SURREY CARE TRUST
About our work
2009
We believe in education with a difference because
we see the difference it makes
The Surrey Care Trust's alternative education, training and preparation-for-employment programmes are at the heart of our work today, helping people overcome economic and social disadvantage.
Lack of qualifications means low incomes, a precarious existence financially and often poverty of aspiration.
Not only do many individuals benefit personally from our work, but we believe that the wider community also gains when people are better equipped with skills to help them find a job, to support them in bringing up their children and in making a positive contribution to society.
We also continue to run the Crisis Grants hardship fund as we have done since the Surrey Care Trust was established in 1982.
The Surrey Care Trust manages the Stanwell Sure Start Children's Centre.
Latest News g
More about our work
g Our STEPS programmes for young people
g STEPS School Inclusion
g STEPS learning centres and the Under 16s programme
g STEPS Ahead for unemployed young adults
g STEPS Mentoring
g STEPS Counselling
g The Swingbridge Community Boats
g Swingbridge boat trips
g The FACE programme for unemployed adults
g The Stanwell Sure Start Children's Centre
g Crisis Grants
g Our Vision and Mission
g Home
Inspiring young people to raise
their aspirations and reclaim their futures
A large part of our work is with under-achieving young people who have struggled to fit into mainstream school and are at risk of finishing their years of education with few skills to take them through life.
These are young people who are often challenging in their behaviour at school, who may have had a difficult start in life and who are readily dismissed as no-hopers. We believe that they all have the potential to make a success of their lives and we nurture their abilities, ambitions and self-confidence
Our aim is to keep them in education, either in their current schools, or potentially in one of our specialist learning centres. We also have a STEPS Ahead programme to help young adults develop their skills and confidence, so they can find work or move into further education.
Our School Inclusion Team is working in schools
Staff working in our School Inclusion team are in local schools, giving one-to-one or small group support to disengaged and often unhappy young people in the middle years of secondary schooling, motivating them to stay in mainstream education.
Personal Adviser Mark Wedden from our School Inclusion team describes his work providing one-to-one support for young people in school. g
Our STEPS Learning Centres provide an alternative education programme
Sometimes it proves impossible for young people to fit into school, so our Learning Centres at Redhill, Staines and Woking, offer the STEPS Under-16s alternative education programme. It is a second chance for 14, 15 and 16 year-olds, youngsters in years 10 and 11 of schooling, to gain self-belief and confidence, develop their skills and experience of the world, and leave with qualifications to equip them for work, training or further education.
Find out more about our learning centres g
Pictures of the end-of-year presentations at our Staines and Woking Learning Centres, summer 2009 g
Young people join the campaign against drug abuse and anti-social behaviour g
Our STEPS Ahead course helps young adults build their skills and confidence
For young people over the age of 16, we run the STEPS Ahead programme. The courses, in Redhill and Woking, are aimed at young adults, mostly aged 16 to 18, who are unemployed and have low skills and limited qualifications. We help them to improve the skills and build the self-confidence and motivation they need, both to find work or return to education and then to make a success of it.
The learners stay with the programme until they find a job or secure a training or a college place. Team work is a key part of STEPS Ahead and the young people have the opportunity to work together on a project doing something useful for the local community, as well as take part in a challenging outdoor activities trip.
Find out more about the STEPS Ahead programme g
Young people from the Woking STEPS Ahead course orienteering in London g
STEPS Mentoring supports young people as they take the next step in life
The Surrey Care Trust has a new mentoring scheme supporting vulnerable young people as they near the end of their time with our STEPS programmes and after they have finished. Funding has been provided by the ACT Foundation.
Find out more about STEPS Mentoring g
Information for young people g
If you are interested in volunteering and taking part in training in 2010 please contact our mentoring managers Georgina Waters or Margaret Reeder on 01483 412760 or 07973 282239.
STEPS Counselling supports young people through difficult times
The final part of our work for young people is STEPS Counselling, a FREE, confidential and independent service for young people aged between 16 and 25. We offer long and short term counselling and our young clients decide for themselves how many sessions they need to talk through difficult feelings and problems that are concerning them. Counselling sessions are provided in Staines and Woking.
Counselling number: 0845 241 0370
Find out more about the STEPS Counselling Service g
It's never too late
for a second chance of achieving
your potential with our FACE programme
Our adult learning programme, FACE, encourages people to recognise their talents and make the most of them. Our courses are designed to boost confidence, to nurture aspirations and equip people with skills to help in finding work or moving into further training and education.
We offer FREE, short informal courses for people who are currently unemployed, including: Motivation Skills, CV Writing, Interview and Communication Skills. As well as these basic preparation-for-work courses, we help people to find further training to match their particular interests. We also mentor and support each individual as they look for a job and move into a work placement, employment, training or further education.
FACE courses are aimed at people of working age who have never gained many formal skills or qualifications, or people who need to rebuild skills and confidence because they have fallen on hard times. Many people who benefit from FACE have never used mainstream adult education, because they cannot afford the fees, or are isolated by lack of transport or childcare, or simply lack the confidence to take the first step.
Our courses are free and run in community locations, with creches to enable parents of young children to attend.
For further information, please contact: Cathy Leamon for the East Surrey Area on 07919 213904 or Raquela Mosquera for the West Surrey Area on 07786 911870.
