News

Rathbone Youth Club have achieved the London Youth Gold Quality Mark.

This is a great achievement as it recognises the excellent standard of youth work delivered by our youth service. Achieving Gold is a badge of excellence for youth organisations that are committed to continuous improvement through the involvement of young people in their organisational development.

gold-award We received some really great feedback from the assessor who commented that they “were impressed by how many opportunities you offer young people to develop their skills!” and “were particularly impressed by how dedicated you are as an organisation to Equality and Diversity and this was shown through numerous examples!”

We are very proud to say that young people are at the heart of all that we do and we thoroughly believe that all young people should be able to access quality youth provisions that enable them to reach their individual potential and lead fulfilling lives.

To celebrate National Youth Work Week (5^th – 9^th November 2018) the mayor’s office held an event in London’s Living Room at the top of City Hall. Hosted by Sian Berry, London Assembly member, the night was a celebration of London’s youth workers. The picture shows our Youth Service Manager Charline King addressing the hall with a speech about what inspired her to become a youth worker and why we need youth workers more now than ever. You can read the full speech here: https://londonyouth.org/why-we-need-youth-workers-now-more-than-ever/

Rathbone Youth Club were very proud to have two of our young people invited to attend the City Bridge Trust Chairman’s Dinner on 13^th November 2018 at The Old Bailey in central London.

They are both members of Dare London, the youth advisory board at London Youth.

They have both been involved with City Leaders, London Youth’s youth action programme which is funded by City Bridge Trust.

“Wow, this event was like a dream come true! I can’t believe I got to wear such a beautiful dress, it made me feel beautiful and special! I can’t thank my youth worker and the London Youth staff enough for believing in me and allowing me to have the opportunity to come to such an important and iconic place like The Old Bailey, even my mum was proud! I was sat on a table with so many important people but what was amazing was they made me feel just as important. I was shy but I still had an amazing time. Being a part of Rathbone Youth Club, you (young people) get to try so many new things and the staff encourage you to do things outside of your comfort zone like going to this event! My mum says she can’t believe how confident I am now and how much I have learnt.”

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“This was such an amazing opportunity, I met people that I could never have dreamt I would meet. Before I went I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to hold a proper conversation with all the ‘posh people’ in the room but staff from London Youth helped me to rehearse and prepare some conversation points and then Charline and Andrew from Rathbone Youth Club reassured me that I would be great before I left the youth club so I just tried to focus on the positive things. Once I got to the event I was sat next to a lovely lady called Sandra who made me feel really comfortable. I was able to tell her all about Rathbone Youth Club and she was really impressed by all the great stuff that we get to do. Being a member of Rathbone’s Youth Management Team has helped me to access so many amazing opportunities but this has to be one of the best!”

Click to read the report

Rathbone’s Outreach service received its CQC Inspection report today! It’s ‘GOOD’!

Congratulations to all of the staff who work in the service, either in the community or in the service’s two supported living projects. This report is a great reflection of the professionalism, commitment and dedication that all of our staff bring to their work.

A big thank you must also go to the integrated disabilities social work team and the commissioners at Lambeth Council, who have worked in partnership with Rathbone to develop and restructure our services during 2017-2018.

And last, but by no means least, a massive thank you to all of the fantastic people who use our service, their parents, carers and families. They have helped us in so many ways, to develop and provide new and innovative solutions to problems, to learn from our mistakes and to work alongside us to ensure that we remain a good, Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, and Well-Led Service.

Well done all! – Jamie Sawyer, Head of Service

Our Chief Executive Andrew Preston said: “I am delighted with the report. I urge you to read it – it’s a great reflection on our staff and how the high standard of their work helps us to deliver on our values of Quality, Trusted, Creative & Inclusive. Support work is hard work, there is no doubt about it. My sincere thanks go to the staff teams and their managers in all of our CQC regulated projects.”

We had a busy weekend at the 44^th Lambeth Country Show. It was scorching hot all weekend which drew a large crowd to the park. Some of our visitors made use of our Instagram frame, others stopped by to hear about our staff vacancies, volunteer vacancies and our Youth club Summer Programme.

Thanks to all the staff and volunteers who bravely manned the

stall in the heat. #LoveRathbone

Have you thought about getting involved with a local, voluntary sector organisation?
Can you spare one evening a month?
We are specifically looking for individuals with a background in health & social care and are particularly keen to hear from friends or family of people with learning disabilities or Autism.

Find out more here

A year of change!

