By the community, for the community

This short piece gives you a taste of where we are now and maybe a glimpse of the future.


The People we support – an odd term to describe those who are at the centre of our organisation. Often described as the most vulnerable in our society, equally as often seen as people who require continuous and ongoing support. To us, our students, trainees and residents are all essential participants and contributors to both our local and the wider community.  At our beautiful rural centre on the edge of the Cotswolds we support high needs, helping learners and residents to communicate, participate and then contribute to their community. We specialise in profound and severe learning difficulties including severe autism. A feature of the challenges that our learners and residents face is associated conditions such as epilepsy, communication difficulties and global delay. They face many barriers in their everyday lives, many are non-verbal and many face the physical manifestations that high levels of anxiety promote – such as challenging behaviour.



I thought it might be useful for people to get a taste of the range of things we actually do at William Morris Community Centre.


We have a body of about 60 staff delivering support and education. We are not just a College but we are a specialist provider – this means we also provide 52 week residential packages through our new Bridging the Gap Programme, and independent living development opportunities through our Independence Houses.


 Accommodation became available as the camp hill live in co-workers left – this has allowed us to grow. We are planning further growth over the forthcoming year - with growth comes new opportunities, we are particularly keen to hear from any parish or local residents who might be interested in working for us or with us. We have a range of roles available particularly in our care, we provide full training that includes 4 complete weeks of specialist professional development across the year.


We have begun to support community groups to use our facilities; with the ‘pay back’ that maybe one or two of our students and residents (with their support) could join in. This month sees us hosting the annual Community Orchards apple squashing fest over several weekends, and the Yoga group starts on the 21st.   Textiles is the next area we want to add to the portfolio.


If anybody has any ideas around community groups or if you’re interested in joining the staff please contact us through recruit@wmcc.ac.uk , or call us on 01453 824025, or even drop in at Chipmans Platt ( on the left just before you get to the A419 roundabout), ask for Anne Edwards our HR coordinator and all round good egg. We’d be happy to see you.

Our programs - One of the innovations this year with be the introduction of the ‘brokerage model’. Simply put, this delivers bespoke pathways of support, learning and activities meshed with communication and therapeutic strategies to help them progress. It is a 24- hour job particularly, to take them on towards their optimum point of independence – including living in the community. College students (see our latest CQC and Ofsted reports both recent, both good) enter a ‘study programme’ that fits in to our brokerage approach and provides individual progression.

Meeting individual needs in this way is enhanced by the structure of our programmes.  For example, through our Health and Well-Being centre we supply a phalanx of therapeutic approaches that are embedded into individual programmes. We also deliver vocational and Social Enterprise opportunities to empower our learners and residents and provide actual outcomes through our Active Lives and Active Futures programmes.  Everything is underpinned by a unique approach to support that includes carefully considered support and care, with specific accommodation meeting specific needs. Whether it is in  College or in ‘Bridging the Gap’ apartment living or Independent living, or in our newly planned specialist communication and sensory homestead ‘Willow’, we provide specialist support in a community setting that is safe and secure.


Our staff - We are fortunate in the quality of our professional staff, our provisions include a full educational programme and /or 52-week residential status based on careful assessment and analysis. But our greatest strength is the care that we provide, it is one-to-one, it is team led and it is delivered by staff who are given loads of training and support. Our Director of care Dawn, is hands on and vastly experienced – she sets the tone for a developing group of support and care staff who work right across all the provisions in play.  Communication is at the heart of everything the staff do with the students and residents. Every one of them has a unique way of interacting with the world around them and our challenge and joy is to appreciate and understand how this works. This is so we can be better equipped to help them learn.


Our future - A large part of our developmental activities are based on a creative approach that stimulates and enriches the communication and personal living/development targets that we set for ourselves as professionals and our learners and residents as citizens of the local community. Art, performance, drama, music all form essential parts of the WMC experience. Recent additions to our facilities and programmes such as food production and our Arts & Crafts Social Enterprise Centre have added another dimension to our growing association - as has our burgeoning links with local community groups - all adding  to the vibrancy of our environment.


 At the centre of it all are the people we support.   


As the fairly recent appointment my role as Director is to help transform William Morris into a real community (and I mean local community) organisation. The old funding regime that used to supply the old Camp hill model has now disappeared. We are now operating against a backdrop of continuous financial challenge as traditional funding and business dries up (the direct result of legislation introduced in the wake of the banking crisis). To meet this, we have begun to extend the range of what we do, and ‘open up’. For us this means more activities meeting more of the needs of ‘those we support’ , it means more staff, better trained with opportunities to develop professionally.  It means becoming a key part of Eastington and the local community.


                  John Nissler


Some of the ECO apple-pressing team taking a break from squashing duty in the new Social Enterprise Centre cafe at William Morris College


No. 159  Oct - Nov  2016

Eastington Community News Magazine.  Community news for and by the people of Eastington, Gloucestershire