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The story of Holistic Harmony
Holistic Harmony is a community interest company providing affordably-priced complementary therapy treatments. It has been set up by a group of women who met when they were unemployed and attending free training courses, run by the Surrey Care Trust's FACE adult learning programme in partnership with Lucis College. They started with a basic course in Indian Head Massage and went on to gain accredited qualifications in this and other therapies. They are now providing treatment sessions at the Longmead Centre in Epsom.
Find out more about Holistic Harmony g
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Our Swingbridge boats offer opportunities for learning practical skills
Training or volunteering with the two Swingbridge Community Boats along local waterways, or coming on a training session, is a great way for people to learn skills and gain confidence and self-motivation.
People who benefit include young people, especially those on the Surrey Care Trust’s STEPS education programmes, people who are underskilled and poorly qualified, those with mild learning difficulties and people recovering from ill health.
Training in skills needed for environmental conservation work is one of the key activities of the Swingbridge programme and among those who work and train with Swingbridge are offenders who have been sentenced to carry out unpaid work for the community instead of going to prison. Although a community payback placement with Swingbridge is hard, all-weather work, it is also intended to be a constructive experience.
Working as part of a team with our volunteers, offenders learn new skills in environmental work and can take the first accredited steps to gaining qualifications. They can see the value to the community of what they are doing in caring for open spaces along local waterways, the River Wey, the Basingstoke Canal and River Thames.
One of our Swingbridge boats is available to hire for outdoor educational and team-building sessions by local schools, youth organisations and companies.
If you are interested in hiring the boat, call Chris Padmore on 01483 412763.
In the summer months, we run trips for people from local community groups. Swingbridge boat trips g
Swingbridge News g
Swingbridge boat trips are appreciated by hundreds of people every summer
We invite hundreds of people from Surrey community groups every spring and summer to enjoy a relaxing couple of hours on the water on one of our Swingbridge boats. A wheelchair lift makes it accessible to people who have limited mobility and these trips are greatly appreciated by people of all ages and their carers. Being able to provide this facility is a wonderful benefit of running Swingbridge. A two-hour trip costs £60 and the money supports the costs of running our Swingbridge programme. Call 01483 426990 to inquire about booking a trip for your community group.
Swingbridge boat trip booking form g
Swingbridge relies on a large group of volunteers to crew the boats, to take in the environmental work and to help with running summer trips. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer with our Swingbridge Boats, call 01252 622229 or 07973 282239 or click to find out more about volunteering.
We are helping families with education, support and advice at the Stanwell SureStart Children's Centre
The Surrey Care Trust runs the SureStart Children's Centre in Stanwell, on behalf of Surrey County Council providing support and provision for children and their families. Our staff offer a warm welcome, a meeting place, learning opportunities, advice and information.
Learning and training are a key part of the Children's Centre, which is where the Surrey Care Trust's our experience of providing community-based, user-friendly education, is so valuable.
Find out more g
The centre celebrated its first birthday in summer 2009. See the pictures g
Our Crisis Grants help people facing hardship in every part of Surrey
The Crisis Grants Fund is another part of the Surrey Care Trust's work. This welfare fund provides modest sums of money to help people who are struggling to afford basic essentials, whether that is a family unable to afford school shoes, a young person brought up in care who has no smart clothes for a first job interview or a pensioner without the means to replace a broken cooker. We help in many, many different situations of hardship.
Grants are given in response to referrals from social workers, health visitors, careers advisers, probation officers and other professionals. We cannot give grants directly to members of the public.
We receive several requests every week and it is sobering to hear about how much need exists, even in Surrey, in 2009 and whenever we can we give help and give it swiftly.
Find out more about the people who benefit from Crisis Grants:
Crisis Grants News 2010 g Crisis Grants News 2009 g
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OUR VISION, MISSION AND VALUES
Our Vision
The Surrey Care Trust’s vision is to transform the life chances and aspirations of local people who are marginalised by disadvantage and lack of opportunity or who need a second chance.
Our Mission
The Surrey Care Trust will tackle disadvantage, social exclusion and hardship in local communities. We will reach out to people to equip them with the skills to improve their economic situation, to reduce their social isolation and to convince them they have a valuable contribution to make to society.
We will achieve this by:
- Offering immediate help to people in great financial need.
- Helping people to help themselves for the longer term by providing life-changing opportunities through education and training.
- Running innovative programmes designed to keep disaffected and vulnerable young people in education, either at mainstream school or at one of our own learning centres, so they achieve the skills and self-confidence they need for a successful, fulfilling life.
- Offering a second chance of learning and training to people of all ages whose lack of skills limits their opportunities and leaves them economically vulnerable and socially excluded.
- Making training and education programmes available to offenders and ex-offenders, both to improve their own life chances and to create safer communities by helping to reduce re-offending.
- Being active in identifying local needs and open to working in partnership with other organisations, so we can respond to those needs quickly and creatively.
Our Values
- We are committed to giving people a second, often a third or fourth chance of achieving and developing new skills and we are open to those who have experienced much failure and rejection in the past.
- We are passionate about providing the opportunities throughout life for positive change that learning and personal development can bring.
- We treat all the people we work with in a caring, non-judgmental way, sensitive to the fact that they are often living in vulnerable and difficult situations.
- We strive for the highest levels of efficiency, effectiveness and integrity in the delivery of our work and in fundraising for the charitable income that is essential to sustain it.