A word from the Managing Director
Welcome to the first newsletter about the latest developmentfrom Progress, my name is Claire Rogers the Managing Director. Over the next few months we will be keeping you up to date with the developments at Stourbridge House and counting down to its launch. So, what’s it all about you may ask?
Well, I shall tell you!
The service, partly commissioned by Wolverhampton Council will provide a brand new short breaks provision for children with disabilities following the closure of Windmill Lane and Stow Heath. Alongside this, the council wanted families to be able to get support in their homes as well as being able to have overnight stays. For those of you with little ones, the outreach service will help you to get a bit of time out too. That’s where we come in, we offered the council the right mix of skills and creativity and were awarded a contract to deliver this.
Progress has been supporting children and young people with disabilities for 17 years now. Our focus is to provide high quality community support, activity groups, short breaks, residential care and fostering services across Wolverhampton and the Black Country.
We have a wide range of experience to meet the needs of young people, we are creative in our approach, offering the right service at the right time and ensuring that we respond to the changing needs of children and families. Ourservices don’t stop at 18, our offering continues on into early adulthood, ensuring continuity and consistency of support and care for as long as needed. In the design of this project, we wanted to take it a bit further than the original brief as our aim is to help young people ‘progress’ and develop into confident young adults. Stourbridge House will be a three-storey building, (you may have seen this peeping above the boarding around the site).
The Ground floor will have 6 beds and will provide short breaks for children with all types of disabilities. The first floor will be for young adults aged 16-25, again offering short breaks but with a greater focus on developing independence and building on friendships and relationships. Finally, the second floor will have 5 flats where young adults can try out what it’s like to live independently.The young people who visit Stourbridge House will be taken on a safe and supported journey into adulthood and will be able to start planning for their futures. We are all very excited about this new project and look forward to sharing it with you and getting you involved along the way.
The Big Build
So, the actual building is about finished, what a challenge that has been! For those of you that don’t know, we are on the Stourbridge Road. The site used to be an old petrol station, so the ground works were a bigger job than expected and it took longer to get it off the ground than we thought. This caused us a bit of delay! We have had multiple tradespeople working round the clock to get the building up which has made up a bit of lost time, but we are still about 6-8 weeks behind schedule because of this.
The underfloor heating is in on the ground floor (we have found over the years that the kids love this!)and the first fix is going in as we speak. Our owners Bal and Raj personally project manage every aspect of the build and Bal has exacting standards when it comes to interior design. She personally chooses all the materials and décor to ensure that it feels like a Progress home. Bal has recently met with suppliers to commission the hoists and bathing equipment, looking for quality, resilience and a non-clinical appearance. The end result will look like somewhere you would want to move into yourself,so I can’t wait to see what she does here!
Our People
We have been doing loads of recruitment locally for our new team to support families and children at Stourbridge House and in the community and were thrilled when we made 19 offers of employment at our last recruitment day, we look forward to welcoming the new staff into the Progress Family. For those families whose children will be transferring from Regis House or community support, you need not worry as some of the existing staff will be transferring over to the new service to provide consistency and make sure that children settle in well.
Registration
Our Registered Manager for Stourbridge House will be Phil McDonald, who many of you will know as he is our current Manager at Regis House and supports many families with his community based services and groups. Both Phil and I are in the process of theapplication to Ofsted to get the home registered and we hope this process will go smoothly, with the support of our colleagues at Ofsted.
Highlights
We wanted Stourbridge House to embrace modern technology so it will be packed full of assistive technology to make people’s lives easier, provide better health monitoring and give young people greater dignity during their time with us. We will tell you more about this next time.
Keep it Wolverhampton
Progress is a family owned business and is proud of it’s Black Country heritage. We like to do business locally and employ local tradespeople. We will introduce some of our local partners in the next few publications. If you know any local suppliers or businesses, who may want to be involved whilst we are kitting out the home and getting ready for launch, please get in touch.
News and events
We are hosting an ‘Afternoon of Fun’ on 31st August as part of the local consultation for our new service Stourbridge House. The family fun day will be held at the Mercure Wolverhampton Goldthorn Hotel between 2:30pm – 6:30pm. It’s sure to be a great day with lots of exciting activities and a goody bag for your children. It helps with our planning if we know you are coming, please click here to register. We are pleased to announce that our lovely CEO Bal will be attending this event. If you would like to meet her she will be available between 3-4pm. We all look forward to seeing you soon!
We will also be launching a competition to name each service at Stourbridge House,to get involved, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for all the latest news.
View this blog as a pdf here.
View the flyer for our ‘Afternoon of Fun’ here.