Our training offer includes a range of employability and life skills courses, which are run on both sites and complement our practical workshop based training. Covid-19 has had a huge impact on our trainees’ lives, with many lost opportunities during lockdown, as such we have expanded our offer to reflect the emerging emotional well being needs of service users.

We offer literacy, numeracy, and basic life skills courses to develop trainees’ skillset and confidence; below is an overview of some of the courses we are currently running.

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Literacy Through Poetry

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This course uses a range of interactive learning activities, with trainees working towards creating their own piece of expressive text, be it a story, poem, rap or song. Adults with learning disabilities often face barriers when communicating, especially expressing their feelings, and we hope to empower them to use their voice and convey how they feel. At the end of the course, trainees are encouraged to share their work at a Poetry Slam, held on a celebration day.

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Managing money

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This numeracy course focuses on basic money handling skills and takes a real-world approach, looking at budgeting, how to pay for things, online banking safety and financial abuse. Trainees are supported to consider financial scenarios they might encounter themselves and problem solve how to deal with it, from checking they receive the correct change in a shop to making a weekly budget. As a group, trainees work towards holding a charity cake sale, practicing the skills they have learnt to plan, budget, buy for and hold a cake sale, whilst ensuring profit is made for the chosen charity. The cake sale is held on the end of course celebration day, where we showcase the achievements of our trainees.

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Looking After Pets

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After the success of having regular visits from therapy dogs and their volunteer handlers, we are running a new course to support trainees that have expressed an interest in caring for a pet. Trainees will investigate the basic welfare needs of a range of pets and practice basic grooming on realistic toy animals. There are regular visits from the therapy dogs, where trainees are supported to stroke and walk the dogs so they understand how to safely interact with an animal and the real life implications of pet welfare.

 

Our courses are run in partnership with an external training provider, and are subject to internal quality assurance checks and Ofsted inspections to ensure we offer quality teaching.