The site is in its infancy but it summarises on what a young person can look forward to at Anderida; what there is to do in the area; info about the education that Anderida offers and useful numbers like Childline, FRANK and Ofsted. We have found that in the past young people who have been given our young person’s guide have shown great interest in the pictures of staff – understandably looking for a friendly and reassuring face, which is something that we have honed in on with the website. With tongue firmly in cheek, we went about making our version of Top Trumps for some of the willing staff. They gave themselves scores out of ten on four catergories including DIY skills, Cooking Talent, Sporting Ability and Joke Prowess and now we have a wonderful gallery on the Meet The Team page that the kids can have a good laugh at!

The site  will continue to expand and now it’s been constructed the consultation process begins with the young people who will help it grow but with keeping it in-house and off the search engines, we’re not looking at another Facebook just yet.

So, why might you consider utilising our staff?

• Immediate Cover For As Long As You Need.

If you have a lot of staff on a shift rota, often mornings can get a bit messy. Sickness can throw a real spanner in the works and your pool of bank staff are not always quick to answer their phones. We can send over a hand picked member of staff immediately to slot in to your team regardless of your circumstances. Anderida could be your bank staff list with the added bonus of the staff being highly relevant, experienced and fully trained in residential child care.

• Highly Relevant Staff

We are offering staff who work with young people in a residential child care environment day in, day out – we won’t simply send you job seekers!

• Highly Skilled Staff

Temping agencies may struggle to find staff specific to your role, but we are clear: our creative and passionate staff are experienced in working in a residential child care environment with young people who display very challenging behaviour. It is these individuals who are responsible for providing the care that received Outstanding from Ofsted. They know what they are doing!

• Fees Nowhere Near to “Agency” Fees

Fees start at £10.07 per hour per member of staff. I think that says it all.

• Pre-screened, Interviewed and Trained.

These aren’t people that we need to find work for as a matter of urgency in order for them and us to earn money – as is the case with traditional agencies; our Project Workers have been employed by Anderida to work for Anderida. They would have been group interviewed, interviewed, had trial shifts, follow up interviews, CRB checked and then been contributing to Outstanding care whilst completing their NVQ and following a detailed training list.

We can help any organisation that feels that we can help them.

If you would like to speak to us about this please contact us via the Contact Us page of our site or call 01323 410655.

We are a child care organisation, ourselves, with twenty years of experience in residential child care which gives us the perfect platform to train on such matters; and with our own training facility we invite all individuals and organisations to book training with us in the following courses:

• Level 2 Certificate and Level 3 Diploma for the Children and Young People’s Workforce (more info here >>>)
• PRICE: Preventative techniques in de-escalation and managing behaviour as well as physical restraint whilst protecting the welfare and well being of others.
• Taking Care, Taking Control: Often undertaken prior to PRICE this course focuses on managing young people and de-escalating difficult situations in a care environment.
• Safeguarding:  The importance of child protection in a care environment.
• Sexual Health: All areas of sexual health and awareness and how to approach subjects with young people.
• Working With Self Harm:  Raising awareness around self harm
• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: CBT and its uses in the care of young people.

• Relevant to most workplaces:
  • Complaints & Whistleblowing:  Highlighting when to complain, how to deal with and manage complaints and the importance of whistleblowing.
  • Fire Awareness: A look at all health and safety and procedures surrounding fire safety.
  • Manual Handling:  Assessment, risk awareness and techniques in handling heavy and awkward objects.

We are situated in Eastbourne, East Sussex, just 10 minutes from the train station and have free parking at the training facility. To book or to find out more click here >>>

Anderida Adolescent Care has long been equipped with a team of in-house NVQ Assessors ensuring that all staff are reaching their full potential and are equipped with the most suitable NVQ level relevant to their position; all Anderida staff must have had or been working towards an NVQ Level 3 in the Care of Children and Young People. Now the qualification framework has changed – but not, we are delighted to say, just for the sake of it! As the CWDC explains,

“The Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) launches a new framework to improve the way foundation degrees are developed for practitioners working with young people.

The new foundation degree framework illustrates good practice relevant to the 6 million practitioners working with young people in England. Their work is often complex and demanding and spans a range of sectors and settings.

The workforce has been calling for more support and greater clarity on the professional development opportunities available to them and this framework will help them to provide better, more consistent services for young people.

CWDC has developed the framework through consultation with young people, learners, employees, training providers, employers and sector experts. Feedback shows that many practitioners are keen to improve their skills and develop their career working with young people.

The new foundation degree framework has been designed to help them do that, providing opportunities for practitioners to strengthen specialist skills and improve the ways in which they work together.

This news has been welcomed by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS). Speaking on their behalf, Paul Greenhalgh, Executive Director for Children, Young People and Learners, London Borough of Croydon said:

“We are pleased to see that CWDC has developed this framework through consultation with employers, training providers, learners and young people. It will bring an element of commonality to the wide range of foundation degrees available for the young people’s workforce while encouraging the development and recognition of specialist skills.”

