September can be a chance to refocus after the summer, and we've certainly got plenty coming up for you this autumn. 

Training courses are up and running covering Alternative Provision, mental health, learning disability and ASD as well as accredited CEVAS farmer training.

Monthly network meetings are back too - your opportunity to drop in and chat with others in the care farming and green care sector across the UK.

Our first autumn webinar on ‘Maximising income for green care sites’ was full of interesting tips and suggestions and will be available for you to watch on our YouTube channel soon.

Up next on the 12th October is our free webinar about Green Social Prescribing. We'll be covering what it means and how you can get involved. We hope you can join us! 

As you know, the end of 2020 will see the winding up of the delivery side of Growing Care Farming, although the discounted training will continue until March 2022.

Covid has hit Government budgets hard and, unfortunately, has led to a significantly shortened project life for us. Rest assured though, that Social Farms & Gardens are committed to continuing support for our sector via the Code of Practice and ongoing training and webinars, so make sure you continue to keep an eye on social media and the website for upcoming events and news.

From next month we will be working with the University of Essex and moving into our evaluation phase, which will give us an interesting period of reflection. If you wish to be involved and would be happy to speak to researchers about any impacts you feel we might have had on the care farming sector over the last couple of years, we would love to hear from you. 

If you haven’t already, take a look at the research section on our care farming knowledge base. We’ve gathered and collated lots of research relevant to our sector, and put it in one handy place.

With sections on nature and health, economic benefits and care farming around the world there’s lots of interesting information!

We carried out our most recent Code of Practice Q&A online session recently with the help of Keily Elvin of Elm Tree Farm.

These sessions are for anyone who has started the care farming Code of Practice application process. Ask questions and get help with completing your application form. 

The date of the next session is to be confirmed but please check back on our website for further information.