Recent times have been very busy and full of change for the team at Rathbone. As part of a major restructuring of our Outreach Service, we have bid a fond farewell to some old faces and their posts. Our Business Manager Pippa retired in December, her function being replaced by Accountability EU, a specialist Voluntary Sector financial management service. Our Team Administrator Jacek headed off to pastures new (well, training to be a Southern rail driver!) and his full time Admin function has been happily shouldered by our hard working Team Managers.

As part of our new structure, we have been extremely happy to welcome The award winning Without Walls team from Lambeth into the service, Without Walls are a specialist complex/challenging behaviour team, whose aim is to support people to remain in their own homes and community, by developing positive behaviour support plans and working to reduce and manage behaviours that less specialist services struggle to cope with.

We have also opened a Drop-in Service, based at the Old Library in West Norwood, which is aimed at providing a flexible, responsive service to people with fluctuating needs, as well as providing group activities and IT resources to enable people to manage their support needs in either 1:1, or group activities.

Last but not least, following our pilot scheme in partnership with the Timewise Foundation we are in the process of reorganising our community based support workers into north Lambeth and South Lambeth focused teams. This is to facilitate both smaller teams of workers supporting people, and to improve efficiencies in terms of more regular/smaller team meetings and a decrease in travel time required.

Overall it has been a difficult and challenging process, but we have enjoyed both a high level of support from the fantastic staff at Lambeth Social Services (both Social Work and Commissioning colleagues) and a huge amount of goodwill and support from the most important people of all, those we exist to provide services to.

Jamie Sawyer, Head of Support Services

In recent months Rathbone’s Youth Club has been very fortunate to have a local parent that is as passionate about young people as we are. She has been working tirelessly on behalf of the young people, encouraging local community shops and businesses to donate goods, funds and time to supporting the delivery of our youth services. Pauline, in partnership with Club members and our Youth Management Team have successfully collected over £325 worth of donations towards for Club programmes!

The young people and staff are so grateful for all the time and effort that Pauline gives us to help improve the outcomes for local young people. Youth Club members and staff showed their appreciation on 5^th April by surprising her with a bunch of flowers and a ‘thank you’ card!

She is an amazing example of a Community Champion, and we are delighted to have her in our community!

All the young people at Rathbone Youth Club would like to say a massive ‘thank you’ To the local community members in West Norwood for all their support.

It’s not often that local businesses understand the needs of the community and what makes a community a positive and fun environment for young people. So we would like to give a BIG shout out from all the young people at Rathbone Youth Club to our local West Norwood shops: Sorrento’s, Tesco, Subway, Pizza Hut, Iceland and Floral Hall! Each of these shops have helped us put on events and activities at our local youth club for disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in the last few months.

We would especially like to give one particular person that is always willing to go the extra mile a huge thank you as even at short notice he has never turned us away even at short notice and that is the store manager Jay at Iceland.

Without the support of our local community shops we wouldn’t be able to have as many fun and engaging youth session at our club!

Support Worker Vacancies
£ 21,216 salary, plus sleep-in payments

FT Contract: 40 hrs per week
PT Contracts (Min 16 hrs per week) with potential to fit around caring responsibilities
Rathbone is a London Living Wage employer.

Are you caring, calm, empathic, resourceful and organised?
Do you have an understanding of the needs of people with learning disabilities?
Attitude is as important as skills and experience, but you need to show some relevant experience

Rathbone is a well-established charity in Lambeth, widely recognised for its excellent quality of support for adults with learning disabilities which often also includes supporting those with autism, mental health issues and complex case histories, physical disabilities, challenging or offending bevaviour and recurring problems with debt and vulnerability.

In return we will provide:

Job satisfaction: helping vulnerable adults to live fulfilling lives.
A range of specialist training both during induction and throughout your career with Rathbone.
Paid travel time and travel expenses reimbursed.
A supportive team of experienced support workers and managers who will provide advice and help you to develop your skills
A friendly, open and collaborative place to work, where every member of staff is valued and a high quality of support for service users is fundamental.
A learning culture, where every employee is encouraged to speak up and participate in the ongoing development of the service.

If you are interested in applying, or would like more information about the post, please email an up to date CV to jobs@rathbonesociety.org.uk.

We are GOLD!

Inspiring Words

A Big Night Out

We Are Good (again!)

We were at the Lambeth Country Show 2018

We need more Trustees!

Evolution & Adaptation

Super Parent

Thank you West Norwood!

Support Worker Posts Available