Our Impact

On this page we'll try to keep up to date information about our current work and impacts! Please read on for more details about the kind of work that we do and what actually happens at The Haven.

Our youth and family work is developing well, and we are connecting with more schools and community groups.

In September 2024 we recruited a full time Community Youth Leader to meet the increased demands for youth support locally. It took us a while to recruit the right person, but we are very pleased with the result. Jacob is perfect for the role and brings a wealth of experience and enthusiasm.

Through our new Youth Worker, we are continuing to create and build connections in our community with schools (Secondary and Primary) and other institutions working with young people.

We are developing our church community and our church-based children and young people initiatives (Holiday Clubs / Breakfast Clubs / Homework Clubs).

Once needs have been fully established, our plan is to deliver credible, evidence-based and approved workshops/clubs to classes and groups of young people - specifically designed to increase wellbeing, resilience and fundamental mental health self-care.

We are still in the process of researching and establishing needs, but we have run a number of smaller youth groups and workshops that have been a success.

Some of what we intend to do and have been doing:

1) Introduce mental health awareness and resilience teaching for self-care to school years 4, 5 and 6. Over this period we have seen an overall improvement in resilience and self-care with youth reporting that they are feeling better after 3-4 weeks of attendance.

2) Provide teaching on good relationships and what healthy relationships/friendships look like to school years 4 to 11. Over this period, we have seen an overall improvement in social connections with youth reporting improved relationships. Our case study for this period, Elliot (which we detail below), demonstrates this impact to date.

3) Work with groups and individuals from school years 4 to 11 on self-esteem. We are working towards 80% improvement in this area. We have one older youth aged 18 years who was a participant and is now volunteering with the groups. His confidence has increased significantly since December.

Our target was to impact 250 youth in year one and increase this to 500 in year two of our current project phase. To date we have reached 35 children through our Friday Night group activities since November 2024 (as of early 2025). We have reached 410 children through our work with schools. We also participated in a combined youth event "445 Service" at the end of January 2025. We are very pleased with the progress to date and we are currently seeing a snowball effect. For example, we have gone from one to four assemblies regularly attended and from one to four schools working directly with us.

We work with families in our Nursery (Treasure Box) and in our local community to support them with wellbeing. We run a family support group and have a drop-in service for families.

The nursery has 30 families using our services, providing education and childcare for children between the ages of 2 and 5 years old.

We have a high level of children with English as an Additional Language - usually 25-30% - as well as children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, cared-for children and those involved with Children’s Services on Early Help or Child Protection Plans. Some of these children are showing developmental delay due to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES).

The staff all have Early Years Qualifications and have had further training in wider areas of care e.g. Makaton Signing, Early Trauma, Co/Self-Regulation and Emotion Coaching.

We arrange termly Stay and Play sessions, where parents/carers are encouraged to come into the session to see what the children do during their time at nursery and join in activities on offer. It provides a chance for staff to explain the curriculum and how we support the children’s overall progress and development socially, emotionally, physically and cognitively.

Parents and carers see the staff model play as well as interactions which help enhance language skills. This also gives them an opportunity in a relaxed atmosphere to share any concerns about their child or wider family issues, allowing us to signpost families to other groups in the church who may offer support or to outside agencies.

We also invite parents to join in with our Forest School sessions and currently we are working with the parents and children with plans to develop our outdoor area.

We have also started to have contact with two of our neighbouring Care Homes, delivering over 80 Christmas cards at the end of the year.

We have a half termly coffee morning in the church Shore Café where we focus on one area for discussion, sharing what works at home and at nursery.

Last term we had a specialist Dental Nurse from the Oral Health Protection Team sharing about oral health and how to access a dentist.

This term (early 2025) we are sharing information about a research project that the nursery is involved in, The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI Project). This is a 20 week oral language intervention programme for all the children, with additional support for those who need it most. The intervention also includes weekly Home Learning Links.

We plan to arrange further visits in the coming year to share story books and sing songs. We have been invited to one of the aforementioned Care Homes when they have a local ice cream van visit so we can have an ice cream treat together!

A major aim of our Youth work is to offer young people from all parts of our community a consistent, safe space where they can be in community with others and feel supported and encouraged. An example of this is below!

Elliot (name and some details have been changed for anonymity) 

Elliot is one of the young people who has recently started attending. Elliot is socially anxious and finds it difficult to connect with people his own age. He found out about us through a friend of his mum’s, and although hesitant at first, decided to join us. Since then, he has grown into the group.

In his first 3 or 4 weeks with us he mostly spoke to leaders or the one young person that he knew. The last week before our half term break our numbers were lower than usual, mostly due to their being no school that day, and so many were already away. Elliot did come but the other young person he knew did not. The leaders had changed over again, and so Elliot didn’t know them all, and we were worried that this would make him feel uneasy.  

However, Elliot thrived. We were all working on the one project together and Elliot got stuck in. The discussions were around what people were wearing to our alternative Halloween event, and Elliot shared with the group and made suggestions for others. The session went surprisingly well and when Elliot was leaving (one of the last to be picked up, which is common) he said to his mum; “Guess what Mum? I made friends today!”. 

Credit must go to both our wonderful youth for making Elliot feel comfortable, and the environment we create. This kind of thing is not uncommon either, this week we had another young person join us with much more hesitation and a much more obvious level of anxiety. Her father even asked if he could stay, which we arranged for, but in the end they both felt comfortable enough to let him leave. 

James' Journey (name has been changed for anonymity)

James joined us after coming to live in this country from Kenya 5 months previously. Shortly after his arrival, at his 2 Year Progress Check with a Community Nursery Nurse, he had been referred to have a Speech and Language assessment as a delay was noted. At nursery we noted areas of delay in Communication and Interaction, Cognition and Learning, Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties and Sensory Needs.

We contacted the local Child Development Centre to ensure that when James had his Speech & Language assessment, they would know that the nursery had wider concerns, and this led to an assessment at the Centre, where it was confirmed that James was autistic. We worked with parents explaining the SEND Code of Practice that we work from in this country and the processes we needed to follow to arrange an Education and Healthcare Plan, which would be used to support James at school.

We were able to reassure the parents that they did have a voice in the decisions about James’s future education. They were keen for James to go into mainstream education - this was partly because of their expectations of a Special School which sounded very different in Kenya. So, we were able to reassure them about the high standards of care and education in Special Schools in this country, but also that if they did want to apply for a place at a local mainstream school, we would support them in this.

They decided to apply for a local church school and the nursery arranged a supported Transition Meeting inviting the area Specialist Transition Teacher and the School SENDCo, as well as the reception teacher, who visited James in the nursery session. We welcomed the Educational Psychologist and Speech and Language Therapist into the setting to observe and work with James, advising how he could best be supported. Also, the church Early Years Pastoral Support, Amanda, who works in some sessions in the nursery as part of her role was able to offer weekly one to one support to James and spent time with his parents offering advice, especially around supporting Speech & Language Development.

Following this, James' mum said how this had been very helpful, and that the strategies had helped them so much in the home. We saw progress in his spoken and receptive language and his ability to self-regulate, where before he had often hit out when frustrated by not being able to communicate his wants and needs. We also started to see some imaginary play, as well as a developing ability to play alongside his peers.

The supported transition to school went well and following the first half term, James' mum contacted the nursery to say how well he was settling in at school and the progress that he was making. She also thanked us for the help and support we had given to the family in the nursery and expressed how grateful they all were.