This week the blog focuses on our young people who are part of our Bridging the Gap (BtG) and Future Finders pathways. Usually I don’t talk about the Future Finders students in this blog but I thought it would be lovely for our families to see the progression that our young people make in their time with us.

These pathways are designed as an internship to offer an insight into life in the working world. Many of the students move on to our BtG programme when they are in Year 13. Some have been on the pre internship pathway and for others they move from Activ8, Lumenus or Digit4ll as they feel that they want to gain an insight into work. It’s great to see our students in action at BtG and how independent they become. I wrote about my visit to the BtG students at the Royal Oldham Hospital in an earlier blog this year. Many of our BtG students move on to our Future Finders pathway and this work ethic continues.

I am going to pass it over to our job coaches Amanda Bell and Anne-Marie to tell you all about what our students have been up during lockdown, starting with Amanda..

Hi everyone! I hope you’re all keeping well and looking after each other. The students from BtG at the hospital have been busy over the last few weeks preparing work for their record of achievement files, writing personal statements, making things at home with family members and doing some art work.
We have all been in regular contact by phone, emails and our iPads enabling us to complete work and just have general chats with each other sharing our experiences. We have had laughs and tears but I am so proud of them and all their achievements under the circumstances.

This week we are excited to share what we have been doing with you all! Patrick has been busy completing work for his Record of Achievement file, organising football quizzes for Mahdlo, baking and making bird houses with his dad and brother Joseph! I was lucky enough to receive a bird house off them for my garden 🙂

Some students chose a picture to colour from our art work booklet to help them relax and switch off from everything that’s going on around them. Look what a fantastic job they have done!

Nathan has been doing some drawing at home and has enjoyed participating in quizzes with the youth council and Mahdlo where Patrick put a football quiz together for everyone.

Nathan has also been putting his cooking skills to test in a cook-off with one of the youth workers from the youth council. He made Spaghetti Bolognese and said it was delicious!

Cherrie has been working on her personal statement, helping out at home painting the garden fence and jet washing, and colouring art pictures..

Cherrie and Dylan have put a lot of work into making their second work placement documents..

Our job coach Anne-Marie now has an update for us on what our Future Finders students have been busy with..

I normally write my weekly blogs in my office, where I tell you about the wonderful achievements that our Future Finders Students have done. I would have been talking about how Matthew would have been working hard at the Clean Plate Kitchen improving his baking skills, Jason and the amazing job he would have been doing at the Guinness Partnership building on his skills of handling money, Fahad supporting the public at the Library with their ICT requests, Lewis continuing to impress as a TA with the ICT groups at New Bridge MAT, Liam working hard at The Atrium Café serving customers or Joshua getting know more about his role at David Lloyd continuing to build his confidence working with the customers and helping out in the kitchen…….

Instead, I am sat in my kitchen writing this and although we haven’t been able to be in college or access our placements, I am still able to tell you about the wonderful things that our Future Finders students have been up to and it has been great to hear about them!

Either myself or Maria have been in contact with your parents, checking in, keeping you updated with what’s going on, helping with work that has been set or sometimes just listening to your stories of what you have been up to since we had to close….Things from becoming experts on games consoles, to ‘meeting up’ virtually with friends from both Medtia and other groups you go to, walking the dog, getting a bike and getting fit and healthy, to the excitement of getting a delivery slot for your food shopping and cutting your own hair just like our very own Lewis!!

Even though we aren’t in college, you have still been sent Maths work from Mr Holland and English work from Mrs Hartley and I have still been sending and receiving work around Employability.

Our Future Finders have still been looking for and applying for jobs – which is amazing! So we have been looking at Interview Skills, just in case..

We even had a couple of you enter the DT Competition – here is Matthew’s entry!

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We have also been looking at Healthy Lifestyles – things that we can do to keep both our bodies and minds fit and healthy! The one thing that I have taken away from all the work that you have sent me is that in a world full of craziness, do something that makes you realise that you can escape from it all and do something that makes you feel good, even if it’s for a little while……..My escape for this week is that my youngest has started to ride his bike with no stabilisers!!

Stay safe and take care!!!! Hope to see you all soon!!

I’m very excited to say that the judging is now complete and Mr Bright is delighted to announce the winners of our DT competition ‘We Can Make It’..

The entries were fantastic and choosing the winners was very difficult – we had some incredible animations and videos entered from schools and colleges across the New Bridge Group to celebrate our NHS.

A lot of time and effort went into creating the animations and we’d like to thank each and every young person who took part in the competition.

In the end we had to choose a winner. Well, it’s joint winners actually:

Joint 1st place:
Matthew from Medtia and Josh from the Learning Centre

Runner-up:
Kai from Medtia

We will post the winning vouchers next week. Once again, well done to everyone for taking part!!

Thank you to our pre intern student Josie who has sent us all a lovely message..

On a final note, can I thank all our families for their continued support during such a difficult time. You have all had Graham’s letter about our new schooling consultation and many of you have kindly completed the survey which will support the MAT in making the next steps. We will be sending out an update on the consultation and next steps before the end of next week.

Can I also thank the wonderful TEAM at Medtia for their continued hard work and support. Not only to the families but to each other and myself.

I hope that you all try and have a lovely half term and weekend. Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating this weekend.

Jaina and the Team

You can view our previous blog entries here

News from the Learning Centre and New Bridge School can be found here

You can also contact the Oldham Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) team directly on 0161 770 7777 and the Tameside team on 0161 342 4101.