family Services had a very limited range of beverages and refreshments so it is essential to have a greater range of hot and cold refreshments and snacks, maybe even fruit options and cater for all tastes.

Family Services in future might consider having its own supply of pins to exchange with families.

Regarding signage, Family Hospitality signs should be clearly visible in each of the official languages of the Games at various points around the venues.

Regarding languages, throughout Family Hospitality we had many dealings with non English speaking families, particularly from Japan and Latin America. In retrospect we would have need more dedicated language volunteers on hand in every venue and event. Language Services provided general assistance in order of priority to medical emergencies, sports protests, all official delegates, volunteers and staff, family members, guests, media and spectators. For future SOWSG try to have as many dedicated language volunteers as possible within Family Services. We coped with Spanish in the sense that quite a few Family Services staff and volunteers spoke some Spanish. We particularly needed Spanish speaking volunteers at the Airport when families first arrived. The following were the most common languages in addition to English as registered by Family Services:

Languages

Arabic

Bengali


Languages

Cantonese

Catalan

Chinese

Danish

Dutch

Faroese

Filipino

Finnish

Flemish

French

German

Greek

Hebrew

Hungarian

Icelandic

Indonesian

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Luxembourgeois

Mandarin

Norwegian

Portuguese

Romanian

Russian

Slovak

Slovene

Spanish

Swahili

Tagalog

Tamil Ukrainian

Urdu

Language requirements can be identified on the Family Registration application forms coming in and notified to Language Services well in advance. It is essential to have language volunteers at the airport for at least four days prior to Opening Ceremony and two days into the Games. If having a s separate Welcome Centre for Host Families this will also need to have some Language Services cover.

From a practical point of view each Family Hospitality Coordinator should have a mobile phone at Games time, and Family Services HQ should also have a separate fax line for reception of Coordinator reports each evening. There should also be at least 2 people staffing the Family Services HQ hotline as this tends to be very busy.


The Athlete Access Request procedure did not work very well overall and needs to be revisited and simplified for the next SOWSG, in order to make it a faster procedure for the families. On arrival one of the first questions of all visiting families is "How can we contact our athlete"? - This query will arise at the airport - so it is important to have an uncomplicated and straightforward system in place for this. The week prior to the Games Family Services must have access details about where athletes are staying as Family Services is the first point of contact for most visiting families. A list of athlete accommodation should be available at Airport, Family Registration and above all, the Family Services Hotline must have access telephone numbers and appropriate contact names in each of the host towns prior to the Games, and in the accommodation venues during the Games.

During the Games the Family Services Hotline should be manned from 8.00 am each day (as indeed should the Sports Hotline). For the first few days a lot of the questions will be about the exact times and locations of where the athletes are competing

in the early stages we did not have this information (nor did the Sports Hotline) so it is important to have fast access to this data. We would recommend that two people cover this desk in the mornings as the number of enquiries that came in was too much for one person to handle, particularly in the mornings. The afternoons seemed to be quieter.

The Family Services must have as much information as possible to function efficiently as for most queries this will be the first number that all families will telephone - both visiting and host families - even though the issue may be sport, transport, tourist information, directions etc . It is almost impossible to predict the nature of the questions that will come in to the Hotline, and for that reason it is essential to have well informed volunteers on hand to staff this Hotline who are capable of accessing information quickly and conveying it to the family member.

Family Services staff will be busy at other activities and visits to volunteers in venues and must be accessible by mobile at all times, even though budget constraints may dictate otherwise. Any serious issues coming in through the Hotline are automatically passed on to the staff and handled by them.

For future Games consideration should be given to having a full-time member of staff in charge of Family Hospitality in general, including all of the evening events.

3.2.6 Family Centres

Minerva Suite R.D.S. and Morton Stadium

The Family Centre at the Minerva Suite RDS will be in operation from Wednesday 18 June 2003 to Saturday 21 June (Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat 9am to 5 pm) to assist those families arriving early in Dublin, and primarily for the purpose of Family Registration. Families will be informed to come to this Family Centre to pick up their Games Accreditation and Welcome Pack (includes Family Handbook, invitations, Opening Ceremony tickets, tourist information, maps) and have the possibility of buying their Public Transport Ticket from a Dublin Bus desk. Tickets to Opening Ceremony will be collected in the Family Centre, and the Welcome Pack will be collected in the Toyota Centre, just across the road from the Family Centre.


Games Accreditation will be delivered in advance to the Family Centre. They will be boxed by delegation, and the envelope will show the name of the athlete and main family contact. Tables will be lined along both sides of the Minerva Suite, in alphabetical order.

All family members have been advised to pre register for the Games and it is expected that the number of families registering on site will be minimal. In any case, families registering on site must be approved by Family Services HQ before issuing an Accreditation Pass, as per the procedure on Family Registration at the Family Centre. If not approved by Family Services, they will be treated like a general spectator.

These venues have been chosen as Family Centres because of their location, north and south side of city, their size, and because of the largest numbers of athletes and family members in attendance at these venues. Proposed hours of operation and family hospitality are 9 am to 5 pm, but final times will be determined by competition schedules. The Family Centre at the Minerva Suite RDS is conveniently located close to the Festival Village, also open to families, where there is a daily cultural/artistic programme and an exhibition space for commercial organisations and groups that work with learning disability.

In addition to refreshments and snacks, each Family Centre will have a SO HQ desk (providing information on Special Olympics, Family Support Networks, Family Leadership information, Healthy Athletes, Sports Development information, Belfast Scientific Symposium reports; pins, etc.) and free access to a computer room/Internet Café for family members only. There are 6 computers available for use in the Minerva Suite RDS and 4 available in Morton Stadium.

The Family Centre at the Minerva Suite RDS is also organising a Healthy Athlete Seminar Programme, which is tentatively taking place each morning from 11.30 am-12.30 pm in the Toyota Centre, just across the road from the Family Centre. The Family Centre is looking at the possibility of children s entertainment/activity from 2.30-3.30 pm each day in the Minerva Suite.

In general, the Family Centres will serve as the hub of family activities during the Games and can be the families main point of contact. There is no day care provided at the Family Centres. Parents are not permitted to leave their children unattended in this area.


Both Family Centres were very well attended by families. Particular attractions included the availability of Internet Access for the first time, the children s play areas and the children s entertainment (clowns). The main Family Centre at the RDS was very busy all the time, as in addition it involved Family Registration, the Healthy Athlete Seminars and the distribution of the Welcome Pack. It is important to have as many services available as possible in an effort to provide a one stop experience. During Family Registration families appreciated the presence of Dublin Bus transport desk, for transport, tour and ticket information.


Family Services was able to provide the 10 computers in the Family Centres as a result of financial support to the amount of 10 000 $ obtained from the Kim Samuel Johnson Foundation. The IT Department took charge of the supply, set up of facility and maintenance of these computers during Games time, and Family Services volunteers ensured that everybody got a chance to use them

The families also appreciated the information provided at the SO HQ desks. SO HQ sent the information and documents directly from the USA and Family Services volunteers took care of the practical arrangements. Experienced SO Ireland Family volunteers staffed the desks and answered questions on site during the Games.

The Healthy Athlete seminars did not take place in the Family Centre in the Minerva Suite as had been originally been intended. Instead they took place in the quieter environment of the nearby Toyota Family Welcome Centre, specially decorated and branded for this purpose. SO HQ brought handouts relative to each topic on the day of the particular seminar and Family Services volunteers coordinated all technical and practical needs on site. These seminars attracted fewer numbers than had been anticipated, which was disappointing given the high calibre of the speakers and the positive feedback of those who attended. However, it is still felt that the Healthy Athlete seminars are a new and welcome addition to Family Services at Games time as they provided the families in attendance with much needed information.

The Welcome Pack distribution also took place in the Toyota Family Welcome Centre.


As this was the first time that the Seminars were provided for families at SOWSG many useful lessons were learned. The Healthy Athlete Seminars should ideally be located in or close to the main Family Centre. We felt that it would be too busy and noisy to have the Seminars in the Family Centre and for this reason we moved them to the Toyota Family Welcome Centre, where there was adequate room for up to 100 people.

It is important to ensure much more advertising of the seminars pre Games and during the registration of family members on arrival. Perhaps the Seminars could be located close to the Healthy Athletes Programme, and families could be given an incentive to attend

for example each family attending the Healthy Athlete Seminar would automatically get a Pass to go and visit the Healthy Athletes Programme in action.

If feasible, we would recommend having Internet access in each Family Hospitality area as families did use it every day to communicate with family at home. Even though Family Services had also arranged free email facilities in the city centre, only about 30 families used this service, whereas the computer facilities in both Family Centres were in constant demand. Also, if space permits it is ideal to have a children s play area in each Family Hospitality area, together with the SO HQ information.


3.2.7 Family Welcome Pack

A Family Welcome Pack containing the Visiting Families Handbook, invitations, tourist information, maps and discount voucher will be distributed to families during Registration. Each family will receive a Welcome Pack (1 per 1 registered family member, 2 per 1+ family members) and to enable this distribution, 1 or 2 red Toyota branded Welcome Pack Tokens will be placed on each Registration envelope. These will be presented at the Toyota Family Welcome Centre in exchange for the Welcome Pack.


What began with the idea of Gift Bag soon changed to the idea of a Welcome Pack, as Family Services did not have any financial assistance or spare budget for this project. The priority of the Sponsorship Department was to source items for the Athlete Gift Bags only and they did not get involved at the level of families. While Family Services wanted to provide gift items for families, we had to follow the directive not to carry out any individual fundraising or contact any company as all such business had to be channelled through the Support an Athlete campaign and the Sponsorship Department. As a result no gift items were donated to Family Services. Toyota Ireland, the designated sponsor of the Families Programme sponsored 7000 red shoulder bags to the value of 20,720 .

The Welcome pack contained the following items:

Visiting Families Handbook

Competition Venues Map

Dublin Tourism Guide

Restaurant Guide

Safety Tips for Tourists leaflet

Discount Vouchers for Dublin Zoo

National Art Gallery Welcome Pack

Shopping Evening Guide

Athlete Access Request Form

Miscellaneous tourist information

The visiting families really appreciated the Toyota bags and the information contained in them. The red bags were highly visible at every Games event making it very easy to recognise family members. As already mentioned, it would have been nice to include some gift items as well as the information.

The Welcome Pack takes quite a lot of organisation from sourcing the design and model of bag, finding a supplier, organising delivery of items to be packed, finding a storage area and organising the pick and pack operation, logistics, delivery and distribution of the Bags. The pick and pack operation can only be done close to Games time, in our case it was done two weekends in advance of the Games. Finding the time and free volunteers at this late and busy stage was quite a challenge and we made up all 7,000 bags with the same contents.


The bags were distributed using a sticker system. Each Registration envelope had 1 or 2 Toyota branded stickers on the outside. The family showed this sticker at the Toyota Family Welcome Centre and a bag was handed over to every family group

one bag

was allowed when there was only 1 family member and two bags were allowed for every family which had more than 1 family member. Once the bag was handed over the sticker was crossed through as having been used.

The Visiting Families Handbook was a very time consuming exercise. Gathering all of the necessary information from the different departments took time as did writing, editing and re-editing it. Much of the information was not available until the month prior to the Games, which left the deadlines for printing and delivery very tight for the

pick and pack operation.


The Welcome Pack was sponsored by Toyota Ireland and distributed from the Toyota Family Welcome Centre. This worked well as it was adjacent to the main Family Centre - however, space permitting it would be easier for the families if they could pick up their Welcome Pack at the same time as Registration, once again emphasising that the Registration Centre should provide a one-stop experience.

We would highly recommend that a translated version of the Visiting Families Handbook in each of the official languages be available for distribution at Family Registration. We did not have the time or financial resources to do this at a late stage before the Games.


3.2.8 Host a Family Programme (HAFP)

The Home from Home Families Programme offers the opportunity for visiting family members to meet with individuals, families and communities in Dublin and surrounding areas, through the Host a Family Programme (HAFP) and Family Ambassador Programme (FAP).

HAFP Information for Visiting Families

The HAFP provides free accommodation and breakfast in Dublin homes, for families of athletes competing in the 2003 SOWSG, particularly those families who would like to attend and support their athlete, but otherwise would not be in a position to do so.

The HAFP provides free

accommodation and continental style breakfast (tea/coffee, cereal, juice, bread) in homes in the greater Dublin area for one or two family members (over the age of 10 years) of Special Olympics athletes participating in the 2003 SOWSG. These homes are situated as close as possible to the various competition venues.

Although visiting family members are provided with free accommodation and continental style breakfast, they are responsible for all other meals and expenses during their stay. The HAFP is an opportunity for visiting families to experience life in a friendly home from home environment.

The dates available for host accommodation: June 21 2003 (arrive) to June 29 2003 (departure on June 30 am at the latest). Although host accommodation is offered within these dates only, a certain amount of visiting families are arriving prior to and after these dates, and each request is being dealt with on a case by case basis. Family members can choose to stay for less than nine days, also within these dates, although this is not the norm.

N.B. The HAFP is not on offer in Belfast (Rollerskating venue).

The HAFP Programme is now closed (Feb 03) except for those delegations that have been granted an extension. All visiting families, subject to satisfactory Police Certificate of Character, who apply for the HAFP are guaranteed accommodation in local homes and should not reserve alternative commercial accommodation.

Family Services has sent a Travel Request Form to all visiting families taking part in the HAFP in order to have their exact arrival time for the information of their local host. This form also gives Family Services an indication of early/late arrivals in order to plan for alternative meeting procedures for hosts and visitors.

HAFP Information for local hosts

The HAFP offers local hosts the chance to actively get involved in the Games by opening their hearts and homes to the families of the Special Olympics athletes.


The aim of the HAFP is to provide free accommodation in homes in the greater Dublin area for one or two family members of the Special Olympics athletes participating in the 2003 SOWSG, so that they can support their athlete in their ultimate sporting achievement (N.B. - the athletes themselves are accommodated with their teams). Local people will showcase the renowned friendliness and hospitality of Dublin to the world, and create a true home from home experience for the families of the participating athletes.

Responsibilities as a Host:

Provide free accommodation for one or two members of the visiting family for up to nine (9) days during the Games period, from June 21-29 2003 (departure June 30 am)

Provide a separate bedroom for exclusive use of the visiting family.

Provide continental style breakfast each morning (tea/ coffee, cereal, juice, bread).

Meet the visiting family upon arrival in Dublin.

Inform the visiting family about local facilities.

