This article was written by Angela Cooke, a teacher at Milestone School, a Special Education School in Gloucestershire, who has co-designed and developed the Trailrail System. For info about viewing the rail, contact Angela on 01452 500499 or email: class6mail@milestone.gloucs.sch.uk

Schools Equipment, vol 6, No 1, Spring Term 2005

This is an article about the Trailrail, a guidance system that enables pupils to safely navigate their way around the school and understand their surroundings.

Trailrail is an original, purpose-designed, needs-led, handrail that has been tailored to the needs of pupils, developed in collaboration with school staff. This is how it happened.

The physical structure of the new school was created from a combination of original, converted and new buildings to form one continuous, ground level school. The completed school has over 30 classes, specialist subject classrooms, administration offices, medical rooms, therapy work rooms, staff resource centre, library, halls, hydrotherapy pool, spa pool, multi sensory environments, soft play room and various other areas which change identity according to pupil needs.

The school became very large, with an extensive and complex network of connecting corridors and this motivated a member of staff to explore the possibility of installing some form of handrail throughout the building, designed to enable pupils, and, indeed visitors, to journey from reception, around all key stage areas, and be returned safely back to the front door again.

Having researched the availability of a ready made rail to meet the school’s needs, and finding nothing available, it was decided to try and design and install a handrail, tailored to the pupil’s needs and the complex environment of Milestone School.

The school worked with a local company called Caesarcraft, of Cambridge, Gloucestershire, who were experienced in creating products for the special needs market and together they developed the project. Slowly, the trailrail took shape and it was designed to provide:

• a supportive handrail for pupils in emergent stages of walking
• a continual tactile route to follow, for pupils with visual impairment, or pupils on the autistic spectrum,
• sensory, tactile islands along the way, for focus, definition, exploration, stimulation,
• information stations to identify individual rooms and places,
• increased opportunity for awareness of direction and personal location,
• physical stability and security for vulnerable pupils by giving a constant, continuous grasp-hold support.

Having got this far, the project went into a period of gestation, while other priorities took precedence, and it became inactive for a while.

Then, in 2003, the trailrail project was back in focus and the task of obtaining external funding had to be dealt with. Letters were sent to several companies located in the area who were known to support projects within the community, asking for part, or full, funding towards the £10,000 installation costs, and, to our delight, Lincoln Financial Group, of Barnett Way, Barnwood, Gloucester, responded, and generously offered to sponsor the total amount of £10,000!

Following another design reappraisal, it was decided to install the trailrail with directional route and Information Stations. Each Information Stations had five means of delivering the identity of a designated room, including a four- window frame, where the room is identified by word, sign, symbol and photograph, and a wall box for the relevant object of reference underneath and a fixed object of reference for matching.

Caesarcraft had to work throughout the 2004 summer holidays to install the trailrail , and this proved to be a much bigger task than was anticipated, but wonderfully, by late September, the final information station was in place, and their work was done.

The response from the pupils, in the first weeks of term, was been fascinating. Comments from pupils include: “It shows you where to go”, “It’s nice for the children in wheelchairs to reach”, “My finger wiggles along”, “I like it, it’s smooth”. From staff: “I can tell a visitor to follow the arrows on their left, and they get there, it’s made it much easier to direct them”. From a Paediatric consultant about a child with independent walking difficulties: “the school has installed a handrail which has enabled her to move more independently, with adult support on one side only, as she holds the rail”.

Staff found that it has enabled pupils to follow purposefully when going between rooms, and others have commented that running has reduced as the children are fully focussed on finger-trailing the rail as they go.

Following this early success, the school is now in the final stages of completing the content of the information stations.

“Total Communication” is a priority for the school, and the next stage of the trailrail projectis to provide each class with their own Communication Box, which has an identical set of Objects of Reference and a pre-recordable voice communicator.

Once again, the school has been amazingly fortunate in having secured sponsorship from Zurich Financial Services, who agreed to fund the cost of the individual Communication Boxes for each class. The contents of these boxes is being decided by a team of staff responsible for Total Communication within school, and is now in place. The Total Communication team has undertaken in-house training on their presentation and use.