Our Space Play & Family Therapies CIC

This has been a year of growth. We have seen increased referrals from private clients, but mainly from Local Authorities and social services, including Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Coventry, East Cheshire and Gloucestershire. We have also seen growing numbers via Adoption Agencies and the use of ASGSF funding. We have found that we have become a key partner with Worcestershire and are often consulted on cases. As a result, we expanded our premises to include two more client rooms and increased office space. This has greatly increased our capacity to work with children and families. We have also increased the number of therapists working with us to 7 as well as the three directors who are therapists. To date staff at Our Space have worked with over 120 young people referred directly into our service and an additional 38 young people referred as part of our school outreach work. Our Therapists have worked with children and young adults in the centre and via outreach in schools. • 98% of clients show improvement in SDQ scores from intake to ending/ review. • All parents/ carers have reported positive improvements during review meetings and feedback • School feedback is positive – indicating a reduction in exclusions, increase in attendance and engagement We been successful in supporting a growing number of young people back into school, and where this has not been possible, supported them whilst out of education or contributing to EOTAS provision. Alongside therapeutic sessions, our therapists also attend meetings around the child with parents/ carers, schools, LA, social services and alternative provision, to support and advise on the next steps for a child journey. At the request of schools, we have begun to develop some short training packages hat can be delivered to school staff. Through raising awareness of the needs of children and how to support them, we hope to help school reduce the number of children they refer to us. We have sought specific training to enhance the provision of the therapies we provide. An ongoing concern is the need to balance costs. We are aware of the need to keep our charges at a level where parents/ carers can afford our services and we subsidise these. We believe that a carers financial background should not be a barrier to a child receiving our service. This however, means that we are restricted in what we can pay therapists and are aware that our employed therapists earn substantially below what they could expect to earn in say the NHS. Moving forward then, one of our aims is to seek grant funding to enable us to continue to provide care at an affordable cost, ideally fully subsidised, whilst at the same time paying out therapists a salary that reflects their work.