Each local host has been assigned to a HAFP Coordinator, a trained volunteer responsible for coordinating a team of hosts, who is assisting the host with any questions or concerns they may have about the HAFP prior to and during the Games. The HAFP Coordinator meets all local families during the home visit and requests proof of home and car insurance. Homeowners are requested to have household insurance in place and families cannot be considered for the HAFP unless they provide proof of their homeowners insurance. All host families will receive a Home from Home Handbook designed to provide you them with all of the information that they will need to prepare for their hosting experience, and will be invited to cultural awareness training and an orientation session in May 03.

Arrival of Visiting Family

The local host will be provided with detailed information on their visiting family s arrival and pick up location. The information will also include key contact numbers and other useful information.


Expression of Interest Forms and Families Programme Promotional Video

The official launch of the Families Programme (HAFP & FAP) took place in April 2002 and was attended by Timothy Shriver, President. What we had initially promoted as the Adopt a Family

Programme officially became known as the Host a Family

Programme. We had already produced a 9 ½ minute promotional video for the recruitment of Host Families and Family Ambassadors which we had been using for presentations to local groups such as Embassies, companies, church and sporting associations, residents associations, SO families and friends. This video briefly


concentrated on the World Games, the important role of the family within Special Olympics and the requirements of being a Host Family or Family Ambassador. It was an essential promotional tool to have available, particularly when presenting to groups which had no prior knowledge or experience of Special Olympics.

Between April and September 2002 we used the Expression of Interest Form to find out the interest in both programmes among the local public. It was not particularly useful in the Irish context as it is traditional for Irish people to invite people to stay in their homes and we expected a good response anyway, receiving applications from almost three times the number of host homes that we required. However, the Expression of Interest forms were useful to us in recruiting volunteer HAFP and FAP Coordinators so that they could be trained well in advance for the home visits and the subsequent responsibility of matching .

We would recommend having the HAFP Application Forms ready for the official launch so that there is no need for dual entry into the database (Expression of Interest Forms and Application Forms). The importance of languages should be highly emphasised on the Application Form -in particular Spanish- as the majority of our visiting families who did not speak English were from Latin America and we experienced a shortage of Spanish-speaking host homes.

Also check well in advance where the largest competition venues are located as that will inevitably highlight where the greatest demand for host families will be and it may require more targeted marketing in these areas. We would even suggest that the 4 main competition venues (athletics, aquatics, bowling, gymnastics) are indicated on the Application Form stating that these are the 4 main areas where the majority of host homes are likely to be requested. It may also be of benefit to ask the applicants to indicate exactly how far their homes are located from these venues by Public Transport and state that only homes within a certain distance will be selected and visited. In our case, as we had such an overwhelming response to the HAFP, we carried out too many home visits, some to homes that realistically were too far from competition venues. This ultimately caused a lot of disappointment, and in order to avoid this, it is advisable to give precise indications on the Application Form regarding the areas where host homes are required.

Cluster Managers

The HAFP was coordinated by a part- time member of staff between September 2002 and March 2003, who then became full time. There was a huge amount of work involved and having only one person was unreasonable, particularly as the same member of staff was in charge of the FAP also. We totally depended on the good will of a core group of volunteers known as HAFP Cluster Managers. We would certainly recommend having these volunteers on board early, particularly if depending totally on volunteers to run the HAFP. These volunteers had already been involved in a HAFP organised for the National Games the previous summer and they found some other volunteers who were prepared to take on the role.

Initially there were 8 Coordinators whom we subsequently trained to be Cluster Managers starting in September 2002. We then invited all those volunteers who had


expressed an interest in being Coordinators (via the Expression of Interest Form) to an information and interview session. With the help of our Cluster Managers we conducted the interviews in small groups, using "What If" situations that they might experience as a HAFP Coordinator. The ensuing discussions soon showed candidates who would be very good for the role and at the end of the session they were all asked if they felt they would be able to give the time commitment and take on the responsibility of the role. Some felt it would be too much of a time commitment. The Cluster Managers made the final selection of Coordinators and at that stage we started with 30 Coordinators and 8 Cluster Managers to help run the HAFP.

Application Forms Host Families

We did not offer the option of applying on line as we did not have an adequate database system. We also requested the written signature of family members over 17 years living in the host home to allow us do a background security check. The Application Form should prioritise email address as the preferred means of making contact. We would also suggest not giving the local Host Family any options on dates

they should be willing to take in a visiting family for the entire period of the Games Within these dates it is important to include the night before the Opening Ceremony and the night of the Closing Ceremony as this was the most common length of stay for our visiting families, but do not leave the dates open ended.

For various reasons, but mainly flight arrangements, many families did arrive earlier and stay later than the specified HAFP dates. Each case was dealt with individually in consultation with both the visiting family and the local family to find the most suitable arrangement. It was generally agreed that switching families during their stay to another host family e.g. if they wished to stay for longer than the agreed period would cause matching and tracking issues.

Application Forms Visiting families

As these were returned hand written rather than typed in most cases, we had difficulty in reading the handwriting which often resulted in wrong spelling on Games accreditation and other relevant documentation from the start. Printed forms would make this task a lot easier. Some important questions on the Application Forms were not always filled in which required follow up on our part and became time consuming. We did ask Family Coordinators to double check all the forms before forwarding them to us, as they best knew the family, but this did not always happen. The role of the Family Coordinator was to ensure that all required information is supplied before the form can be sent to the GOC, and to supply any additional information if they deemed it necessary, such as mobility or other needs.

We restricted the HAFP application to 2 family members per family. In retrospect this could have been 3/4 family members maximum as some of our local hosts wanted to accommodate more visitors and we also had a huge surplus of host homes available, which may not be the case in the next SOWSG. However it should be stated in this instance that the HAFP cannot guarantee accommodating all family members in one home. On the other hand, we also found that it was not a good idea to place only 1 family member in a host home where both parties in the host home were working full


time. They found it too much pressure having to look after just 1 person whereas 2 or more people can relieve them of this as they are not as dependent entirely on the Host Family.

We also restricted the HAFP application to children over 10yrs for child protection, safety and security reasons. Some of our Host Families with young children were disappointed with this as they would like to have welcomed visiting children. In retrospect however, the majority of our visiting families did not bring young children with them, and the profile of visiting families was quite mature. We placed families from the following 61 delegations in the HAFP:

HAFP Delegation Listing

Athlete Delegation

Argentina

Aruba

Australia

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belgium

Benin

Canada

Chile

Dominican Rep.

El Salvador Finland

Gabon

Germany

Ghana

Gibraltar

Great Britain

Guatemala

Honduras

Hungary

Iran

Ireland

Isle of Man

Israel

Jamaica

Japan

Kenya

Lebanon

Malawi Mexico

Morocco

Netherlands

New Zealand


HAFP Delegation Listing

Athlete Delegation

Pakistan

Panama

Peru

Philippines

Puerto Rico

Romania

Russia

Rwanda

Seychelles

Sierra Leone

Singapore

Slovenia

Spain

St.Kitts/Neves

Swaziland

Switzerland

The Gambia

Togo

Trinidad/Tobago

Turkey

Turkmenistan

Uganda

Ukraine

USA

Venezuela

Virgin Islands

Zimbabwe

Police Certificates of Character

In addition to asking that all Application Forms be processed, screened and approved by the local SO Programme or Family Coordinator, we also asked each applicant over the age of 16 years on the HAFP to send in a Police Certificate of Character with their application. In retrospect this involved a huge amount of work, not just to obtain them and follow up with families who had not sent them in, but also to process and check within Family Services. This procedure had not been done within SO HQ before as the last HAFP had taken place back in 1995. We were advised that it was much more trouble than it was worth, it was not requested for athletes and that there had been no incidents with family members at past Games. Beyond a delegation confirming that a registered family member is a close associate of an athlete, delegations could not be responsible for doing background checks or vouching for the integrity of family members attending the Games.

None of this answered the GOC s concerns for a true background check for families to be hosted in private homes so for this and other reasons we decided to go ahead and


request them. We had been to several meetings with the national body of residents associations (ACRA) at a time when there was a high sensitivity surrounding child protection issues in general in Ireland. In order to obtain their support for the HAFP, and although they did not expect any unlawful activities, they were requesting that we guarantee the character of visiting family members staying in local homes, in the same way as all our host families had to undergo a background security check also

We did query the reliability of such Police Certificates of Character as they came in such a wide variety of different languages, formats and were valid for different time periods. We were also aware that it was an extra expense and sometimes substantial cost for the athlete s family as there was often a fee in the local country for each Certificate issued and a long time delay to obtain the Certificate. Once again, as in previous Games, we had no incidents with family members staying in host homes.

Home Visits

The home visits were entirely carried out by volunteer HAFP Coordinators. Some families made the comment that they expected full time staff to be carrying out the home visits rather than volunteers.

We had 38 Coordinators in total (including the 8 Cluster Managers) and all were fully trained prior to commencing the HAFP home visits. They each visited approximately 20-25 homes each and were subsequently responsible for those Host Families from the time of the home visit right up to and during the Games.

The Family Services Department in fact had very little contact with the individual Host Families as all queries/problems, went via the Coordinator, the Cluster Manager and then to the Family Services Department. We recommend that the home visits take no longer than 20 minutes as this is not a home inspection but merely a visit to get to know the family a little better, to confirm information and facilities stated on the Application Form, to answer any queries the potential host family may have and put them at ease about the HAFP. This should be clearly conveyed to them when making the appointment for the home visit. Each Coordinator had a copy of the Application Form and they were able to go through the information together and note any other points they found applicable. They also gave the home a 1,2, or 3 star rating rather than writing any negative comments on the form.

The Coordinators built up a very personal relationship with their Host Families and this was of great importance when it came to the matching stage first of all, and then dealing with any cancellations and changes closer to the Games. One of the greatest challenges of the HAFP was the tracking of changes and flight information of the visiting families, and then ensuring that the Host Families were kept informed at every stage.

At the home visit stage it is important to reiterate to the Host Families that the SO athletes will not be staying with them

we found this difficult to get across to the families at the start of HAFP as the whole concept of Special Olympics was very new to many of them, coupled with the fact that some Host Towns had decided to accommodate the athletes in host family accommodation also.


The first phase of home visits started in October2002 and was completed by the end of November (December and January was not a good time to do home visits due to the Christmas and New Year festivities, and also the fact that many of the Coordinators had their own families). This involved approximately 650 homes in the Dublin area. The homes were allocated by the Cluster Managers to the Coordinators who in turn were very efficient at arranging the appointments and follow up with the individual families. They found the home visits a very enjoyable part of the HAFP. It is extremely important that Coordinators have a good general knowledge of the SOWSG, competitions and venues as they will be asked a variety of questions about the Special Olympics. All of this information must be well covered in the training sessions.

Although Coordinators were offered telephone and mileage expenses and were given the appropriate forms to send in to the Family Services Department very few in fact followed up, preferring to contribute their efforts to the Games. It is important to have set aside a budget for these expenses however, should this not be the case in future SOWSG. It would be preferable if Coordinators had some database skills and had access to a computer at home, as email was the main source of contact between the Family Services Department and the Coordinators.

Insurance

Insurance proved to be a big issue from the very start of the HAFP. The SOWSG Insurance Company informed the Family Services Department that we simply needed to request that Homeowners have household insurance in place and that no families be selected unless they provided us proof of their Homeowners Insurance policy, including contents and liability cover. The 2003 SOWSG were not responsible for any claims, acts or injury or resulting loss to persons or property and the Host Families would have to present any claims to their own home insurer. It was very difficult to get this concept over to the Host Families as they expected the 2003 SOWSG to make special arrangements for insurance cover. The reason behind this was that families were taking in non-paying guests so that it was no different than where a family invited a friend/relative to stay over for a few days/nights, as a guest in their home. In fact the 2003 SOWSG off loaded the risks and liabilities to the home insurance of the Host Families which they did not appreciate on the basis that they were inviting strangers into their homes and that the 2003 SOWSG were not taking any legal responsibility at all for the conduct of visitors in their home, except in the case of proven negligence on the part of 2003 SOWSG.

Some families in fact withdrew their applications on this issue alone and the fact that their Homeowners insurance would go into play if there was a problem. The national body of residents associations (ACRA) also believed that host families should have been covered by the GOC insurance.

The Family Services Department had no option but to insist that host families provided details of their Homeowners Insurance Policy to our Coordinators during the home visit. (Obviously if the policy was going to be out of date by the time of the Games it was the responsibility of the Coordinator to follow it up). It was important to anticipate all these issues that came up in relation to Insurance and have a clear and concise response for any queries that will arise in any future HAFP. This also needs to


be covered extensively at the training of the Coordinators prior to the home visits, as Insurance questions were often directed at them first of all. We also insisted on the fact that visiting families did not smoke in the homes and should be asked to smoke outside, and covered this point in all training documents. In the end, we did not receive any reports of incidents or accidents in any of the host homes.

Car Insurance was also required if the family intended to drive their visitors at any time but this was not a big issue and Host Families gladly provided details of Car Insurance during the home visits. Medical and Travel Insurance were the responsibility of the visiting families and this was repeatedly emphasised on all the documentation to them.

Timelines and Milestones

The launch date of April 2002, 14 months out form the Games was very early for the HAFP and careful consideration should be given to this by future GOC s. With the continued advertising of the HAFP during this time it soon became over-subscribed and created extra work for an already over burdened Family Services Department, as well as increasing the number of disappointed families when they had no chance of being matched as a host family. In retrospect, we had so many applications from local families that we could have made Dublin one entire host family city and not consider commercial accommodation at all. As for the advertising, more targeted advertising would benefit the recruitment of host families, particularly those with language skills.

By our closing deadline of 31 October 2002 for receipt of visiting family Application Forms for the HAFP we had only received 180 applications. Already there were far more host family applications than visiting family applications. This was an unrealistic deadline on our part and the first deadline should probably have been 31 December 2002. Family services did not actually close the HAFP to visiting families, given there were surplus host families. All involved agreed that this was not a problem and would recommend this facility for the future. It was felt that possibly local Family Coordinators closed the HAFP and didn t forward on applications to the GOC as certain families arrived at the games which clearly would have been candidates for the HAFP.

In reality we never closed the HAFP as we had such a surplus of homes available to us and applications were still coming in up to two weeks before the start of the SOWSG. However it is a good idea to enforce a deadline as it gives the coordinators a timetable to try and follow. In total we had 1350 applications from local families, 566 applications from visiting families. By Games time, after numerous cancellations (126) on the part of visiting families we had a final total of 440 families (representing approximately 1000 individuals) who were actually matched and stayed with a local family.