The foundation degree framework provides clearer development routes for those choosing a career working with young people. Employers can also use it to support learning across a range of different sectors, enhancing their practice in three key areas: working with young people; working together; developing specialist expertise.”

At Anderida, we have been delighted with the changes that we have seen. The qualification aptly reflects the type of work that we do in residential child care. We have worked quickly to adapt to the changes and our team of NVQ Assessors are now in a position to assess under the new framework.

With the development of the new qualification comes the development of our own Assessment Centre and we are pleased to be able to offer a fully supported Level 2 Certificate for the Childrens and Young People’s Workforce and Level 3 diploma for the Childrens and Young peoples Workforce which includes workshops at our training centre and support and assessment within your practice.

The CWDC website has plenty of information about the qualification here and if you would like to discuss utilising our Assessment Centre, please do get in touch here.

At Anderida, we feel that it is vitally important to break the cycle of pupils regularly being excluded from school, with the placement subsequently being more liable to break down. For this reason we have decided to take control of the education provided to our residents.

We believe that each and every student has much greater potential than their past performance in school would indicate and that, to unlock this potential, an individual learning programme is required. We have therefore designed a system that acknowledges the barriers to learning often experienced by Looked After Children, using interactive, online lessons (Accipio) as a basis for accessing the National Curriculum, accompanied by individually organised practical, vocational, face-to-face learning sessions.

This part of the education takes place at our own farm (Oliver’s Hill at Ashburnham, East Sussex), where students are taught the life cycle of farm animals, from birth to the plate, along with many other aspects of animal husbandry and general farming. We will shortly be adding a range of other vocational skills programmes such as motor mechanics, construction, woodwork and food tech. A complete and well rounded scheme of learning is thus provided to each student to maximise their educational potential and retain sufficient flexibility to maintain their interest whilst offering a preparation for the world of work and adulthood in general.

We take into account the Statement of Special Educational Needs and couple this with initial and ongoing assessments to devise a unique timetable based on custom-designed schemes of work, to focus on the strengths of each student and gently stretch their academic base. We seek to fire up the imagination with reference to their particular interests and abilities, rather than to continue to unsuccessfully try to force a square peg into a round hole, offering a way back into education for pupils of all abilities.

A base-line assessment is carried out soon after admission, allowing subject content to be targeted at an appropriate level to challenge the learner without creating further barriers to learning. Regular assessments will provide evidence to gauge progress and end of term reports will be supplied. Key-teacher sessions will be provided on a weekly basis to ensure that the curriculum is meeting the needs of each pupil, maximising their potential in line with the five outcomes of Every Child Matters.

Pupils will sit exams through GCSE, AQA, Edexcel, Asdan and City & Guilds, to enable them to face the competition of the workplace on an equal footing. This education package is part of the residential placement, utilising staff with whom they are already familiar and who are skilled in behaviour management, to supervise the learning day, maintaining good communication between school and home.

This education provision is fully inspected by Ofsted, registered EBSD School DCSF: 925/6053.

About Accipio

Accipio Learning supports 80 local authorities and over 100 schools and works with in excess of 1000 pupils each academic year. Our curriculum, ethos and approach are entirely focused on supporting pupils who may be socially and economically disadvantaged and/or may have disengaged from mainstream education.

Accipio is typically used by local authorities and schools to provide the backbone of their alternative provision programmes. Accessing Accipio is simple with pupils learning from home, school inclusion setting, authority centre, work or college placement or indeed any venue where a broadband connection and pc are available. .

Accipio provides complete flexibility and can deliver between 5 and 30 hours of education per pupil each week, tailored to the needs of each individual, addressing the personalised and digital learning agendas and working as part of a blended education solution for many young people. We teach GCSEs over 2 years, 1 year or even just 5 months.

Our school typically comprises pupils who are:

• At risk of exclusion
• Excluded from secondary school
• Unable to attend school for medical reasons
• Unable to attend school for mental health reasons
• Special Educational Needs (S.E.N)
• Young people in the public care system (L.A.C)
• Teenage mothers
• Not in education, employment or training (N.E.E.T)
• Young offenders
• New arrivals, refugees and asylum seekers

Inclusive Education
However these young people are categorised, it is clear that access to high quality education delivers the same opportunity for advancement and progression as for less disadvantaged young people. This is the central ethos behind Accipio and informs all that we do and hope to achieve.

Accipio is modelled on the same premise as a normal secondary school. Our teachers are subject specialists in their own right and as a team bring many, many years of mainstream secondary school teaching experience to our online classroom. This experience, allied with cutting edge technology, has consistently delivered positive outcomes with over 40% of pupils achieving A* to C grades over the past few years.

Kids + Cash = ?

