More great news to start my blog today… Medtia Square is now officially part of the New Bridge Group! We have signed the lease and work has already begun on adapting the building. Letters have been sent home this week to families of the young people currently based at the Horizons centre on Broadway Street letting them know what will be happening over the coming weeks. Transition visits to Medtia Square will start from Monday 15th February and continue over the following two weeks before we move into the building completely from Monday 29th February.
Future Finders students will be based at Medtia Square from Tuesday 23rd February (their first day back in after their half-term holiday) and we’re sure they will enjoy being able to access their placements across Oldham from their new centre in the middle of town! We will be writing to confirm these new arrangements for our Future Finders at the start of next week.
Tuesday 23rd February is also the date of the open day when families are being invited to come and see our new building at long last. Tours will be held at 10.30am and 5.30pm and we hope you will be able to join us and give your verdict on our new centre! If you would like to attend, please return the reply slip on the bottom of your letter to let us know whether the morning or the evening tour would be best for you.
Our Future Finders are still working hard and this week they have continued to learn new tasks and to take on additional responsibilities within their placements. It was great to hear that at an OCL directors meeting last night, the project was brought up and the feedback from OCL staff was brilliant!
I must this week give the ‘Employee of the Week’ badge to Max. Max is working in the gym and many customers have been commenting on what a great motivator he is! One lady in particular passed on her thanks as she wanted to give up on the power plate – I’m not sure what that is but I don’t like the sound of it! Max showed her how to work the machine and encouraged her to stay on for longer to burn more calories. Thanks to his help the lady worked twice as hard as she would have done without his encouragement and she was very grateful. Well done, Max, our very own Mr Motivator!!
I also want to wish Reece the best of luck for his working interview. Reece has been invited to apply for a job by one of our placement providers and we wish him every success in his interview. To be offered an interview this early on into the course is a huge achievement and is testament to Reece’s hard work, commitment and work ethic. I am very confident that whether or not this is the right job for Reece, he will be successful in gaining employment this year and will prove to be a real asset to any employer.
At Horizons this week, activities have again been hit by the dreaded weather! I think the storm from New York headed straight to Oldham, which unfortunately led to us cancelling this morning’s Wheels for All session. Our young people did, however, beat the weather earlier in the week and had a great time..
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Another group actually managed to time a visit to the park perfectly and bathed in the only 12 minutes of sunshine that we have had all week – some people get all the luck!
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In our DIY sessions this week, our young people have been creating Valentines gifts with Jeff – they are already looking fantastic as you can see, we can’t wait for the finished results!
Letters will be going out early next week regarding the new work experience placements at Dr Kershaw’s I mentioned in last week’s blog. This is such a fantastic opportunity for our young people and we hope many of them will want to sign up to this project. We are aiming to start the placements in line with our move to Medtia Square – watch this space!
I did promise last week that I would try to get some photos of Medtia Square to you but as the decorators got inside before I did, I will have to report back next week with updates on their progress and those eagerly awaited photos.
Have a wonderful weekend – let’s hope this awful rain stays away!
Many thanks,
Daniel Wood
Future Finders Manager
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Click here to find out what Graham has been up to this week