As our home visits were carried out in October / November 2002 there was obviously a very long time span before we were in a position to confirm with our Host Families whether they were going to be matched with a visiting family or not. This was a great source of frustration for some of our local families particularly for those we did not need in the end. In hindsight the HAFP at local level should have been closed much


earlier once we had sufficient host homes and the home visits had been completed, ie by early December 2002.

It is very important that a letter is sent out to the Host Families on receipt of their Application Form explaining the procedures and the time scale. A second letter should be sent out after the home visit is completed to let them know that they are accepted into the HAFP

however, this will not automatically guarantee them a visiting family

because at this time we were not in a position to know how many Host Families were ultimately required and we did not have a precise handle on the numbers until March 2003.

We knew from an early stage that not all host family applicants were going to be matched and this was going to leave a very large number of disappointed families. Families who weren t matched were advised by letter from Family Services Department and a personal call from the Coordinators eased the feelings of disappointment as they had built up a relationship with the applicants. Having got over their initial disappointment the families who were asked to be reserve

host families really appreciated their involvement in the Games and gestures such as tickets to ceremonies and invitations to family events in the evening. The Family Services Department did not anticipate the high level of disappointment felt by local families

Other local families took the whole procedure very personally and when they received the letter thanking them for their application, but informing them that we had sufficient homes and we would not be taking them up on their offer they felt it was a reflection on their home, their family, the result of the home visit etc . We received some irate phone calls asking why their home had been "turned down" - so it is most important to be very sensitive in any correspondence to those families whose homes will not be used for the HAFP. The volunteer Coordinators also received some irate calls as some of the families felt that they were directly responsible for them being "turned down" in the sense that they had given negative reports" on their homes.

Training

We sent out monthly updates with translations to Family Coordinators to distribute to families and one final set of Guidelines specifically for the visiting families coming into the HAFP, as this was not included in the Visiting Family Handbook distributed to all families on arrival. We insisted that families should communicate with each other before coming to Dublin and gave guidelines to both parties on how to go about doing this. SO families were on occasion nervous about this trip and staying with complete strangers, as were our local host families regarding language difficulties and communication, if a language match up was not possible.

At local level we organised a large General Orientation event for all Host Families and Family Ambassadors together (approx 800 people) at the beginning of May 2003 in a large theatre in Dublin. The aim of this was to ensure that Host Families and Family Ambassadors had a minimum level of general SO training and to make them feel involved in the bigger picture. We followed this with a smaller and more detailed briefing, question and answer, and cultural training session for Host Families only at the end of May 2003, dividing the city into north and south side. This covered areas


such as food, lifestyle, social interaction, daily living habits, religion, greetings, time, clothing, language and communication, cross cultural communication tips and conflict resolution. It was a good way for local Host Families to meet over refreshments. In addition we provided a detailed Family Handbook to all local families. The issue of expenses and financial differences between host families and visiting families did not come up at this session, but it was in fact a major cultural issue during Games time with certain delegations.

Cancellations

We experienced a considerable number of cancellations from the visiting families in the final weeks before the Games. In most cases we would have been advised of this by the international Family Coordinator. We would then pass this information on to the Cluster Manager who in turn would then inform the respective Coordinator and Host Family. In a lot of cases the Coordinators were in a position to "rematch" the Host Family with another visiting family if the cancellation had been notified at a reasonably early stage. However there were also a number of last minute cancellations and this caused great disappointment to our Host Families. Fortunately, we had arranged for all local host families to get tickets to Opening and Closing Ceremony and this somewhat alleviated the disappointment. Most of them got into the spirit of the Games anyway and went to watch competitions in their local venue.

On the one hand we were disappointed with the large number of cancellations by visiting families right up to Games time, and in some cases neither Host Families or the Family Services Department were informed, meaning that some Host Families did go to the airport to meet families who had sent in arrival information details, but who never arrived. On the other hand we had very few cancellations form local Host Families (mainly through illness) as everyone wanted to be involved in the Games in some way.

Substitute/additional family members

Nearer the Games some visiting families substituted or added other family members to their party and did not always inform Family Services or indeed their Family Coordinators. We alerted Family Coordinators to this issue as it was probably the most time consuming aspect of the HAFP in the final countdown to the Games. Each of our visiting family members over the age of 16 years had to provide a Police Certificate of Character and when family members were substituted or added, we had to advise them that we needed a relevant Police Certificate. In some cases this was quite difficult to obtain and caused us some problems. In other cases Family Services Department was not advised of the changes and it would only come to our attention when the Host Family contacted the visiting family. This was a serious issue for us as the substitute or additional family member was not even registered with Family Services and could not be allowed in the HAFP without having had a security check. On these occasions we had to advise the Host Family that they could certainly accept the person into their home with the original registered family member, but that it was their own decision and we could not be responsible for them. In most cases the Host Family decided to go ahead and as it turned out we had no major issues to report. It is important to anticipate changes to members of the visiting family e.g. husband cannot now travel, so


aunt is coming instead etc .This will inevitably happen and it is important to have procedures in place to handle it.

Communication between the Host Family and the Visiting Family

After the matching process we provided a brief profile of each family to both parties in March and April 2003 and asked them to communicate with each other to get any additional information that they required so that by the time of the Games that they had almost formed a level a friendship. In some cases the information provided by the visiting family was scant and the main difficulty this caused was in making contact. Quite often the phone numbers given were impossible to get through on, therefore making initial contact difficult. If the host family was unable to make contact with their visitors 6 weeks before the Games, Family Services took over and endeavoured to get in contact with the family.

In a lot of cases this worked very successfully but where applicants only provided a telephone number particularly families from countries outside Europe and the USA this proved very difficult. With time differences, language problems and costs to be taken into account it is advisable for the Family Services Department to take this on. The international Family Coordinators did help in this process but it proved slow, particularly for our local families who could not understand whey the visiting family was not responding to them. An email

address is imperative, and that is why we suggest this to be more emphasised on the Application Forms both for Host and Visiting Families.

Matching Process

The Cluster Managers and Coordinators did all the matching themselves as we did not have the staff to help with this process. In reality it worked out very well as they best knew their group of families and had undergone training in the matching process. The final matching process must be done manually rather than by computer, as there are so many variables and human interest to take into account. In reality it involves several attempts before arriving at a first matching, and once again our Coordinators, rather than staff were best equipped to do this. They took into account the following main criteria:

Date of receipt of completed Application Form

Proximity to public transport

Convenience to competition venue of athlete s sport

Bedrooms and beds available, types of bed,

Requests of host and visiting family

Religion of host and visiting family

Dates suitable for host and visiting family

Language skills of host and visiting family

Smoking policy of homeowner

Pets in the home

Children and ages

Elderly family members


Wheelchair access

The first phase of matching involved approximately 350 families and was carried out between mid January and the end of February 2003. The matching was then communicated to Family Services Department and had to be entered into the database. From then on we faxed any new visiting family applications directly to the Cluster Mangers of the area where the athlete was competing and they selected the appropriate home. All communication with the international Family Coordinators was done by the Executive Assistant in the Family Services Department and any queries that our Coordinators had was handled by the same person. The Family Services Department notified both parties in writing with a brief Profile" at the end of March and we also notified the international Family Coordinator by email of all the matching for their delegation.

On arrival it is advisable to provide all the visiting families from smaller delegations with the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the Host Families who are accommodating their delegation so that they can contact one another should the need arise. This is not practical or necessary for the Team USA families as there are too many of them and there are no language issues involved. The same information should be given to the Host Families, but only at registration/on arrival and not beforehand as there will be a lot of changes right up to the arrival of the families.

Also it is a good idea, where practical, to accommodate the same nationalities in the same area so that they can travel together to the Games and meet up when necessary. This also proved very helpful to the Host Families as they could then arrange special nights for their guests together with other Host Families in the area.

We had quite a number of applications from people travelling on their own and in these situations it is advisable to put more than one person in a Host Family (unless they have specifically requested otherwise), preferably with the same language (even though they may be from different countries) as this will take the pressure of hosting off the Host Family. We found that Host Families with only one guest felt obliged to spend a lot of time with them and if there was a language mismatch it made things quite difficult for them. In some cases Host Families had taken holidays for the period of the Games to devote time to their visiting family and were not happy with having only one guest.

A post matching telephone survey was carried out by the Coordinators in April 2003, approximately the weekend after all the local host families received notification of their matching. This was recognised as a good idea as it highlighted any problems or queries at an early stage. The biggest fear of host families was that they would not be able to communicate with their visiting family. The safety net of the language services hotline was a big comfort. In some cases the Coordinators were able to put host families in contact with others hosting families from the same country. This was very useful and appreciated where it happened.


Reserve Homes

It is important to have a reasonable number of reserve homes to accommodate late applications. When we had completed our first phase of matching and had notified those that we had matched we also asked approx 100 Host Families if they would consider being on our list of "Reserve Homes", which meant that they could be asked to host at any time right up to and during the Games. This proved to be essential as we used almost all of our reserve homes due to the cancellations of some Host Families for various reasons and some very late applications from visiting families. We received almost 150 additional applications after we had completed our first phase of matching at the end of March 2003. In our case the term "Reserve Home" caused us some issues possibly because the Host Families did not appreciate that we would probably need them at a later stage but were not in a position to confirm this until much nearer the Games.

Matching that didn't work out

We were extremely lucky and only had to re-accommodate 2 families during the Games. In one case an elderly Spanish speaking lady with no English felt she was too far from the rest of her delegation, by public transport. She asked to be moved closer to the competition venue of her athlete. This was done and she was very happy in the new Host Family where there was also another Spanish speaking lady from another delegation.

In the second situation it appeared that the two guests staying in the Host Family were first and foremost journalists and were not related to the athlete, nor did they show any interest in a particular athlete. The Host Family were not happy with this situation as they really had wanted to accommodate family members who would be more involved with a particular athlete. We moved the guests into free emergency accommodation.

Even though we had a lot of reserve homes available to us for situations like above we would advise that when a matching does not work out, it is preferable to move the family, where possible, into emergency accommodation as there is a strong possibility of repeat situations in the new Host Family.

Other issues in the HAFP during the Games

We had a small number of very elderly visitors, some of whom travelled on their own and some Host Families felt they had to drive them around as they were incapable of managing on their own. In hindsight and if feasible it is necessary to have motor pool access for such cases - even to have a car collect them each day to bring them to the competition venue and collect them in the evenings. The Application Forms give a very good indication of the number of elderly visitors travelling alone.

We also had some visitors that arrived with very little money and some of our Host Families had to give them money for bus fares so that they could get to the competition venues and back. This worked out quite costly to some Host Families particularly if there was more than one guest over a ten day period. When the Family Services Department became aware of this issue via a Coordinator we bought Transportation


Tickets for the family members. It is not advisable to announce this in advance so as not to create a precedent and have families expect free transport. Any issues like this were conveyed to us by the Coordinator and then we handled the matter from there.

Due to various reasons some families will arrive at the airport unannounced with no accommodation booked and will have no finance to support themselves during their stay. These families were not eligible to stay in our HAFP as no background security check would have been carried out on them and this is where the Family Services Department Emergency Accommodation came into play immediately.

We had a small number of families who had been matched but arrived very late during the Games, due to problems obtaining Visas. In some cases the Host Families were quite happy to accommodate them but in others, where the Host Family was no longer free, we accommodated them in our emergency accommodation and they were quite happy with this.

Emergency Funds

We also had one case where a Host Family contacted her Coordinator to say that she was financing her two guests totally as they had no money at all. In this case we provided a small amount of cash to the Host Family ( 25 per person per day for food) to give to the guests, rather than directly from the Family Services Department. Again, it was better to provide this emergency fund on a case by case basis as it could have escalated into a huge cost for us had it been openly advertised.

From the post Games comments received from Host Families this does not seem to be an isolated case and other Host Families found themselves in the same situation (providing money for food and transport) but did not bring it to the attention of the Family Services Department until after the Games. Also some visiting families expected to have all their meals provided by the Host Family even though they had been clearly informed that only Bed and Breakfast would be provided. It must be noted that dining out in Dublin is expensive and we had fore warned families of this. Again these issues only came to our attention post Games as Host Families did not make an issue of this during the Games. Some Host Families felt that they had been taken advantage of by their visitors and it must be highlighted for future SOWSG that some of our visiting families did have genuine financial problems. It is therefore advisable to have a small fund for this and similar type problems.

Other local families however felt that merely providing bed and breakfast was not enough and were delighted to provide all meals. They felt they deserved no thank you from SOWSG and the pleasure of the whole experience was the thank you for taking part in the HAFP. They felt that it was a great privilege to have played such a small part in the Games.

The mere fact that visiting families could afford the flights led us to believe that they would have enough spending money during the Games. It was unfair of Family Services to put local Host Families in this position and we can only be very grateful to them for their generosity in these cases. However we recommend that the issue be looked at on a global scale for future SOWSG.


Transport

We endeavoured to place visiting families as close as possible to the competition venue where their athlete was competing. It is important to check out the Public Transport arrangements for the Games prior to placing families as our HAFP made it quite clear to both parties that they were not expected to transport the visiting families during their stay. In a number of cases very elderly applicants with restricted mobility were placed with families. The families were not made aware in advance that there may be issues, as this was not mentioned in any correspondence with the visiting family. In such cases the host family felt obliged to provide transport for the duration of the visiting family s stay.

In other cases the visiting families expected to be driven around by the Host Family and this caused some issues during the Games. It is therefore important that this is made very clear to visiting families prior to their arrival, and even though we did highlight the transport issue in all our correspondence, some families ignored it

hence the importance of finding host homes very close to venues.

The Coordinators felt that the shuttle bus service in place was probably adequate for the majority of public transport requirements of visiting families and in some cases families purchased the integrated public transport ticket unnecessarily. During the matching process, it was attempted to place families of athletes participating in basketball convenient to the three proposed venues for this sport. During Games time however, it became apparent that athletes were predominantly in one venue for the duration of the Games. Had this information been known in advance better matching might have been done from the point of view of transport options.

Arrival Procedures

The Host Family were asked to collect their visiting family on arrival in Dublin and bring them to their home. We made it their responsibility to find out directly from their visiting family what their flight/arrival details were. As a back up the Family Services Department also sent an Arrival Information Form to each visiting family and as many did not even return them it became imperative that the Host Family obtained the information directly. We in turn asked the Host Families to keep us informed of the arrival details so that we would have some indication of how many staff/volunteers we would need at the Airport and HAFP Welcome Centre on June 21st. Some of the smaller delegations like Honduras, Dominican Republic etc

will all travel together and we obtained Arrival Information directly from the Family Coordinator. Accurate and precise arrival information is vital to the HAFP. Getting arrival information proved to be quite difficult which made it hard on the host family to prepare appropriately.

