Treloars Livery Day

As most liverymen will know one of the important charities that the Company supports is Treloars which supports and educates physically and intellectually challenged young people through from nursery to college.

On September 27 September the college opened its doors to a number of supporting livery companies and as the Company link I supported Senior Warden Anthony and Junior Warden Andrew on their initiation to this remarkable institution.

After coffee and an introduction from Jon Colville, Director of Fundraising, we were conducted to observe dieticians at work in the treatment room with a new body mass index machine now used routinely to monitor the health of students.

One of the challenges facing staff is in supporting students in the transition from college to work and our next destination was the 6th form class room where we met a number of inspirational students and staff.

Our final, formal, insight was to inspect the College’s brand new coach. Built at a cost of £285,000 it is purpose-built to accommodate 11 wheelchairs plus seating for staff. It will allow more students to travel safely together to a wide range of events.

A special treat was meeting the two staff members who are using our major donation to study the special demands of social, emotional and mental health in context with a view to rolling out a programme internally to other staff. (As a reminder to members, we have tried to apply our limited resources with Treloars to projects that have a knock-on effect, thus getting a very big bang per buck.)

The staff in question are Caroline Casula, speech and language therapist, and Zoe Haddock, occupational therapist. We hope to see more of them in the future and wish them well with their studies.

Vic Flintham

Assistant