News
We are looking for volunteers for our Young Achievers programme, working directly with children and young people with Down Syndrome.
Young Achievers runs weekly on a Saturday afternoon, during term time only. You don’t need to be there every week - just let us know what works for you.
No experience required - just enthusiasm and enjoyment from working with children.
Training and support will be given. Volunteers need to be 16 or over.
This grant will help to fund the DS Achieve Resources into Homes service until September 2024.
Our Resources into Homes service is for families with early years children with Down Syndrome who are not yet attending an education setting. It involves direct training to parents from a specialist teacher on how to use a specialist resource to enable their child to achieve maximum progression with their learning at this early stage. The specialist teacher will identify the next step in learning for the individual child and advise on which resource is most appropriate to help the child move forward with their development.
Tesco has introduced a £5m grant programme, in partnership with Groundwork UK, to give children across the UK a stronger start in life.
We’re so pleased that we can continue to empower parents and help children with Down Syndrome fulfil their potential via Resources into Homes. Thank you Tesco Stronger Starts!
At DS Achieve, we would like to say a MASSIVE THANK YOU to Mike and Steph Whateley for their fantastic fundraising by hosting a tea and cake afternoon in their garden.
We have received an incredible £450 donation into our account, of which every penny will go towards our work with families and professionals to enable children and young people with Down Syndrome to fulfil their potential.
We are extremely grateful, thank you!
We are delighted to introduce Fiona as the new day-to-day manager of DS Achieve. Fiona will be responsible for the management of the Charity day-to-day operations, including leading our team and delivery of our services.
To better meet the demand of our service users and partners, Fiona's core working hours will be 10am-2pm Monday to Friday. This means DS Achieve will now be ‘open’ every day during term time. Fiona will be the main contact point for DS Achieve going forward and will report into Michelle Bolton, Head of Operations.
In addition, Michelle’s role as Head of Operations has now changed to mean she will be more ‘behind the scenes’ going forward (with substantially reduced hours), overseeing Charity Operations and supporting Fiona to deliver DS Achieve’s strategy.
The coming weeks will be spent on handover from Michelle to Fiona, and Fiona getting up to speed on ‘all things DS Achieve’ We very much look forward to introducing her to everyone!
We hope everyone had a wonderful summer and that things go smoothly for those with children starting new schools or going back to school this week. Best of luck to everyone!
A new term at school means a new term for DS Achieve activities and services:
GROUPS for children:
Little Achievers starts back on 14th September: Little Achievers - AUTUMN '23 Tickets, Thu 14 Sep 2023 at 10:00 | Eventbrite
Young Achievers starts back on Saturday 16th September: Young Achievers - Social Skills group - AUTUMN '23 Tickets, Sat 16 Sep 2023 at 14:30 | Eventbrite
TRAINING:
Our EHCP workshop - What to do when things don’t go to plan (Part 2) is on Friday 29th September
Our schools training starts on Monday 9th October with our three part course Supporting Pupils with Down Syndrome in Education for education professionals
SIBS are running their Supporting Siblings of Children with SEND course for us on Friday 20th October
You can book any of the training courses by visiting out EVENTS page.
We are also excited to announce that our first Hertfordshire Libraries volunteer placement (for young people aged 16-25 with Down Syndrome) is underway, with many more planned to take place this academic year.
And don’t forget our Resources into Schools and Resources into Homes services which are ongoing. Make your application at any time.
If you would like any more information on any of the services DS Achieve offers, please get in touch! We would love to hear from you: info@dsachieve.org / 07824 467471.
As we approach the end of this academic year, there are some important DS Achieve updates that we would like to share with you.
As a charity, DS Achieve has grown considerably in the last two years and so we have needed to review our people structure to ensure we are continuing to meet the needs of the families and professionals we work with and to deliver the wide ranges of services we now offer.
As a result, you will see the following changes in our DS Achieve team:
- In September, we are introducing a new role - Operations Manager - which will be Monday to Friday. As a charity, this means we will be 'open' and can be contacted five days a week, instead of our current three days a week, to better meet the customer service needs of those we work with. The Operations Manager will be responsible for delivery of DS Achieve services on a day-to-day basis and will be the main contact point consistently across the week.