Database

This is one of the most crucial important aspects to have right for the easy processing of the HAFP and if not set up properly it will cause huge problems throughout the whole process, as already mentioned. It would be ideal and less time consuming to have the initial phase of matchings (venues, languages, bedrooms, special requests


etc ) done via a database, and then proceed manually with the exceptional cases. We were not in a position to do any initial phase of matching via the database. The matching procedure was done manually and involved a lot of human

input, time and

thought.

Questionnaire for local HAFP families

All host families received this Questionnaire at their final pre Games briefing, to return by mid-July to the Family Services Department. We have found it very useful in compiling this after action report. Many issues which were not brought to our attention during the Games were subsequently highlighted. For example, although the HAFP was not available in Belfast, family members of athletes competing in roller skating availed of the HAFP in Dublin, which meant making the 200+ mile round trip to support their athlete every day. In some instances this placed a burden on the host family who felt obliged to entertain the visiting families on the days they didn t travel. Overall, all the host families thoroughly enjoyed the experience and did not hesitate to say that they would get involved in a similar programme again

Debriefing for HAFP Coordinators

We did a formal debriefing for the HAFP Coordinators in mid July 2003 covering the following major areas of the HAFP, the answers to which have been reflected in this after action report. We also gave Coordinators the opportunity to have a look at the Questionnaires returned from the Host Families and the thank you emails received from the visiting families on their return home.

1. Coordinator training 2. Host Family Application forms 3. Visiting Family Application forms 4. Home Visits 5. Insurance 6. Matching Process 7. Profiles sent to Host Families and Visiting Families 8. Cancellations 9. Changes/substitutions 10. Transport 11. Meals in Host Family Homes 12. Financial issues 13. Cultural training 14. Games time support

Summary

The HAFP was a very time consuming part of Family Services and we were very privileged to have a wonderful team of Coordinators and who gave so much of their time and energies and were totally committed to every aspect of the programme. The Host Families gave much more than the Bed and Breakfast experience we had requested, and really did open their hearts and their homes generously to the visiting families. They got involved in the whole momentum of the Games and frequently


accompanied the visiting family to the competition venues where their athlete was competing and in a lot of cases became part of the extended family of the athlete, reflecting the spirit of sharing the feeling of the Games. From the Questionnaires that the Host Families returned to Family Services after the Games a lot of them found the whole experience very rewarding, but tiring and felt they were privileged to have been part of the Games, while all the time treating the families like real VIP s. Personality clashes and cultural misunderstandings were rare and many long term friendships were formed and great memories stored for the future.


Quite a few recommendations are contained in the above comments, and to summarise we would emphasise the following points for future SOWSG:

The importance of obtaining accurate and correct contact details from visiting families, an email address being the best form of communication. This should be even easier at future SOWSG when more families will have access to email.

Specifically target local families with foreign languages.

Specifically target areas close to competition venues

Ensure when matching that some form of communication is possible, i.e. some common language between the host and visiting families.

Open the HAFP to families wishing to travel with more than 2 family members.

Define an acceptable prototype for security clearance documents.

Include in all guidelines the possibility that host family or visiting family may not be ultimately matched

indicate that even though the family has been accepted into the HAFP, this does not automatically imply they will be matched.

Put in place suitable data management system from the outset.

Have less aggressive deadlines

Anticipate last minute changes and substitutes to members of the visiting family party

Do not ask volunteer Coordinators to do more than 20 home visits and have staff members involved in the home visits also.

Recruit a full time Coordinator for the HAFP from the outset.

3.2.9 Family Ambassador Programme - FAP

Family Ambassador Programme Information for Visiting Families

The Family Ambassador Programme (FAP) is a hospitality programme whereby visiting families have the opportunity to meet with local Irish families and spend some time together, sightseeing and visiting places of interest in the Dublin area.

It is an opportunity for visiting families to experience Irish hospitality and to see Dublin and the surrounding area through the eyes of a local Family Ambassador (individual, family or group) who is acting as their personal guide.


The FAP does not include staying in the home of the local Family Ambassador. All visiting families who register for the FAP are responsible for their own meals and transportation, and MUST reserve their own accommodation. The FAP is not on offer in Belfast (Rollerskating venue).

Local and visiting families will contact each other during the Games and arrange a time and place to meet for their activity. Each individual is responsible for any expenses incurred (entrance fees, transport, meals in restaurant etc ).

Family Ambassador Programme Information for local hosts

The Family Ambassador Programme (FAP) offers local people the chance to actively get involved in the Games by sharing their time and activities with the families of the Special Olympics athletes.

The aim of the FAP is to introduce visiting families to local people and provide them with an official host while attending the 2003 SOWSG. Local Family Ambassadors will welcome and meet a visiting family, spend some time with the family members on one or more occasions during the Games, either sharing a meal, shopping or visiting places of interest. They will ensure that the families of the participating athletes experience the renowned friendliness and hospitality of the Irish people.

The FAP does not include staying in the home of the Family Ambassador. It is organised specifically for those visiting families not availing of the HAFP.

Responsibilities as a Family Ambassador:

Correspond with visiting family in advance

Be available to meet visiting family during the Games

Give advice on where to visit, what to see and do in the greater Dublin area

Organise at least one activity with the visiting family (shopping, sightseeing, BBQ, picnic, invitation to your home for a meal, cultural activity)

Arrange a convenient place and time to meet during the Games (June 21-29 2003).

Local families will contact the visiting families during the Games and arrange a time and place to meet for their activity. The visiting family members have been informed that each individual is responsible for any expenses incurred (entrance fees, transport, meals in restaurant etc ). However, if the local Family Ambassador wishes to organise an activity which involves expenses, and wishes to pay for this, this gesture is very much welcomed.

Induction session

The induction session is an integral part of the FAP. The FAP will arrange a meeting for the local Family Ambassador to give an overview of the FAP and give the Family Ambassador the opportunity to ask questions and have any concerns addressed. All Family Ambassadors will receive a Home from Home Handbook designed to provide you them with all of the information that they will need to prepare for their hosting experience.



The FAP was not as popular as the HAFP judging on the number of applications from the visiting families and the applications from the local Family Ambassadors. This was a Programme offering a different way to get involved in the Games with less time commitment.

We believed that it did not take off as well as HAFP as local people really wanted to offer accommodation and in a large part due to the Irish mentality, the HAFP was always going to be of more interest to Irish families wishing to participate in the Games.

We had stipulated that visiting families could only apply for one of the Programmes, as we knew that the local host families would also play the role of Ambassador. In some cases there were applications for both Programmes but it was probably the fact that families felt if they did not get onto one programme they would be accepted onto the other. In one or two cases visiting families were entered into both Programmes and the local host families were not pleased that after accepting visitors into their homes other volunteers were also involved in social activities with them as Family Ambassadors.

The Programme was launched at the same time as the HAFP but it did not create anything like the same response. The Expression of Interest forms which were available at the time of the launch also included the FAP. Because of the huge volume of work involved in the HAFP alone, and the comparably small number of applications for the FAP we did not really get the Programme going until February 2003.

Our first step was to appoint Family Ambassador Coordinators and train them. These were selected from the Expression of Interest Forms. We worked on approximately 20/25 Ambassadors per Coordinator. Each Coordinator was initially allocated 20 visiting family applications and they were responsible for matching them with the applications received from local Family Ambassadors.

The Coordinators were responsible for keeping in touch with their Family Ambassadors from the introduction right up to and during the Games. If the Family Ambassador was having difficulty contacting their visiting family it was the Coordinators responsibility to contact the Family Services Department to request that they take this on. Once again only the Family Services Department had contact with the international Family Coordinators.

Due to the huge over subscription for the HAFP we sent out application forms to all those host families who were not "matched" inviting them to apply for the FAP, but a very small percentage actually applied. After we had closed the HAFP we sent an application form for the FAP to the Irish families who had sent late applications. This would have been approximately four months before the Games and we found that the whole momentum of the Games was now encouraging everyone to take part as a volunteer in one form or another.

Visiting families were contacted on receipt of their applications confirming that they had been accepted onto the Programme but advising them that we were not in a


position to send them details of their "matching" until approximately two months before the Games.

Induction for the FAP took place in March and April 2003. Induction took the form of several information, question and answer sessions around the FAP. During these sessions we showed the Family Ambassadors profiles of the visiting families and allowed them to actually take part in choosing their own visiting family as opposed to matching them ourselves. We provided a brief profile on the visiting families without addresses and telephone numbers and once they had chosen their family we confirmed this in writing and sent a more detailed profile. They were then required to contact the family to find out what they would like to do on their visit to Dublin so that they could plan how they could share some local Irish hospitality with them. This format, due to the constraints of time and lack of staff, worked well for us.

In relation to language issues this format also worked well and if there was a shortage of Family Ambassadors who spoke certain languages, inevitably one of the Family Ambassadors would know a friend or colleague who would be happy to take part. The FAP was much more casual than the HAFP and it allowed everyone to take part at their own level of commitment. The only requirements that we asked for was that the Family Ambassador would commit to at least one activity with the visiting family and that they would contact them prior to the Games to confirm that they would be their Family Ambassador during the Games.

The Coordinators once again were the main contact for each Family Ambassador and any queries or issues that arose were handled by them directly. Family Services Department dealt directly with the International Coordinators. Making contact with the visiting families was a major problem for many Family Ambassadors and once again we would advise that "email addresses are requested as obligatory on all application forms.

We would recommend that the local Coordinators are given contact details of the international Family Coordinators approx 6 weeks pre Games. It should be made very clear to the Coordinators that they should only make contact with them for major issues eg. in the case of the Family Ambassador finding it difficult to make contact with their visiting family. Family Services Department must be copied on any communication by them as it is essential that you are up to date on all issues relating to the Programme. In some cases our visiting families made no contact whatsoever with their local Family Ambassadors and no one advised the Family Services Department that they had in fact cancelled their trip.

As visiting family applications were sent in many months before the Games there was inevitably a lot of changes and some cancellations right up to the Games. The database we were using did not identify these changes/cancellations immediately nor allow us to rematch where necessary.

In relation to "finances" for the FAP Programme it was made clear to visiting families that the Family Ambassadors were not responsible for any expenses incurred. The Handbook stated " Your Family Ambassador is not responsible for paying for your activities (except he/she formally invites you and says that he/she will pay for you) or


for transporting you by car. You will be using public transportation most of the time. You are responsible for paying for any expenses such as entrance fees, taxis, transportation, meals in restaurant etc As many Family Ambassadors will be looking after large family groups, we would recommend that you clarify with your Family Ambassador any expenses that may be incurred prior to finalising any arrangements as it may not be within his/her budget or indeed your budget .

This explained exactly what the FAP offered and what was expected by either party and seemed to have been very well followed by both Ambassadors and visitors. For our local families it was a different way of getting involved in the Games with a lesser time commitment, and a way of alleviating the disappointment of not being a Host Family. When our HAFP was full we asked all further applicants to consider applying for the FAP instead and still contribute to making sure our visiting families had a warm welcome in Dublin. As far as we were concerned this welcome and immersion in Irish culture and hospitality was just as important to our visiting families as staying with a local family, even though our disappointed Host Families did not always see it that way. Feedback since the Games suggests that Family Ambassadors did far more than their remit. In some cases they put up their visitor in their own home for part of the stay. In other cases the Family Ambassador met up with their visitors on several occasions during the week rather than the one visit suggested and organised several activities.

As we were so overwhelmed by the response to our HAFP, we were not in a position to give the FAP the time, attention, advertising or resources it merited, as it really is a marvellous programme for visiting families staying in commercial accommodation. As a result, with everybody wanting to host, we received only 246 applications from local families and 280 applications from visiting families. We mainly advertised on our website and to the disappointed host families. 228 families (impossible to estimate the number of individuals) were actually matched and met up with their local family. The FAP was coordinated by the HAFP Coordinator together with a team of 12 volunteer Coordinators, who were recruited in March 2003. We placed families from the following 26 delegations in the FAP:

FAP DELEGATIONS

Athlete Delegation

Australia

Bahamas

Belgium

Canada

Ecuador

Finland

Germany

Gibraltar Great Britain

Guatemala

Hungary

Isle of Man

Italy


FAP DELEGATIONS

Athlete Delegation

Japan

Kenya

Malta

New Zealand

Panama

Puerto Rico

Singapore

South Africa

Spain

Switzerland

Trinidad/Tobago

Uganda

USA

The individuals who got involved in the FAP really seemed to enjoy it. It s a great way for people to get involved in the Games if they cannot commit to having a block of time available for them to volunteer in a full-time capacity. Feedback since received from visiting families was also extremely positive and motivating for organising the FAP at the next SOWSG.


Be very strict in making visiting families choose either the HAFP or FAP, not both Programmes and follow up immediately on the dual applications for both the HAFP and the FAP in order to avoid any misunderstanding later on when the families arrive.

3.2.10 Family Transport

Because families are staying in either commercial or host family accommodation all over Dublin city and surrounding areas, they are advised to use the existing public transportation network, giving them greater flexibility to visit the Dublin area and the different competition venues. In addition there will be no parking or strictly limited parking at all venues and no special provisions will be made for family members, who will be treated like a normal spectator in this instance.

Existing Scheduled City Transportation Services

The 2003 GOC Transportation department has identified existing city public transportation as the most efficient means by which families may travel to and from 2003 SOWSG venues and functions. The recommendation to use public transportation is based on:

The limited or total lack of public parking available at sporting and event venues.


The location of the 2003 SOWSG sporting venues and their proximity to bus and rail stations, and the frequency of services that exist, affording the maximum flexibility to families travel plans.

The unknown family accommodation locations, both commercial and host family, would not allow for a complete dedicated transport system to be developed specifically for family members, which would compromise its success from the outset.

The 2003 GOC Transport Department is arranging a specially priced integrated Public Transportation Ticket for travelling around the Dublin area during the 2003 Games. This ticket will be available to registered family members

and will allow unlimited access to Dublin Bus and DART suburban trains in the greater Dublin area, including the public bus service (Airlink) to and from Dublin Airport.

Families will be advised how, when and where to purchase this ticket, either in advance of the Games or upon arrival in Dublin. The cost of this transportation ticket will also include the dedicated shuttle services to family specific events.