Anderida Adolescent Care know the headaches that money can bring to a residential children’s home all too well and have gone some way to iron out inconsistencies and subjective rules. The young people at Anderida Care have always been able to earn points for good behaviour and for going one step further than the call of duty requires. Key Workers look through a young person’s Care Plan and, with the young person, work out what they could go about improving on. For example, if a young person was a smoker, a point could be rewarded for not smoking or indeed for smoking less; does the young person swear all too flippantly? A point could potentially address this matter. As well as addressing the negatives, they are rewarded for the positives: a point for washing up, a point for offering support… These points would convert into cash and the young people would be allowed to spend them on activities.

The Wii. It certainly looks like an activity... Errr...

The issues that arise around this is what constitutes an activity? Is a Nintendo Wii an activity? Is a new pair of trainers to “go running” in allowed? Can a young person short on pocket money use their activity money on travelling to see friends? Why not? It’s “an activity!” As I said at the beginning, it can be quite subjective and inconsistency doesn’t suit a children’s home! Not only did the Activity Points come into question regularly, it was hard for the young people to envisage what they could achieve if they saved them up; often, enough would be saved for a night out bowling or a visit to the cinema and like money burning a hole in a pocket, the points would quickly be cashed in.

So how did we get around this?

We came up with A-Points. Points no longer meant cash; points meant prizes and we wanted to lay out a menu of diverse experiences for the young people to browse through and aim for. Yes, they could still save up 250 points and go bowling but what could they achieve if they knuckled down? Had it even dawned on them that if they really worked hard they could go zorbing or paragliding or learn to scuba dive? Could they even grasp what these activities were? Or how about a holiday or snowboarding in the Alps?! Whilst continuing to recieve pocket money, they could realistically achieve this.

Having researched activities, we went to work on an in-house website that lists around 100 activities – a list that continues to grow.

A screenshot from the homepage

The young people can click on a point value and then run through the different activities available to them if they were to achieve that target. The site has embedded video on many of the activities. For example, if the young person is interested in a day at Brands Hatch, they can click play on the video and watch a clip of some motorbike racing at the circuit to stimulate the imagination while learning what the activity is all about. There’s also a link directly to the circuit timetable to see what’s on in the foreseeable future at a glance. Should they have their heart set on something but can’t find it on the site they can click on the “suggest an activity” button and an email will go to the site manager who can then assess its appropriacy, attribute a point value, make a page and add it to the site. In a sense the young people are developing the concept and the website themselves.

A typical page

On top of this we have an ever-growing list of activities that cost the young people absolutely no points. With 40 or so at the moment, the page serves as a good go to point when young people and staff are scratching their heads, all out of points and trying to think up something new to do. Geocaching, nature trails, rock pooling, roller blading, cooking, baking, art… But we all know that the staff are hoping that the kids save up for Disneyland!

Take a look at the website here.

Food is not only a great way for people to bond, it is a great way to evolve an understanding for other people’s cultures and while there are obvious health benefits in learning to cook healthily with fresh ingredients, we wanted to turn eating into something a bit more fun and somewhat of an experience. Hence the World Food Charts.

Wednesday is World Food Day every week at Anderida. On a Wednesday the young people and carers take a look at their World Food Calendar to find out what icon hovers over the day to determine what they’ll be cooking that night; and if they are feeling really into the idea – what they might be wearing!

With dates dedicated to countries like Spain, Italy, France and China we have encouraged the young people to delve into some classic global cuisines. But we wanted to go a little further and encourage some real diversity; have the young people do some research to discover what other delights could be rustled up in the kitchen. This is why we have included countries like Mongolia, Indonesia and Jamaica.

Peppered (‘scuse the pun) throughout the year are other surprises such as “veggy day,” “fish & seafood day” & “house favourites,” to add even more variety and learning to the occasion.

Whilst we have a poster of suggestions (above), the young people have done plenty of their own research and come up with alot of their own suggestions. Needless to say the home made burgers on USA day go down a treat!

With so much training and refresher courses that the staff here at Anderida take part in, it was only a matter of time before we looked for a place of our own as opposed to training in rented spaces across the town. Fortunately, with the space that came with our brand new offices, the opportunity arose to develop our very own training and conference facility that we have been putting to good use throughout it’s development and are delighted to now be in a position to open the facility up to everyone else. In addition, if you have involvement in care, you may be interested in contacting us to take part in our own training.

• Easy accessible transport links
• Comfortably seats 40
• Projector and large screen
• Full use of kitchen and cloakroom facilities
• WiFi
• 42 inch HD TV and DVD player
• Free parking
• Laptop provided if necessary
• Flip chart
• Just £12-£15 per hour!

Call us on 01323 410655.

With various seating plans available we should be able to help you organise the ideal meeting, training or conference get-together:

To book, contact Anderida via the “Contact Us” page.