- The role of Head of Operations will change. At her request, Michelle Bolton’s hours will reduce substantially from September and she will be more 'behind the scenes', while maintaining overall responsibility for Charity Operations.
- The role of Operations Coordinator (two days per week) will no longer be required and so Bhavika Bhurtun will leave DS Achieve at the end of this term, on Tuesday 18th July. Bhav has been a fantastic member of our team and a pleasure to work with. She will certainly be missed but she remains a firm part of the DS Achieve community and we wish her the very best for her future.
We are also sad to say goodbye to Jo Hansler who has been providing maternity leave cover in the role of Young Achievers Group Leader, while Avril has been away. Jo has done a fantastic job in designing the curriculum and delivering the Young Achievers sessions and we wish her the very best for her future.
We look forward to welcoming Avril Prosser back from her maternity leave in September to resume her role as Young Achievers Group Leader - we are certain the children and young people will give her the warmest of welcomes.
If anyone has any questions about these changes, please contact Michelle Bolton, Head of Operations, on info@dsachieve.org.
When Neil at Mix92.6 got in touch to ask if we would be interested in doing a radio interview for their Parents Show, we were a bit nervous to say the least! BUT… we also recognised what a great opportunity it would be to share what we do for families with children or young people with DS and for the professionals working with them, and how people can get in touch. And that’s what it’s all about!
So our Head of Operations, Michelle, met with Neil to pre-record the discussion, which aired on The Parents Show on 22nd June.
A huge WELL DONE to Charlotte, our Young Achievers Support Worker, on completing the St Albans Half Marathon on Sunday!
We are both incredibly impressed by all her hard work in training and on the day, especially in the intense sunshine, and grateful for her fundraising for us and for Sosa St Albans.
Thank you so much, Charlotte!
If you haven't donated and would still like to, the link is:
Eve Wainwright has joined DS Achieve this month as our new Little Achievers Support Worker, working alongside the team to deliver our weekly Early Years programme for 0-5 year olds.
Eve is a qualified and experienced teacher (especially with Early Years), who has taken some time out from her teaching career in the last few years to look after her three young children.
She is passionate about working with children and helping them achieve their potential, and is excited about her new role with DS Achieve.
We are already one third of the way through 2023 and we thought it is time for a governance update.
The Trustees have continued to work behind the scenes overseeing service delivery, monitoring compliance with our legal duties, manging risk, reviewing our policies and of course ensuring we have the financial resources needed and are spending them in the best interests of our service users. We have introduced some key performance indicators to help us monitor our impact and have started to collect some additional diversity data to ensure that we are meeting our duties to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion within the charity.
We have six Trustees including our newest appointment, Huw, who is taking over the treasurer role from Rachel. Rachel has supported the Board with robust financial monitoring and reporting over the past 5 years and we are grateful for her ongoing support and excellent handover to Huw.
Following some successful fundraising at the end of 2022 and early 2023 we have set a balanced budget for 2023 which supports the ongoing delivery of our existing services and provides some scope for expansion. At our team Away Day last September we heard the views and ideas of our employee and volunteer team and service users which encouraged us to look for continual improvement in our service offer and incremental additions to it.
Our ongoing review and development of our strategy has resulted in us amending our constitution, with Charity Commission approval, to extend the age range of the young people with Down Syndrome we can support, up to age 25. This aligns with our partnership with Hertfordshire Libraries and gives us scope for other future services as our young people get older.
Recent new services have included our EHCP Support service and Resources into Homes and we hope that these will further enable and empower parents to secure and provide the best possible support for their children.
The Trustees continue to look further ahead into 2024 and beyond to ensure we remain financially viable for the years to come and further fundraising and grant applications are an embedded part of our planning. We are also conscious that rising costs affect those using our services and we remain committed to keeping costs low and also ensuring free access to all of our services for those where cost is a barrier to them participating.
As ever we would love to hear from you if you have any questions, comments or feedback on any of our services. Please do message us or email us at info@dsachieve.org
