[senit] Equipment loan bank

CENMAC too has an extensive loan bank that is part of our assessment and review service to subscribing LEAs in the London area. We loan for as long as the pupil requires the equipment or until an upgrade is needed.? When equipment is returned from a pupil, it is cleared, cleaned and made ready to go out again.? Many pieces of equipment have been used for many years.? However, there is a high write off every year as equipment breaks, is no longer viable or just too old fashioned.? Some things are requested again and again.? These are usually low tech devices that have proven to be excellent in the build up of switch skills and symbol recognition.
Portable computers do have a very short life expectancy but with falling prices are now used in more cases where specialist software or access devices are required.? 

However, we do not provide the loan of high tech communication aids for pupils (although we would like to) purely due to finanical contraints of the budget and will pass pupils/schools on to the appropriate services.? CENMAC can provide 'start out' machines to start?building up the communication?skills.? In mainstream schools, this works well as you can gently break the staff in to the world of communication and AAC.? 

A loan bank does work but the CENMAC loan bank has been going for many years.

I am happy to talk to anyone off list if they want to contact me about how we manage this amount of equipment.? We presently have 3,400 items and work in approx. 240 schools.
I could go on and on about Access but perhaps that is enough information for now.

Trish 
CENMAC
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