Welcome to the June update from Growing Care Farming 

Greetings from the Growing Care Farming team

On day 85 since lockdown restrictions came into force, we hope that you are keeping safe and as upbeat as possible. As a team we are keeping in regular contact via our online meeting software and we are having weekly catch ups with wider SF&G colleagues across the UK which helps keep us connected. As Malachy (the Social Farmer using physical distancing) from Northern Ireland pointed out on one of our online care farming meetings, it's so important to stay socially connected even if we need to be physically distanced.

With further loosening of restrictions announced this week, many care farms, city farms and green care providers have started to get in contact with us about reopening and resuming activities.  With responsibilities for looking after staff, volunteers and the people they support, questions about regulations, risk management and health and safety have been high on everyone's mind. We've been asked repeatedly for advice on how reopening can happen in a safe and responsible way. Our GCF team have been working with our fanstastic, and highly experienced, Code Assessors to turn their minds to support you with this and are busy working on checklists and information which may be of assistance. We are also covering this in our webinar next month  - more details below.  In the meantime, NCVO continues to produce some helpful guidance and the Small Charities Coaltion has a full suite of online webinars covering a range of subjects. 

Upcoming Webinars and Online care farming network meetings

The recordings of webinars which we have run over the last month on Creative Engagement & Social Media and also IT Security are available here and also on our YouTube channel (along with a range of other videos and links). If you have a YouTube channel and would like it to be linked to ours, please let Katie know by emailing [email protected]

Our next themed webinar will take place on Tuesday 14th July between 2.00pm and 3.00pm. It will cover reducing risks and reopening your care farm.  It will also highlight a new checklist being developed by the GCF team and assessors to enable care farms to confidently review their working practices and put measures in place to reduce risks before re-opening.

The next Online Care Farming Network meeting is on Wednesday June 24th at 10.30am.  These online meetings are a less formal opportunity for care farmers, prospective care farmers and the GCF team to support each other and to share learning and ideas and are also an opportunity to discuss subjects highlighted in the GCF Themed webinars in more detail.  Do join us if you'd like to pick up on some points about reopening that we can feed into the content for the webinar in July.  You can participate as much or as little as you like. We've found it's nice to have the cameras on and see friendly faces, but if you'd like to just phone in and listen to the chat that is fine too.

Links to further information on both of these and details of how to book can be found here. We are aware that there are occasional glitches with emails with links for online events ending up in spam/junk folders.  If you don't receive links to join the online events please get in touch so we can check if there's a problem.

Our colleagues in Social Farms & Gardens have also run webinars based around funding and budgets to support the wider green care and gardening sector during this time.  With subjects ranging from budgeting and cashflow to adapting your working practices, they are now available on the website and are well worth a look.  

Training

We are delighted to announce that the online training, developed with our partners Thrive, is now available and ready to access. 

• Principles of Care Farming covers the origins of care farming, where it fits within green care, working with service users, referrals and more about how care farming works. It is a simple, easy access resource on our webpages that gives a useful overview and background to the subject.
   
• Starting with Care Farming is designed for those interested in setting up a care farm - it will give you an introduction into care farming, what you might need to consider when setting up, and some guidance on how to get into care farming. This is the first course in the online programme of training delivered as part of the Growing Care Farming Project by Thrive, and follows on from Principles of Care Farming (above). if you have not yet visited this site, we recommend doing this prior to enrolling on this course. 
   
• Developing Good Practice in Care Farming will give you a more detailed look at care farming, and developing good practice on your farm, whether you are new to care farming, or whether you have already set up your farming practice.

All these courses are free to access and Thrive are currently working on developing the face-to-face training (which weas piloted earlier this year) into a blended learning package to enable remote access. We are also developing the Introduction to the Code information  and we will let you know when it's 'live'. We look forward to receiving feedback on these courses and are very grateful to both Thrive and the many care farmers consulted for their input and time during development.
 

Other News

We are really pleased to see how much focus there is on the role that nature can help in the nation's recovery from COVID-19.  From nature organisations such as Natural England, the RSPB and the Green Alliance to articles in medical journals, much has been written about the importance that nature has played in how people have coped during lockdown and how it will support people going forward. We will be working hard at advocating on your behalf, promoting the role that care farms can also have in this 'green recovery' and will continue to highlight the valuable work that you do in supporting vulnerable people.

Please let us know if your work has been featured during this period and also if you come across research or articles that may be of interest to us about how our sector can be part of this. We try to keep abreast of much of what is out there, but the internet is a big place!

Stay safe everyone and keep in touch with us.  We love to hear from you!
 

You can send general enquiries to [email protected] or you can contact Debbie and Rachel on [email protected]