Opening & Closing Ceremonies Transport

As Croke Park Stadium is adjacent to the city centre, family members are advised to use public transportation to get to and from the Ceremonies. The times of the last public transport buses are being extended to enable family members to return home.

Inter-Venue Shuttle Transport

A network of circular systems will connect with each other in key venues, linking the twenty one (21) competition venues in the Dublin area. This system will operate from Saturday, June 21 through to and including June 29, 2003. Specific details regarding routes and frequency of this system will be advised closer to the Games. All registered Family Members in possession of a Family Accreditation Pass will have access to the Inter-Venue Shuttle, however, priority will be given to athletes and official delegation members.

Family specific events shuttle

This shuttle bus service will transport family members to and from evening events. Families must be in possession of their transportation tickets will be transported via a dedicated continuous shuttle which will make several trips from a centrally located point in the city centre to the various functions. These include:

Shopping and Entertainment Evening at Blanchardstown Shopping Centre on Tuesday, June 24,

Race Evening at Leopardstown Racecourse on Wednesday, June 25,

Parents Reception at The Point Theatre on Thursday, June 26.

A return service from the venues to the city centre will operate in the same manner at the end of each event.



It is essential to have an emergency transport service. Unfortunately it was not part of the Games Transportation department s remit to provide emergency transport for families via the motor pool. Family Services set up an account with a taxi company and provided quite a lot of emergency transport particularly from the Airport. This service came directly from Family Services budget.

Regarding the Games Transportation ticket, families would have needed a greater choice of options in terms of ticket duration. There was one pass valid for 13 days, which proved to be too long and too expensive for some family members. Most family members opted to use the Inter Venue Shuttle service or bought regular Dublin Bus Transport tickets for shorter durations, depending on where they were staying or depending on the advice of their local host family. Family Services did buy transport tickets for some families who really could not afford public transport at all. It would appear that most visiting families used the Inter Venue Shuttle as much as possible and did not need to go to the expense of purchasing the Games Transportation ticket.

The Shuttle Bus service for each of the family events that took place at night worked out really well and was well utilised by family members for all three events. It was important to have volunteers at the starting point to direct the families onto the buses and give information where appropriate.

Due to the traffic restrictions in the area around the Opening & Closing Ceremony venue, it was necessary to obtain individualised and named Garda (Irish Police) access passes for the transportation of disabled or special needs passengers to the gates of the stadium. This worked very well for the family members who had identified themselves to the Family Services Department in advance, via the Family Registration Form, as we had these passes ready for collection at Family Registration.


Have multiple options for public transport tickets

Provision within motor pool remit to transport family members who are elderly or have limited mobility around games events

Extend shuttle bus service for families to include Opening and Closing Ceremonies

Put procedures in place specifically for transportation of special needs family members.

Perhaps provide free shuttle transport to and from a city centre point to the Airport.


3.2.11 Family events

There are three family specific events being planned in Dublin, to which registered family members attending the Games are invited free of charge (the Symposium which takes place in Belfast is not being organised by Family Services):

Shopping & Entertainment Evening

A Shopping & Entertainment Evening in the company of the athletes on Tuesday 24 June 2003, 7-10 pm.

This evening will provide an opportunity for families and athletes to meet and enjoy a fun filled evening of shopping and music in the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre. The Shopping Centre will close to the general public at 3 pm, and will prepare for the arrival of the athletes and families from 6.30pm. Families will arrive at the Centre first and will be directed to the meet and greet areas. The athletes and families will meet in a specified shop or shopping area for each delegation. Stewards and volunteers will be on duty at all times, assisting and marshalling the meet and greet operation. There will be no other fixed entertainment outside the Centre. Once families and athletes meet up they can spend the evening together. There will be roving entertainment throughout the Centre for the duration of the shopping evening. Shopping will cease no later than 9.30pm and all buses will fill and depart for city centre (for families) and athlete accommodation venues.

The preliminary operating plan for the evening is as follows:

15:00 Shopping Centre closes to the public

18.15 First Family Shuttle bus arrives at Centre

18.30 Athlete buses begin to arrive into parking areas

18.30 - 19.00 Athletes and Families meet and enter Centre

21.00 Athlete and Family buses in position to load and depart when full

21.30 - 22.00 Loading and departure of all vehicles

Admittance is by Family Accreditation Pass only, and full information will be included in the Family Welcome Pack distributed to family members at family registration in the Family Centre on arrival in Dublin. A dedicated bus service will transport family members to and from this reception, from a central point in Dublin city centre.


This was a very popular event, as it was the one social event during Games time, where both families and athletes were present and could meet up informally, given that families were not allowed to meet up with their athletes in Olympic Town. Although the evening was called a Shopping and Entertainment Evening, the emphasis was on much


more on shopping and less on entertainment. Clowns and street performers as well as a jazz band entertained the crowds outside the centre for approximately ½ hour when the doors opened.

Some delegations, and indeed families, had very little money and for this reason did not attend the evening. Certainly in one case the families turned up, not knowing that their athletes would not be there and this caused both confusion and disappointment. Also, it took a while for some teams to arrive from the competition venues and Family Services did not always have this information to give to the families as they waited for their athlete to arrive. Similarly at the end of the evening, there was a change of exit plan and this information did not filter down to the Family Services volunteers to enable families to drop their athlete back to the appropriate bus. However, all the athletes did rejoin the correct buses and families were directed back to the Shuttle Bus service to the City Centre.

The local Host Families and Family Ambassadors were also invited to this evening and really appreciated meeting the athletes. As these individuals had not been given Games time accreditation it was necessary to check them in separately for the Families database lists. We were very careful to ensure that all these extra invitees in addition to the athletes and families had undergone a Security Background Check, and it was only on this guarantee that we were able to invite them to the event. As this was a private function exclusive to the 2003 SOWSG, the Shopping Centre was closed down to the general public at 3 pm and underwent a police sweep. All visiting families, local Host Families and Family Ambassadors were issued with a wrist band for security purposes on entering the Shopping Centre. Approximately 20,000 people attended the event.


Although the evening was very colourful, and did have a carnival atmosphere, special offers, discounts and giveaways, the focus was definitely more on shopping than on entertainment. Given that many families and athletes did not have money to spend, perhaps more emphasis on the entertainment side should be provided for future events of this nature. Otherwise the event could be misconstrued as purely a consumer event.

Race Evening

A Race Evening at one of the very popular mid summer Race Meetings at Leopardstown Racecourse, for an evening of racing and live music, on Wednesday 25 June 2003, 6-10 pm.

This is one of the annual evenings of summer racing at Leopardstown. Families will receive 2 free Access Passes, courtesy of Vodafone, in their Registration envelope, and on arrival at the Racecourse this will be exchanged for a free race card and a food voucher (Fitzers Catering).


17:30 First Family Shuttle bus arrives at the racecourse


Families are briefed on the bus re the evening s proceedings

18.30 First race approx

21.00 Last race approx (followed by musical entertainment)

21.30 - 22.00 Loading and departure of all vehicles

Admittance is by Family Accreditation Pass only, and full information will be included in the Family Welcome Pack distributed to family members at family registration in the Family Centre on arrival in Dublin. A dedicated bus service will transport family members to and from this reception, from a central point in Dublin city centre.


Overall the entire evening ran very smoothly. The Leopardstown staff were extremely helpful and co-operative from start to finish and reported a record turnout for a mid week evening of 9,300 people (normally 3,000).

The Shuttle Bus transport system worked well. Pat Liddy, a well known Dublin writer who has written a number of books on Dublin, wrote a short guided tour based on the route from the City Centre to Leopardstown and the scripts were read out by the two volunteer tour guides on each bus. In addition some key information about racing was supplied. Volunteers monitored numbers getting on the buses and phoned ahead with requests regarding families with mobility needs to ensure that other volunteers were available to assist wheel chair users from the bus park to the main entrance of the Racecourse.

There was a big welcome for the families arriving from the Army No 1 Band which had volunteered to play for the families as they arrived at the Racecourse. This made the welcome really special for the Special Olympics families. All visiting and their local Host Families and Family Ambassadors were then directed by volunteers to the Special Olympics designated food area in the marquee. The catering consisted of a baguette with roast beef/roast chicken/roast vegetables, coleslaw and a choice of one soft drink per person. Once our guests had their food, they were shown the Parade Ring where prize presentations took place. 3/6 presentations were made by SO Equestrian athletes who had won medals during the week. Leopardstown very kindly presented all 3 equestrian athletes with a gift of an Aran Jumper in appreciation for giving of their time.

Regarding numbers at the Race Evening, we had received 5000 free Access Passes courtesy of Vodafone. Catering was paid for 4,000 food vouchers in advance x 5.20 and later advised us that 3,500 food vouchers were used. It was impossible to know how many families would show so we worked on an attrition rate of 20%. Families could have paid for themselves to enter the Racecourse, but the general admission ticket would have cost 12 without the food and the race card. The catering invoice amounted to 23,608 including VAT. Family Services did not have this amount in its budget and luckily a private donor had given 20,000 for this event.


Club 92 opened their doors for the purpose of giving the families a place to sit and eat their food in comfort. The Club installed extra Totes and two well-seasoned race goers

Tipsters mingled amongst the guests and offered advice and tips on racing. After their race, Jockeys came in to Club 92 to meet the families. Above Club 92 there was a designated SO viewing platform from which to watch the 6 races. There is a wheelchair platform in Leopardstown and this was pointed out to wheelchair users. 2,500 worth of bets, broken down into 2 tokens were distributed to the guests on a

first-come first-served basis, courtesy of Tote Ireland. We called this a Surprise for the Early Birds . Leopardstown supplied a desk which served as an Information Centre. This was staffed by 4 Family Services volunteers and all queries from the families during the evening were directed here.

Once again, local Host Families and Family Ambassadors appreciated the opportunity to be invited out with their visiting family. Most families had a long day and took advantage of the Shuttle Bus service back to the City Centre rather than waiting for the musical entertainment after the last race.


After English, the most commonly-spoken language by our families was Spanish. If this event was being repeated, it would be important to have several (one was not enough) Spanish-speaking volunteers to explain the intricacies of racing.

Parents Reception

A Parents Reception sponsored and hosted by Clipped Wings, a group of former and current United Airlines flight attendants will take place in The Point, on Thursday 26 June, 6- 9 pm. The evening also includes a song and dance performance featuring 100-120 children with a learning disability on stage with mainstream performers, involving the following parties:

Musical Director David Jackson, Tonewall

Producer

Stuart O Connor, Spotlight Productions

Delta Centre Carlow Eileen Brophy, Patsy Nealon

Carlow Stage School

Stuart O Connor


17.30 Families start to board buses at Burgh Quay

18.00 First Family Shuttle bus arrives at The Point

18.00-19.30 Finger food reception

19.45-20.45 Speeches and performance


20.45-21.15 Loading and departure of all vehicles

21.15-22.15 Clipped Wings party

22.15-22.30 Final departures

The reception is by invitation only (2 family members), and these invitations will be included in the Family Registration envelope. A dedicated bus service will transport parents to and from this reception, from Burgh Quay in Dublin city centre.


This was the 9th Parents Reception organized by Clipped Wings, a group of United Airlines Alumnae and Flight Attendants. 4000 people were expected at The Point Theatre for drinks and finger food from 18:30-19:50/20:00. For the first time, a performance was to follow speeches for 30 minutes, and the event was to end at 21:00/21:15. Clipped Wings would then have a private reception for one hour. At 20:00, Spotlight Productions & the Delta Centre Carlow presented David Jackson s Sound Beams, and the Carlow Stage School in an evening s entertainment. After an introductory set, there were speeches and a presentation by the Clipped Wings president, Barbara Bertacini, Mary Davis, CEO of the 2003 SOWSG, Alvaro Miranda, Global Messenger, and Mrs Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Traditionally Mrs Shriver gives a speech to the parents at the event and this was a highlight of the evening. After her speech the performances recommenced and all of the VIP s went back to their seats and stayed for the entire show. Mrs Shriver came backstage afterwards and spoke with many of the performers at length.

Transportation for the Parents was provided by Dublin Bus which ran a shuttle from the City Centre to The Point, and back again at the end of the event. Family Services volunteers working this event helped direct the attendees to the correct buses. They travelled back to The Point on the last shuttle at 19:30. Three private coaches from the Games Transportation pool brought the 150 Clipped Wings volunteers from their hotels and home again. Catering was provided by a local catering company, cash bars were staffed and stocked by The Point and soft drinks were provided by Coca-Cola through GOC Catering. Clipped Wings staffed these beverage stations.

The GOC designed, organised and paid for the Clipped Wings invitations ( 640 including VAT) and made sure they were inserted in the Family Registration envelope. The GOC also paid for the rental of the venue and staging expenses of the performance which amounted to 18600 including VAT (this was not a cheap event and the rental alone of the venue had been negotiated down to less than half price - 12000).

Family Services was much more involved in this Parents Reception than previous GOC s had been, maybe because of time and distance constraints in dealing with Clipped Wings and the inclusion of a musical performance in the evening. Apart from the Clipped Wings presence on the evening it was practically another Family Services event from the point of view of having to coordinate and organise it. In fact Family Services did most of the planning and negotiating for this event. Family Services negotiated with several catering companies and chose the best deal. Clipped Wings


then signed a contract directly with the catering company and paid for the catering ( 33,000 including VAT) and sundry expenses on the night ( 8580 including VAT) such as security, seating, cleaning, electricity, Fire Officer and staff. Final numbers were estimated at 3,500 attendees, 150 Clipped Wings volunteers and 20 Family Services volunteers and staff.

The performance was a huge success with the audience, and we received a lot of feedback on how great it was, even though it did go on longer than expected. A real, as opposed to approximate timeline for the performance would have helped ..! The delays to other areas (transportation, catering, The Point security staff etc ) had a ripple effect at the end of the night. We are not fully sure how this could have been improved, as we used every means of communication possible to make clear the reasons for the GOC/Clipped Wings/The Point timelines that the Production Manager had agreed to follow.

Regarding the free Coca-Cola products, we never found out if was the GOC Catering or Coca-Cola, but the delay in the arrival of the products for the soft drink bars caused a minor scramble just before the doors were to open (thank goodness for the extra volunteers arriving!!)

Having volunteers from other Functional Areas show up just in case we needed them was initially a very nice feeling, and then hugely helpful at various crunch times (see above). The parents loved meeting the volunteers they had started to get to know during the week too, and it added to the family atmosphere of the evening.


