Growing Care Farming project update - July 2019

Growing Care Farming Update - July 2019

• Job opportunity
• Regional engagement in Yorkshire and Humberside
• Training
• Website and social media

'Growing Care Farming' is a wonderful opportunity to transform the scale of the care farming sector across England, creating more opportunities for both children and adults with a defined need, to benefit from health, social and specialist educational care services delivered on care farms.

We are in the planning and scoping stage of the Growing Care Farming project and have been beavering away developing resources and recruiting staff. We recently introduced you to two new members of the team, Katie and Pearl who are both based in Bristol. We now have a new role in the North of England which we are seeking to fill. Further details below.

We're also pleased to include details of our plans to commence delivery of the Regional Engagement and Training elements of the programme this September, along with information about how our website and social media channels will be developed over the coming months to highlight events and materials as they come online.

Job Opportunity

We are currently recruiting for a part-time Regional Support Officer (North) to join our expanding team.

The successful applicant will be supporting our programme of regional events across Yorkshire, the North West and the North East and will be working closely with a number of care farming facilitators (more about these later) across these areas to promote care farming, collate learning, act as a regional ambassador for care farming and canvas and raise awareness amongst all regional stakeholders.  You can find more details and how to apply on the Social Farms & Gardens website but don't hang about as the deadline is Monday 15th July at 9am. We'd be happy to chat through the role with anyone who would like more information so please feel free to call Debbie on 07706 182198 or email [email protected]

Regional Engagement in Yorkshire and Humberside

As we highlighted back in May, one of the key areas that GCF will be focussing on is a programme of regional engagement; enabling networks of care farmers and other stakeholders to provide mutual support, strategic growth and to develop links with health, social care and education referral organisations, to increase the number of care farming referrals.

The regional engagement part of the project runs from September 2019 until September 2022. We have decided to start our work in Yorkshire and Humberside where there is an existing active and engaged network of care farmers and also significant interest and support from commissioners and an active social prescribing scene.

From September we will be seeking expressions of interest from people with a background and expertise in care farming across Yorkshire and Humberside who would be interested in acting as 'Care Farming Facilitators'. We believe that the people who best understand the local picture are those that have a track record of delivering care farming services in their area, for a range of commissioners, within health, social care and education. These facilitators will have pre-existing relationships with commissioners on which to build and will have first-hand knowledge of the various referral routes currently being used and will be able to facilitate events in their localities to promote care farming and share learning.

There is funding available to cover time and expenses and we will share more details later in the summer. In the meantime, if you would like any more information please email [email protected]

There is also a 'Going Live' event planned in Yorkshire in November - more details in the next update.

Training

We have been excited to start working with Thrive to develop training resources ready to share with both existing and prospective care farmers this autumn. 

We've been working closely with a group of care farmers across all regions to ensure that what is developed is relevant and appropriate. There has been lots of spirited debate and discussion (we'd expect nothing less from people who are passionate about seeing care farming promoted and presented in the best way!). We are looking forward to further consultation and beta-testing before sharing these materials more widely. 

We are keen to have resources that will not only support existing care farmers to be the best they can be and highlight up to date best practice, but also build more capacity in the sector by encouraging new care farmers to start up with good quality support and guidance.

Over the summer, the SF&G and Thrive team will be visiting a range of care farms to film and gather materials. We look forward to sharing the results of all this work later in the year.

Website and Social Media

We now have a dedicated web page for Growing Care Farming on the Social Farms & Gardens website. 

This will be developed over the coming months to highlight events and materials as they come online and we will keep you updated when things are posted.

The sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that our Twitter handle has also recently changed to @GrowCareFarming so for all the keen tweeters, we'd be grateful if you could tag us on this handle now.  We will no longer be using the old Facebook page and will be sharing up to the minute information about care farming only on Twitter for the time being, so please make sure you follow us!