At Orchard Hill College we try to engage the local community and look for work placements within the Learners local area.
We will travel with the learner and support them during their work placement until they are prepared to be more independent. We aim for as many of our learners as possible to have some form of voluntary or paid employment during or after their time with us.
Welcome to a new academic year. During the past 7 years, we have gradually increased the number of places for learners. We have also developed more centres so that we can be as close as possible to local communities. We are working with Local Authorities to continue to make more places available closer to home and to increase the range of options available locally after College. Our new centre in Southwark will open in early 2012. We will be able to update you with more details in the Spring term newsletter. We have also set up a new class at the Leonard Cheshire centre in Southwark, which will give our learners a chance to use their fantastic media resources. The BedZED centre in Hackbridge has been altered over the summer so that we have one extra classroom there now. This is so that we can offer more places.
Thank you so much for taking the time to return our feedback surveys. It is enormously helpful to hear everyone’s views. Lots of your feedback relates to wanting more provision and longer time at College. We continue to work closely with funding agencies but, of course, statutory resources are restricted. So, we have launched our new leisure courses which take place in holiday periods and also in 10 week term-time blocks to give an option to buy into courses when statutory funded places are not available.
We are always looking for additional funding for equipment, so if you have any sponsorship contacts, please let me know or contact John Holmes, Friends of Orchard Hill College on 0208 668 2619. It all helps to improve the facilities for our learners and we are very grateful for all help large or small!
Dr Caroline Allen OBE, Principal