For our successors in Nagano and Shanghai, especially as all practical arrangements must take place at local level, we would suggest that the Clipped Wings volunteers for the evening are not counted upon to run the event in any practical way. Given a similar event, next time we would roster at least 30 GOC volunteers to staff and manage the different areas

soft drinks bars, VIP Meet and Greet, production liaison, catering, security/crowd control and movement, and transportation.

Global Family Leadership Forum

A Global Family Leadership Forum, organised and hosted by SO HQ, and involving global family leaders, will take place in Dublin Castle on Friday 27 June, 11am 3 pm.

The preliminary operating plan for the morning is as follows:

11.00 Registration of delegates

11.30 Forum begins plenary session in Conference Centre

12.00 Delegates go in break out groups

13.00 Report back plenary session


14.00 Finger food reception (Masterchefs Catering)

15.00 Forum end tours of Dublin Castle for delegates

This event is by invitation only and these invitations will be sent out directly by SO HQ.


The Global Family Forum attracted more than 200 Special Olympics family members who attended the Games from around the globe. Special Olympics leaders and honored guests included Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, Special Olympics Founder; Timothy Shriver, President, CEO and Chairman of the Board for Special Olympics; Kim Samuel-Johnson, Special Olympics Board Member and Forum host; and HRH Queen of Lesotho.

The Forum included a detailed presentation by Dr. Stephen Corbin, Dean of Special Olympics University, concerning the findings of the recently conducted Multinational Attitudinal Survey which collected information on the attitudes of people about the capabilities of those with intellectual disabilities in 10 countries. Following the presentation, family members broke into small discussion groups to share their experiences and their reaction to the data. SO HQ are currently working on a qualitative analysis and report on shared themes and priorities gleaned from the family discussion data.

Special Olympics Global Family Leaders Patricia Hickey (Ireland), Muhammad Abdouni (Lebanon), Cecilia Britez (Venezuela), Tan Ruyan (China) and Carolina Zuppa (Italy) reflected on the benefits and opportunities for families who are involved in Special Olympics. Building on the strong foundation of a Family Support Network, the family leaders advocated for Unified Sports®, Special Olympics Healthy Athletes, Special Olympics Get Into It

(SO Get Into It) and local Program development, all contributing to the growth of Special Olympics.

Special Olympics is eagerly reaching out to family members of athletes through the Family Support Network. Funded through generous contributions by Kim Samuel Johnson and the Samuel Family Foundation, the Family Support Network provides an ongoing programmatic structure in which family leaders reach out to new families and welcome them into the Special Olympics community. The Family Support Network s objectives are to support new families, develop partnerships with community organizations and train new family leaders. These all contribute to Special Olympics primary goal of increasing the number of new athletes to 2 million by 2005.

Although SO HQ took the responsibility of identifying the appropriate invitee list, invitations were not sent out directly by SO HQ to families as had been intended. Instead they were delivered to the Family Registration centre. Although great efforts were made to include them in the appropriate family Registration envelope, this proved difficult at the last minute. In many cases the information contained on the invitation envelope was incomplete or difficult to match with one of the visiting families registered on the Family Registration database.


All practical arrangements were made at local level by Family Services in advance of the Forum

Dublin Castle facilities, catering, number and size of break out rooms,

equipment needed and general volunteers on the day. SO HQ paid for the catering ( 5,000 including VAT) and signed a contract directly with the catering company. The cost of the use of the Conference Centre for the morning was included in the overall GOC budget with Dublin Castle. Family Services liaised closely with SO HQ throughout and SO HQ took full responsibility for coordinating theme, content, Chair and speakers, Global Family Leaders, 350 invitees selected by Regional Family Directors, Break out sessions (content and attendees), Facilitators, Secretaries (people who have experience within SO), Template for reporting, Specific look / signage / theme for Family Leadership announcement, specific documentation). They were not in a position to advise us on the number of break out groups, topics, speakers and facilitators until the week before the Games, so there were quite a lot of last minute details to be put together for this event.

Feedback received from the families and family representatives mentioned that the Forum was challenging and enjoyable. The Forum offered them the opportunity to learn about the Family Support Network within Special Olympics and the breakout sessions provided people with an opportunity to voice and discuss issues of common interest across the Special Olympics family programmes and learn from the other participants. This was facilitated by the fact that there were several breakout sessions with specific topics, rather than one big discussion group, as had been the case at the last Global Family Forum in Alaska. There was good team work between the SO HQ staff and the Irish Family Services team members. Everything went smoothly on the day (other than timing, see below), including the registration, breakout room sessions, facilities and lunch. This was the most formal occasion families attended and in spite of running over time, the event was well structured and organised.

The number of attendees (200 approx) was lower than anticipated (320), which was a shame given the positive feedback on the usefulness of the Forum itself. SO HQ had planned this Forum to be a flagship event, to announce and launch the first class of Global Family Leaders and the new Family Leadership website, as well as update resources to support Family Leadership and Family Support.

Regarding the timing on the day

getting started and the initial sessions ran way over time so the whole day ran on, meaning lunch was very late and only began at 3pm. The timing of the event meant that some people were late in trying to get to final day competition. Most attendees used public transport to get to and from the event, as it was taking place in the City Centre. However, a limited supply of motor pool cars to get people to their next destination from the event would have been a help.

As we had no prior knowledge of the attendees, the make up of the breakout groups became controlled chaos as the breakout groups required us to get people into the rooms and sort out language needs on the day, rather than in advance.

The signage within Dublin Castle grounds was a little confusing and some people got lost making their way into the conference facilities.



The pre Forum planning, especially around attendee s invitations and RSVP s, facilities required by SO HQ (e.g. tape recording of sessions a last minute request) must be closely monitored as this is the only way of knowing how many people will eventually turn up on the day. This has huge implications for the make up of the breakout groups and the language needs of the participants.

Family Events - General


We tried to organise as many events as possible for the visiting families to get together and to invite their local Host Families and Family Ambassadors along also. As they got so involved with the visiting families, the fact that we included them in the Shopping Evening and the Race Evening generated a lot of good will and excitement around the family events. We also wanted the visiting families to experience some typical summer s evening entertainment in Dublin and the Race Evening at Leopardstown was ideal for this.

It was quite a challenge for the Family Services Department to organise 4 major events, not just from the point of view of a small staff, but also from a budgetary point of view. At every stage along the way we had to seek funds for any event we were organising. Each of the 4 events mentioned above was a major operational and logistical challenge in its own right, particularly the Parents Reception and the Global Family Forum, as we were not the sole parties involved in the organisation of these latter 2 events. Each event required several meetings dealing with items such as choice of location, venue capacity, liaison with venue, sponsorship, funding, logistics, signage, printed documentation, catering, medical, languages, translators, transport, technology and equipment, media, advertising, invitations, hotel reservations, safety and security, operational plans, briefing and training of volunteers etc These meetings involved many external bodies and a high level of integration between the different GOC Departments already mentioned above. Ideally we would like to have had one Event Coordinator to supervise all 4 events, but this was too much work for any one volunteer, each of the events being so time consuming and involving many different meetings during working hours.

All 4 events ran smoothly overall due to the diligent efforts of the 4 volunteer Event Coordinators.

Families were made aware of the events in the monthly delegation updates and in the Visiting Families Handbook. Furthermore, during Games week the Family Services volunteers kept informing the families about that night s event. This ensured an excellent turn out at each family event.

Family Services was lucky to find 4 very dedicated volunteers, one to follow up on each event directly in liaison with the Family Services General Manager, intermittently from


January 2003. It was particularly important to have these Coordinators on board as part of the Family Services team at this stage, because as the Games drew nearer the Family General Manager no longer had the time to attend separate meetings and attend to all the minor details for each event. These Event Coordinators were excellent and totally managed the event on the day. The Event Coordinators responsible for the Parents Reception and the Global Family Leadership Forum were particularly busy the week of the Games as Clipped Wings and SO HQ representatives only arrived in Dublin at that stage and there were several details still to be organised at Games time.

Rather than recruiting and training extra volunteers to staff these events, Family Services asked for help from its pool of hospitality volunteers. These volunteers willingly got involved and were asked to attend further meetings nearer the events and be available from early afternoon on the day of their particular event for the final briefing. As a result they were not rostered to work in a venue on that day.


Depending on the number of events to be planned for families, and if budget allows, it would be ideal to have 1 full time Event Coordinator for all events, and as previously mentioned, this person could also take charge of all aspects of Family Hospitality.

Future GOC s may wish to look at the order and type of events to be organised. Maybe try to have the events as early in the week as possible, when families are less tired and competitions are not in their final stages. We found that by the time the Parents Reception came around, it was already the 3rd major evening event for families and they were beginning to look forward to having an evening off.


4. Policies & Procedures

4.1 Policies

4.1.1 Definition of a Family Member


4.1.3 Family Access to Athlete

4.1.4 Family Access to Host Town Programme


4.1.1 Definition of a Family Member

2003 SOWSG POLICY

Lead Functional Area

Family Services

Policy Number 1 Policy Title Definition of a Family Member

Other FAs affected All Signed off by

Policy Statement A Family Member for the 2003 SOWSG is defined as follows:

The husband, wife, partner of the athlete,

A blood relative of the athlete (mother, father, child, sister, brother, grandparent, aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin, a relative related by marriage or a partner of a blood relative),

An individual who serves as the athlete s legal guardian, foster parent, carer,

An individual involved with the athlete in a parenting role.

Additional explanation or information

Family Registration is obligatory for all Family Members of participating athletes.

Family Members must register with Family Services by completing the Family Registration Form (available from the local Special Olympics Programme office or Family Coordinator, Family Services).

The deadline for returning completed Family Registration Form to Family Services is 28th February 2003.

Family Services makes final decision on registration of Family Members.



2003 SOWSG POLICY


Family Services

Policy Number 2 Policy Title Family Registration Other FAs affected Accreditation, Ticketing Signed off by

See related procedure No 2 Policy Statement Each family member has their registration details entered under

the athlete s name

regardless of the number of names that are received by the Games Organising Committee. This will alleviate confusion for the collection of Accreditation Passes, tickets, invitations and Welcome Pack by a family group on arrival at the Games.

Additional explanation or information

(optional)

Family Access to Tickets for Opening and Closing Ceremonies:

Family members who pre-register by the February 28, 2003 registration deadline are guaranteed limited number of tickets to Opening and Closing Ceremonies. These tickets will be distributed at same time as Accreditation Passes. Families who do not meet the February 28, 2003 registration deadline are not guaranteed any tickets to Opening and Closing ceremonies.

Family Access to Family specific events:

Shopping & Entertainment Evening: All family members in possession of a Family Accreditation Pass are invited. Each Family Accreditation Pass serves as the invitation and admittance to the event. No other invitation is required.

Race Evening at Leopardstown: All family members in possession of a Family Accreditation Pass are invited. Each Family Accreditation Pass serves as the invitation and admittance to the event. No other invitation is required.

Parents Reception: Each registered family will receive one invitation (admits 2 people) and every effort should be made to ensure that parents of athletes are able to attend.


If this is not possible, the individual family should make the decision about who uses the invitation in the best interest of family members and the overall spirit of the 2003 SOWSG.

Global Family Leadership Forum: This event is by invitation only and invitations will be sent out directly by SO HQ.


4.1.3 Family Access to Athlete

2003 SOWSG POLICY


Family Services

Policy Number 3 Policy Title Family Access to Athlete Other FAs affected Sport and Competition, Athlete Accommodation, Delegation

Services, Event Services Signed off by

See related procedure No 3 Policy Statement HoD/Head Coach will determine if, when and where family can

have access to their athlete.

It is the HoD/Head Coach responsibility to grant permission and inform the athlete and the family.

Family will be required to complete an athlete access request form.

Hod/Head Coach will sign athlete access request form.

At least 24 hrs advance notice is required (ex: Family Member makes request on Monday am, permission is given on Monday pm, access to athlete takes place on Tuesday). 48 hrs advance notice is ideal.

Additional explanation or information (optional)

Family members are advised to meet athlete at competition venue in which athlete is competing.

Family members are advised to pick up athlete from and drop back to same competition venue.

Family members may accompany athlete back to an identified drop off point at the accommodation venue, if they are not dropping the athlete back to the competition venue

Family members will need to understand that they will not be permitted access into athlete accommodation venues and this will not be considered a place to meet, except in the case of emergency.


4.1.4 Family Access to Host Town Programme

2003 SOWSG POLICY


Family Services

Policy Number 4 Policy Title Family Access to Host Town Programme Other FAs affected Host Town Programme Signed off by

Policy Statement The Host Town Programme is limited to official delegation members only. It is not intended for family members of athletes.

Additional explanation or information (optional)

Families will NOT be allowed to travel on host town transportation, stay in host town accommodation, or take part in host town meals.

Families that plan to travel with their delegation and go to the host town will be responsible for all arrangements and costs related to their visit. These include transportation, meals, accommodation, activities, etc


Policies General


We simply elaborated on the definition of a family member provided by the 1999 GOC, and added the broader term of partner , as a result of comments received by family members attending the 1999 SOWSG.

The Family Registration policy worked well in practice.

The Family Access to Athlete policy was continued on from the 1999 SOWSG, but in reality, as already mentioned, it proved very difficult to put into effective practice.

The Family Access to the Host Town Programme was also continued on from the 1999 SOWSG. We found that many families totally ignored all of the information we had sent out on the access to the Host Town Programme and made their own arrangements separately. This caused difficulties for Family Services at the Airport, as families who had been expecting to travel with their athletes to the host town suddenly realised that this was not going to happen. They were separated from their athletes on arrival, and some expected Family Services volunteers to help them make transport arrangements, even though, strictly speaking, this was not the responsibility of Family Services.

Also the fact that Family Services had sent out directives that families would not be granted access to the Host Town Programme, and the GOC subsequently decided that family members of Team USA could take part in the Host Town Programme in Belfast caused a certain amount of confusion.


We recommend that the definition of a Family Member be revised again by the next GOC to include all close associates of the athlete, so that it is as all inclusive as possible.

The Family Access to Athlete and to the Host Town Programme must be reviewed for the next SOWSG, and indeed within the SO movement world wide. Neither of these policies work out during Games, and in fact we would recommend that both policies are less strict, as in the final analysis, family members will do all they can to meet up with and follow their athlete, regardless of policies in place.


