May 2017
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Dear Supporter
Summer beckons and hopefully it might warm
up soon! We have a busy time ahead…...
Flourishing Families - Coming Soon!
We have changed the name from Growing
Points Plus so now it says what it does on
the tin…..
as Clinical Support Workers. The ultimate aim
for some is to get in to nursing.
Congratulations to our delighted customers and
Guardians and to our partner agencies who
helped make this happen.
We are now working in Sheffield on a similar
scheme and there are plans to roll it out to other
cities.
Here is what one of our customers had to say…
click here to view youtube video
Growing Points Associates
We are starting this in September in Leeds. Our
partners City of Sanctuary and Retas are
identifying low income families who want to lift
themselves out of poverty. We will facilitate
monthly meetings where they identify their life
goals and develop a plan to achieve them. We
give them access to choice connections and
capital which is all they need to fly. A Growing
Points Associate (a former customer) will
support them by arranging meetings and getting
them to upload data on their achievements. We
incentivised their activities by giving them a
small monthly stipend to cover expenses for
example a new laptop.
There is good evidence that this self help
approach works. Consistently, average incomes
increase by more than 20% within two years of
enrolment. Household savings go up, debt goes
down and children do better at school. (FII
Newsletter November 2015)
Hidden Talents
This programme goes from strength to strength.
We have recently worked with Leeds Teaching
Hospitals on a second recruitment round. This
time we have been equally successful and have
got 5 people on to the apprenticeship scheme
and 3 more people have been recruited directly
We have nominated some of the “graduates” of
Growing Points to Associate positions and we
hope they will work with us in the future.
Abyiot is one such Associate and has recently
opened a restaurant called Oromiyaa in Bolton.
Dick, pictured above with Abyiot on the
right, is Abyiot’s Guardian and says:
“Abyiot's restaurant will be a great hit it has good food, good atmosphere and a
varied menu.“
We all wish Oromiyaa Restaurant
good Luck!
May 2017
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Our national offer to Refugees
Well done Sufyan – what's more he has offered
support to other aspiring customers!
Our offer now comprises three strands, Growing
Points Hidden Talents and Flourishing Families.
We have now started rolling our national offer
out to other cities following our success in Leeds
and Sheffield. We recently travelled to Hull the
City of Culture 2017 and held a partnership
event there. The primary purpose was to
explain what we did and see what sort of
support there was for our plans. The result was
amazing and we had lots of offers of help from
Hull. Our thanks to Open Doors for hosting the
event!
Our Guardians…
Leicester Manchester and Liverpool have all
expressed a wish to become involved and we
are looking forward to working with them too!
Why we do this!
Sufyan was introduced to us by Social Action for
Health and was paired up with our Guardian
Dick Stockford. Sufyan has a lifelong ambition to
be a doctor and his application for medical
school had been rejected several times. Dick
used his great professional networks and
introduced Sufyan to people in the NHS who
understood the system well and gave Sufyan
valuable advice including looking at his personal
statement and practice interviews. We are
delighted to announce that Sufyan has now
been offered a place at Bart’s this autumn to
study medicine. His ambition and determination
are inspiring and we are so pleased to have
been able to support him in achieving.
… are a great bunch and we had an away day
kindly hosted by the Health Foundation in
London. We were able to celebrate our
customers' achievements and remind ourselves
what Growing Points does so well - ambition
and action!
We are always on the look out for caring and
compassionate volunteers who can offer our
customers connections.
And finally…
Dick is doing a sponsored walk in September
from Hull to Liverpool taking in Leeds Sheffield
and Manchester. We will be doing some crowd
funding and hope you will support us and spread
the word.
Any enquiries please contact:
[email protected]
or
[email protected]