4.2 Procedures

4.2.1 Issue in Host a Family/Family Ambassador Programme

4.2.2 Family Registration at Family Centre

4.2.3 Facilitating Family Access to an Athlete


4.2.1 Issue in Host a Family/Family Ambassador Programme

2003 SOWSG PROCEDURE


Family Services

Procedure Number 1 Procedure Title Issue in Host a Family Programme (HAFP)

Family Ambassador Programme (FAP) Other FAs affected Safety, Security Signed off by M. Courtney

DESCRIPTION: STANDARD PROCEDURE(S) Group dealt with: What the steps are: Who does them: Local host family Host family contacts HAFP Coordinator to

register issue Host family

HAFP Coordinator reports issue to Cluster Manager

HAFP Coordinator

Cluster Manager contacts host family to resolve issue in a satisfactory way

Cluster Manager

Issue is registered by Cluster Manager on Games Incident Report Form

Cluster Manager

Alternative Cluster Manager considers that issue is serious, and immediately contacts Family Services HQ to resolve

Cluster Manager

Family Services HQ deals with issue directly and immediately

Family Services HQ

Games Incident Report Form is completed Family Services HQ

Visiting family Visiting family registers issue with Family Hospitality in venue

Visiting family

Family Hospitality Coordinator informs Family Services HQ immediately

Hospitality Coordinator

Family Services HQ deals with issue directly and immediately

Family Services HQ

Games Incident Report form is completed Family Services HQ


Same procedure 1-11 as above


4.2.2 Family Registration at Family Centre



Family Services

Procedure Number 2 Procedure Title Family Registration at Family Centre Other FAs affected Accreditation, Ticketing, Signed off by M. Courtney

DESCRIPTION: STANDARD PROCEDURE(S) Group dealt with: What the steps are: Who does them: Visiting family who has pre registered

Visiting family member (ideally main family contact or person nominated by main family contact) arrives at check in and gives athlete s name

Family Coordinator for delegation arrives at check in on behalf of all families in delegation

Visiting family

Family Coordinator

Family Services checks athlete s name, list of family members registered, and asks for identification

Family Services

Family Services hands over envelope with Accreditation Passes for all family members in family/group and one ticket/voucher that allows them to receive one Welcome Pack

Family Services

Visiting family member signs on behalf of all family members in group

Visiting family

Visiting family member proceeds to pick up Welcome Pack

Visiting family

Visiting family member proceeds to pick up tickets to Opening Ceremony

Visiting family

Visiting family who has not pre registered

Visiting family member arrives at check in and gives athlete s name

Visiting family

Family Services checks athlete s name and asks for identification

Family Services volunteer

Family Services verifies athlete s name against athlete data

Family Services HQ

Family Services approves and agrees to have an Accreditation Pass issued

Family Services HQ

Visiting family fills out Family Registration Form

Visiting family


Family registration data is forwarded to Accreditation Service for processing of Accreditation Passes

Family Services

Visiting Family waits until Accreditation Pass is made or returns next day to pick up

Visiting family

Family Services hands over envelope with Accreditation Passes for all family members in family/group and one ticket/voucher that allows them to receive one Welcome Pack

Family Services

Visiting family member signs on behalf of all family members in group

Visiting family

Visiting family member proceeds to pick up Welcome Pack

Visiting family

Visiting family is not guaranteed tickets to Opening Ceremony

Family Services


4.2.3 Facilitating Family Access to an Athlete



Family Services

Procedure Number 3 Procedure Title Facilitating family access to an Athlete Other FAs affected Sport and Competition, Delegation Services,

Athlete Accommodation, Event Services

DESCRIPTION: STANDARD PROCEDURE(S) Group dealt with: What the steps are: Who does them: Family Member Family Member completes athlete access

request form, obtainable from:

Family Welcome Pack

Family Hospitality area in each venue

HoD/Head Coach in venue

Family Member

Family Member returns completed form to Family Hospitality in venue at least 24 hours prior to requested visit time.

Family Member

Family Hospitality submits form to Delegation Services

Family Hospitality

Delegation Services submits form to HoD/Head Coach

Delegation Services

HoD/Head Coach gives permission for access to athlete

HoD/Head Coach

It is the responsibility of the HoD/Head Coach to complete the remaining sections of the Form, arranging, with the Family Member, a suitable meeting point for handover at start and end of visit and a specific return time.

HoD/Head Coach

Family Services will assist in arranging for the Family Member to meet with the HoD/Head Coach (most likely the Head Coach) in the competition venue should the Family Member have difficulty in making direct contact by themselves.

Family Services

If assistance is required, Family Services will contact the Sports Information Desk, via VCC, to arrange with the Head Coach a meeting point and time for both to meet.

Family Services

Sports Information Desk communicates meeting arrangement to Family Services via the

Sports Info Desk


VCC.

Form is signed by HoD/Head Coach and by family member and the HoD/Head Coach retains the Signed Form for their own records.

Family Member

HoD/Head Coach

In agreeing to the athlete visit, both the HoD/Head Coach and the Family Member must abide by the pre-arranged meeting point and time for same.

Family Member

HoD/Head Coach

Athlete is not prevented from leaving venue in the company of a family member wearing a Family Accreditation Pass

Athlete/Family Member

Event Services

Scenario 1 If the Athlete s visit is scheduled to occur during the time that the team is in the Competition Venue

the athlete should be returned to HoD/Head Coach before the end of competition and prior to the last transportation departure to accommodation from that venue.

Scenario 2 If a Family member has permission from HoD/Head Coach to drop athlete back to accommodation venue at agreed time and location, it is the responsibility of the Family Member to make whatever arrangements are necessary to transport the athlete to the accommodation meeting point. The latest possible meeting time allowed is 10pm.

Family Member

In the Accommodation Venues, meeting points will be identified for the handover of athletes from Family Member to HoD/Head Coach following their visit. Since many of these are at entrances to the venues or along an avenue route, both parties should be respectful of arriving on time to avoid one party waiting on their own. HoD/Head Coach will have other athletes to attend to and may not be delayed beyond the meeting time.

It is the responsibility of the HoD/Head Coach to inform the Front Desk staff in the particular accommodation venue of the expected arrival time of the Family Member and Athlete to the venue.


Procedures General


As already outlined, the athlete access request procedure was notified to families and delegations in advance of the Games in the monthly updates, and it was also outlined in the Visiting Families Handbook. It was particularly difficult to manage in the week prior to the Games when some families arrived early and wanted to meet their athlete. At that stage athletes were still in the host towns and Family Services was not able to facilitate their request.

Issues were few in Family Registration and in the HAFP/FAP, so both these procedures worked well for us.


Procedures for athlete access were too long and complicated and need to be revisited by the next GOC.


5. Timeline

5.1 Milestone Summary

MAJOR MILESTONES DATE All home visits complete for HAFP 31 Jan 2003 Matching of host and visiting families 28 Feb 2003 Closing date for family registration for tickets to O/C ceremonies 28 Feb 2003 Notification to host and visiting families 31 March 2003 Recruitment of families HAFP and FAP complete 31 April 2003 Family Handbook compiled and ready 31 May 2003 Notification FAP complete 30 April 2003 Orientation HAFP, FAP all families complete 31 May 2003 Emergency family accommodation finalised 31 May 2003 Family Accreditation Pass production complete 31 May 03 Family transportation system starts 18 June 2003 Family registration begins in RDS 18 June 2003 Shopping and Entertainment evening/Blanchardstown 24 June 2003 Race Evening at Leopardstown 25 June 2003 Parents Reception hosted by Clipped Wings/The Point 26 June 2003 Global Family Leadership Forum at Dublin Castle 27 June 2003


A lot of our timelines were very aggressive and as a result many families could not meet these for the reasons explained in this after action report. We refer in particular to the following major dates which were initially:

Family Registration: 28th Feb 2003

Family Accommodation Reservation Service: 31st March 2003

Host a Family Programme: 31st Oct 2002

In reality our timeline was pushed out on each occasion, it became very flexible, and we were still organising registration, accommodation and the HAFP as late as mid June 2003, which is to be expected. This is feasible, but creates a huge amount of extra work close to the Games.


We would certainly recommend later dates for Family Registration and the HAFP to cater for all the families who will only decide to travel nearer the Games.


6. Budget

The budget for Family Services, excluding salaries is 28000 for 2002 and 52000 for 2003.


The budget in Family Services was low and at every stage we had to negotiate all expenses and find sponsorship. The main part of the budget was used for the development and printing of materials and the hire of the venue for General Orientation training. Fortunately, one of our biggest expenses, the staging and launch of the HAFP and FAP was paid for by Toyota Ireland, sponsor of the Families Programme. They also supplied the 7000 bags for the Welcome Pack, without which we would have had to look at a more basic option. Finally, regarding Family Events, we were fortunate to have a private donor who paid for the catering at the Race Evening.


The recommendation here is obviously to continue to advocate for the importance of Family Services at SOWSG. Family Services must be empowered with the allocation of necessary staff, resources and budget, and not just paid lip service, to ensure that family activities at the Games are first class and that family activities are at the forefront of any Special Olympics event, with as many activities as possible planned for the families during the Games.

7. Appendices

7.1 Equipment Requirements List

Signage

Tables

Chairs

Serving Counter (L shaped, 12 ft x 8 ft approx)

Under counter shelves

Back counter

Refrigerator

Sink


Water jugs

Burco Boilers (minimum 2 per venue)

Pump flasks (2 x small venue, 3 x medium sized venue, 3 x large venue)

Sockets

Extension lead

Notice board

Flip chart

Magazine racks

Cleaning kit

Waste bins

Fire Extinguisher


The Family Services volunteer Hospitality Coordinator spent a lot of time following up on furniture, fittings and equipment with the venue planning team, mainly to ensure a consistent look and minimum fit out across all venues. Not all of the above items were required in every venue, as some of the hospitality areas were in the lounge bars of clubs. It was an excellent idea to have a notice board and Guest Book in the Family Hospitality area

many of the families started to leave messages for friends and relatives and it became a great source of information and communication as the week progressed. While we would like to have had internet access and tv/video support in each hospitality area, budget did not permit this.


Regarding signage, it is essential to have excellent signage in place for Family Hospitality within venues, and in all languages of the Games if feasible. Otherwise families may not know until a late stage in the week that a special area for families exists and may therefore not get to avail of it.


7.2 Forms

7.2.1 Athlete Access Request Form

7.2.2 Arrival Information Form

7.2.3 Voucher for Emergency Hostel Accommodation

7.2.4 HAFP / FAP Issue Report Form

7.2.5 HAFP Home and Car Insurance Form

7.2.6 FAP Car Insurance Form


The main issue we had in relation to the above forms was with the Athlete Access Request Form, as already mentioned. The procedure was rather long and it took quite a few days before all families and coaches became fully aware of the procedure and made contact with their athletes smoothly.

The Arrival Information Form worked well when visiting families sent it in. It was a vital information tool in the HAFP

we did not use it for families staying in commercial accommodation as we did not have the resources to follow up arrival information of all visiting families.

The Voucher for Emergency Hostel Accommodation was the only document the Hostel would accept from the family member on arrival at the Hostel as proof that they had been granted free accommodation, and it worked well for us.

The HAFP / FAP Issue Report Form was only used on a few occasions, and we found it adequate for reporting incidents.

The HAFP

Home and Car Insurance Form and the FAP

Car Insurance Form were essential documents to have in the file of each local Host and Ambassador, and as already mentioned insurance concerns were predominant in the HAFP.


The only recommendation here is to simplify the Athlete Access Request procedure at the next SOWSG.


ATHLETE ACCESS REQUEST FORM 2003 SOWSG

DATE OF REQUEST_________________________________________________________________ Date Day of the Week

ATHLETE INFORMATION

Athlete Name_________________________________________________________________________

First Name Last Name

Athlete s Delegation & Sport ____________________________________________________________

FAMILY INFORMATION

Name of Family Member

Requesting access___________________________________________________________________ First Name Last Name

Relationship to athlete_________________________________________________________________

Telephone Number of Family Member_____________________________________________________

Family Member s Signature____________________________________________________________

ACCESS INFORMATION

Date of proposed access to athlete________________________________________________________

Date Day of the Week

Time of Pick Up_____________________ Time of Return____________________________________

Location of Pick Up__________________ Location of Return_________________________________

Where are you planning on taking the athlete_______________________________________________?

Additional Comments_________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________________

HEAD OF DELEGATION/HEAD COACH RESPONSE

Visit Approved as Requested___________________

Visit Not Approved_____________________Reason_________________________________________________

Print Name of Head of Delegation/Head Coach_____________________________________________

Head of Delegation/Head Coach Signature_________________________________________________


ARRIVAL INFORMATION FORM 2003 SOWSG

Name of Main Family Contact: Address:

Phone: E.mail:

Family Coordinator:

Phone: E.mail:

FLIGHT ARRIVAL INFORMATION AT DUBLIN AIRPORT

Origin of Flight (Airport):

Flight no: Airline: Connecting flight no, if applicable Airline: Date of Arrival: Time of Arrival in Dublin:

No in Family Group:

Special Assistance Required:

Yes No

If Yes, please specify type of assistance needed:

ARRIVAL INFORMATION IF NOT ARRIVING AT DUBLIN AIRPORT

Type of transport (ferry, train, bus, car): Date of Arrival in Dublin:

Point of Arrival in Dublin:

Time of Arrival in Dublin:

DEPARTURE DETAILS

Type of transport:

Date:

Time:

Please return before April 30th 2003 to: Family Services, 3rd Floor, Park House, North Circular Road, Dublin 7, Ireland, Fax: +353-1-8687203 or [email protected]


VOUCHER FOR EMERGENCY HOSTEL ACCOMMODATION

Dear ..,

This letter is to certify that the following family members

1) ............

2)

3) ...

4) ...

of the athlete .. of the .

Delegation are entitled to free accommodation (bed and breakfast ONLY) in

in (room type) ...

from (arrival date) to (departure date),

as agreed with Marion Courtney, Family Services General Manager for the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games by telephone on (date)

Verified by

.


HAFP / FAP ISSUE REPORT FORM

TO BE COMPLETED BY HAFP COORDINATOR

FORMS TO BE RETURNED TO FAMILY SERVICES HQ

NAME OF PERSON REPORTING ISSUE (host or visiting family):

.........................................................................................................................................

ADDRESS: (host family)...............................................................................................

.........................................................................................................................................

PHONE NUMBER: .......................................................................................................

DELEGATION: (visiting family)...................................................................................

(A) Date and Time issue reported to Coordinator:

.........................................................................................................................................

(B) Details of issue: .........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

(C) Name of Coordinator:

..........................................................................................................................................

(D) Date and Time issue reported to Coordinator

..........................................................................................................................................


(E) Action Taken by Coordinator

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

(F) Coordinator s comments:

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

Signature ________________________ Date _____________

Action taken by Family Services (if required):

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................................................

Signature ________________________ Date _____________


HAFP

Home and Car Insurance Form

HOST A FAMILY PROGRAMME

Please find below details of my/our Home and Car Insurance in relation to my/our Host a Family Programme Application with the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games.

Host Name: _______________________________________________________

Address:__________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________

HOME INSURANCE DETAILS

(building, contents, public liability)

Insurer: __________________________________________________________

Home Insurance Policy Number: ______________________________________

Renewal Date:______________________________________________________

CAR INSURANCE DETAILS

(if applicable)

Insurer: ___________________________________________________________

Car Insurance Policy Number: ________________________________________

Renewal date:_______________________________________________________

Signed: Date:

__________________ __________________


FAP Car Insurance Form

FAMILY AMBASSADOR PROGRAMME

Please find below details of my/our Car Insurance in relation to my/our Family Ambassador Programme Application with the 2003 Special Olympics World Summer Games.

Ambassador Name: ________________________________________

Address: _________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________

CAR INSURANCE DETAILS

Insurer: ____________________________________________________

Car Insurance Policy Number:__________________________________

Renewal date:_______________________________________________

Signed: Date:

__________________ __________________


7.3 Diagrams

None




7.4 Job Descriptions

Family Services General Manager

Department: Support Services and Volunteers

Reports to: Director Support Services and Volunteers

Summary: Responsible for the coordination of all personnel, procedures and activities in the Family Services Department

Responsibilities:

Welcoming and hospitality of all families

Registration of all families and gift bag

Hospitality

Accommodation

Entertainment

Receptions

Transportation

Family Centres

Organisation of tours

Host a Family Programme


Key Activities and Tasks:

Develop and implement a planned approach to the Family Services area

Recruit, manage and ensure training for all Family Services volunteers

Draft job descriptions for each position on the Family Services Team

Liaise with appropriate bodies, departments and stakeholders in the North and South of Ireland

Oversee the creation and implementation of all family services polices and procedures

Educate family members prior to and during the Games

Promote, organize and implement the Host a Family Programme and the Family Ambassador Programme

Organise and staff family hospitality and the Family Centres

Organise and staff the Family Receptions

Ensure seating is reserved for family members at all competition venues, award ceremonies and Opening / Closing ceremonies

Manage Family Services budget

Communicate with other Department Managers and Directors

Make recommendations to the Director of Support Services and Volunteers

Attend meetings as required


Maintain updated files on the area

Provide detailed reports as requested by the Chief Executive Officer and/or the Director of Support Services and Volunteers


Family Services Executive Assistant

Department: Family Services

Reports to: Family Services General Manager

Summary: To provide administrative support within Family Services in general

Responsibilities:

Family Registration

Assist with the administration of Family Registration process (application forms, database, queries)

Family Coordinators

Assist with the administration of Family Coordinators (queries, responses to emails, information updates)

Families Programme

Assist with administration of Programme (HAFP / FAP applications, queries, database)

Family Services Volunteers

Assist with the administration of the recruitment, training, screening and co-ordination of volunteers.

Family Services in general

Assist the Family Services General Manager in general with all aspects of Family Services (receptions, accommodation, transport, hospitality etc )

Assist with communications between staff in other departments and the Support and Volunteers Services Department.

Participate in all necessary team meetings

Maintain a record of meetings, reports, proposals, memos, budgets, expenses etc relating to Family Services.

Assist with development of Family Services in general

Undertake any other duties as necessary within Family Services Department

Keep Family Services General Manager informed of progress and report any anticipated difficulties


Families Programme Coordinator



Summary: To be responsible for and oversee all aspects of the Host A Family and Family Ambassador Programmes

Responsibilities:

Follow up the Expression of Interest campaign and necessary activities

Prepare promotional material and actively promote both programmes to interested organisations, residents associations and other relevant groups

Follow up on numbers of applications from visiting families

Develop structures to recruit local families to serve as Host Families and Family Ambassadors

Follow up, where necessary, on development of application forms and guidelines for both programmes for local families and visiting families

Establish a screening process for all Host Families (home visit) and Family Ambassadors (interview)

Develop structures to recruit and train volunteers to coordinate local families

Implement recruitment and training process of volunteers

Implement recruitment, screening and training of local hosts

Establish a system for matching visiting families with local hosts

Oversee the necessary correspondence with all local families and visiting families

Ensure guidelines are clear for all local hosts and visiting families regarding their responsibilities, in the form of a Host Agreement and Guest Agreement

Address risk management issues surrounding the HAFP and provide the results in a Frequently Asked Questions format that will be available to families

Ensure smooth operation of linking families together once they arrive in Dublin

Generally oversee administration and follow up of both programmes

Participate in all necessary team meetings and assist with development of Family Services in general

Undertake any other duties as necessary within Family Services Department

Keep Family Services General Manager informed of progress and report any anticipated issues


Family Services Hospitality Team Coordinator



Summary: To assist Family Services General Manager in setting up Family Hospitality in all venues

Responsibilities:

Ensure the Family Centres and competition venues have hospitality areas with refreshments and snacks for family members

Organise and coordinate hospitality across all venues

Ensure service is of similar standard together with look, signage, decoration

Recruit and supervise a team of Hospitality Coordinators, deputies and assistants in sufficient numbers

Complete and review the volunteer needs assessment.

Follow up on queries from volunteers

Ensure guidelines are clear for all Coordinators, deputies and assistants, with regard to their responsibilities

Complete and review the equipment/service needs assessment

Ensure adequate FFE for each hospitality area

Work with Catering department to determine adequate supplies for hospitality areas

Assist Family Services General Manger with developing and implementing Family Services training for volunteers in Family Services functional area

Assist with training of volunteers

Ensure smooth operation of Family Hospitality in competition and non competition evening venues

Address any issues surrounding Family Hospitality in venues

Assist Coordinators with scheduling and rostering of shifts for volunteers

Manage daily issues (if any) of Coordinators during Games


Keep Family Services General Manager informed of progress and report any anticipated issues


Family Services Hospitality Venue Coordinator


Reports to: Family Services Hospitality Team Coordinator

Summary: To be Family Services representative in venue and be responsible for smooth operation of Family Hospitality in general

Responsibilities:

Coordinate and supervise a team of Hospitality Assistants in venue

Organise lay out of family hospitality area as appropriate

Create a good atmosphere, making it a family-friendly area where families can relax, meet and talk

Monitor numbers within hospitality area, as far as possible

Ensure that hospitality area has sufficient refreshments and snacks

Ensure service provided is of a professional and friendly standard

Carry out a briefing each morning and ensure guidelines are clear for your deputy and assistants, with regard to their responsibilities on a daily basis

Allocate as far as possible a multi-tasking role for each of your volunteers during the Games

Be responsible for scheduling and rostering of shifts for volunteers

Manage daily issues (if any) of your volunteer team during Games

Maintain contact with volunteers prior to Games and follow up on any queries

Assist with training of volunteers, if available

Assist at family specific events in the evening, if available

Address any issues surrounding Family Hospitality in venues and report immediately to Family Services Hospitality Team Coordinator


Keep Family Services Hospitality Team Coordinator informed of progress and report any anticipated issues


Family Services Hospitality Assistant


Reports to: Family Services Hospitality Venue Coordinator

Summary: To provide Family Hospitality service in a venue

Responsibilities:

Make visiting families feel special and welcome at your venue

Offer a warm and friendly welcome

Meet/greet/direct families within venues

Interact with family members

Provide information (or direct families to Information Services desk in venue)

Prepare and serve tea and coffee, refreshments, snacks

Set up hospitality area each morning

Clear and tidy area each evening

Ensure professional and friendly service to family members

Attend volunteer training


Assist at family specific events in the evening, if available

Follow guidelines given by your Coordinator or Deputy Coordinator

Keep Family Services Hospitality Coordinator informed of any issues in your work


Family Services Events Team Coordinator 4 events



Summary: To assist Family Services General Manager in coordination of all family specific events

Blanchardstown Centre - 10 000 family members +7 000 athletes

Leopardstown - 5 000 family members

The Point - - 4000 parents

Dublin Castle - 350 invitees

Responsibilities:

Follow up on all work in progress to date

Monitor any anticipated issues with each Event Coordinator

Coordinate all plans for 4 events and organise necessary meetings

Ensure that all the logistics of the event are in place

Maintain all documents pertaining to the event (reports, contracts, agreements, budgets)

Ensure that all site arrangements are in place (liaison with site owner, security, parking etc )

Ensure that all catering, entertainment arrangements are in place

Liaise with Guests and Sponsorship for all events

Liaise where necessary with other departments on behalf of Event Coordinator (transport, signage, medical, safety, event services, volunteers, FFE)

Liaise with event partners ensuring that they receive any necessary briefings or assistance to support their participation in the event

Complete and review the volunteer needs assessments

Liaise with Family Services Hospitality Coordinator to organise volunteers to staff the events

Develop and implement just in time training for these volunteers

Coordinate time schedule for events

Be available during Games to coordinate all events

Keep Family Services General Manager informed of progress with 4 events and report any anticipated difficulties


Family Services Event Coordinator

1 event


Reports to: Family Services Events Team Coordinator

Summary: To assist Family Services Events Team Coordinator in organisation of one of the following events for which you are responsible

Blanchardstown Centre - 10 000 family members (7 000 athletes)

Leopardstown - 5 000 family members

The Point - - 4000 parents

Dublin Castle - 350 invitees

Responsibilities:

Follow up on all work in progress to date

Organise all the logistics of the event

Maintain all documents pertaining to the event (reports, contracts, agreements, budgets)

Be responsible for site (liaison with site owner, security, parking)

Organise catering, entertainment, programme, invitations if required

Attend necessary meetings and assist in developing plans for event

Liaise where necessary with other departments (transport, signage, medical, safety, event services, volunteers, FFE)

Liaise with event partners ensuring that they receive any necessary briefings or assistance to support their participation in the event

Organise any necessary event specific meetings, minute and circulate to all involved

Ensure that the appropriate look of the Games and signage are in place

Organise volunteers to staff the event

Implement just in time training for these volunteers

Develop time schedule for event

Co-ordinate entire event on the day

Keep Events Coordinator informed of progress with the event and report any anticipated difficulties


Job Descriptions General


Although clear and detailed job descriptions were essential for all staff and volunteers, they tended to keep expanding as the Games preparations progressed. Unfortunately we were not in a position to have an Event Coordinator for all 4 Family Events. No job description fully mirrored the amount of work carried out within Family Services. It was also impossible to predict the number of hours volunteers were expected to give as the goalposts kept changing.


As already mentioned in the after action report, the whole area of staffing the Family Services functional area would need to be readdressed. If a similar service and activities are to be provided in future Games, a greater number of staff members is imperative.


7.5 Volunteer Requirements

Competition Venues

Venue Function Volunteers/Shift ALSAA, Dublin Airport

Family Hospitality Coordinator/Deputy

3 Assistants Athletic Union League, Clonshaugh


4 Assistants Belfield (UCD) Family Hospitality Coordinator/Deputy

5 Assistants David Lloyd Riverview, Clonskeagh


4 Assistants Dublin City University, Glasnevin


3 Assistants Elm Green Golf Centre, Castleknock


3 Assistants ESB Arena, Tallaght Family Hospitality Coordinator/Deputy

4 Assistants Glenville Pitch & Putt, Old Bawn


3 Assistants Kill Int. Equestrian Centre, Kildare


3 Assistants King's Hall, Belfast


2 Assistants Leisureplex, Blanchardstown


4 Assistants Loughlinstown Leisure Centre


3 Assistants Morton Stadium, Santry

Family Hospitality

Family Centre

Coordinator/Deputy

9 Assistants National Badminton Centre, Baldoyle


3 Assistants


National Show Centre, Cloghran


3 Assistants Phoenix Park Family Hospitality Coordinator/Deputy

3 Assistants National Aquatics Centre, Abbottstown


6 Assistants Portmarnock Hotel & & Golf Links


3 Assistants Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge

Family Hospitality

Family Centre

Coordinator/Deputy

19 Assistants Royal St. George Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire


3 Assistants Salmon Leap Canoe Club, Leixlip


3 Assistants Sportslink, Santry Family Hospitality Coordinator/Deputy

3 Assistants

Non Competition Venues

Venue Function Volunteers/Shift Dublin Airport Meet and greet families on

arrival, assist through airport

Coordinator/Deputy

7 Assistants Belfast Airport See Dublin Airport 2 Assistants

Shannon Airport See Dublin Airport 2 Assistants

Fingallians GAA Club

A Welcome Centre to link visiting families with local host families

HAFP Volunteers

20 Croke Park Meet and Greet Families

O/C Coordinator

6 Assistants


Family events venues

Venue Function Volunteer/Shifts Blanchardstown Shopping Centre

Shopping & Entertainment evening

Coordinator

20 Assistants Leopardstown Racecourse

Race evening and reception Coordinator

20 Assistants The Point Parents Reception

Clipped Wings

Coordinator

20 Assistants Dublin Castle Global Family Leadership

Forum Coordinator

10 Assistants


Family Services trained and rostered approximately 220 volunteers in competition venues, of which approximately 100 volunteered to work at other events. We initially interviewed much higher numbers of volunteers as we had looked at the possibility of 2 shifts in Family Hospitality. In the end, due to space issues and a directive from Volunteer Services to reduce volunteer numbers, we decided on 1 long day shift. Most volunteers found this acceptable, and were flexible in arriving early or staying late. Even though rosters had been set up in advance, Family Hospitality Coordinators in venues arranged their own rosters during Games time and volunteers were flexible in terms of last minute changes or deployment to another venue owing to reduced family numbers or competition finishing early in a venue. In most areas morale was very high and volunteers worked well as team. To begin with, some of the venues reported overstaffing and too few families, however as the week progressed, reports of excellent morale, teamwork and atmosphere were reported across the board.


Volunteer numbers within your Functional Area can be difficult to estimate without experience, and it is certainly important not to be overstaffed, so that the volunteers do not get bored and have an enjoyable experience. We recruited too many volunteers initially and it was not easy task to reduce numbers. We would recommend initially starting with small volunteer numbers and then recruit extra volunteers on a case by case basis. Also, it is very important to give volunteers an opportunity, if they so wish, to work on the Family Events.

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Documents

Family Services After Action Report Final 29-08-03media.specialolympics.org/soi/files/resources/World_Games/World_… · Family Services HAFP Welcome Centre is open on June 21, 2003