Birtenshaw- Creating a brighter future for children with special needs

Futurebuilders invested £944,885 in Birtenshaw to support the development of new children’s homes for children with a physical disability or a learning disability and improve its management infrastructure.

About the organisation

Bolton-based Birtenshaw was established in 1955 by a group of local people who were concerned about the lack of specific facilities for disabled children in the surrounding area. It operates two distinct services for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties, in particular autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and/or children with a physical disability.

The organisation runs a special day school and a number of children’s homes offering long term placements, or ‘short break’ placements. Most children placed at Birtenshaw receive services at both school and in the home. It’s services are complemented by the provision of health-related services such as nursing care, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, occupational therapy, rebound therapy and speech and language therapy.

David Reid, CEO, explains that “Birtenshaw now have about 90 odd employees and part of the development of Birtenshaw - which was assisted by the Futurebuilders investment - has been to really develop our services and increase our management capacity. We have been able to develop a capable team to support our vision – to create a brighter future for children with special needs - and to be become recognised as a centre of excellence.”

How Futurebuilders helped

Reid declares that a few years ago “we were really struggling for funding and to keep our head above water. We clearly weren’t bankable so had to take some drastic action fast and make some key decisions. There was no way we could go to a commercial lender so I started to explore some options and luckily came across Futurebuilders.”

Futurebuilders invested £948,600 in Birtenshaw in the form of a Full Investment. This investment comprised a £659,285 loan for the purchase of three properties to be developed as new children’s homes, providing 24/7 care; a £170,000 capital grant for the refurbishment of the three properties; a £100,000 revenue grant to cover the salary and costs of recruiting a head of finance and a head of training and development; and a £15,600 capacity building grant to provide full cost recovery and leadership training, a skills audit, recommendations and recruitment of new trustees and development for board and senior management.

“Since we’ve had the Futurebuilders investment,” Reid explains, “we have been able to move children out of our main building – we used to have 16 children living here - it wasn’t very suitable, it wasn’t fit for purpose or complying with the current legislation. Over the last couple of years we’ve been buying and renovating houses so that we can relocate all the children into ordinary houses in the community. We moved very quickly after the Futurebuilders decision was made, one of our properties only took 10 weeks for complete renovation – we don’t hang around! ”
Birtenshaw has embarked on an accreditation process through the National Autistic Society for its autism specific services to develop its employees to benefit its service users. It also now has the staffing infrastructure in place to competently bid for a wealth of public service contracts and has increased its confidence in doing so.

“If we hadn’t had the investment from Futurebuilders, which enabled us to increase our infrastructure and our capacity we would not have been able to go for various tenders - It has given us capacity to explore options. We were surprised and grateful that Futurebuilders was able to support us to such a substantial level – almost a million pounds!”

Increasing capacity and seeing results

Birtenshaw has dramatically increased its capacity to deliver services for children with a physical or learning disability. It has evidently expanded its service provision and is continually on the lookout for more ways to do this including plans in the pipeline for another children’s special school. Reid asserted that they are never without future plans and aspirations for Birtenshaw and describes that the impact of developing its services so far has been unmistakable:

“We didn’t really expect a big impact from moving the children into the new properties but what was interesting is that from the very first day it clearly had an impact, a very positive impact. The combination of the houses being more pleasant and completely tailored to their needs has made the children much more settled, content and happier. The enhancement of their quality of life has been immense and immediately noticeable and it gives us great job satisfaction that we are providing a quality service and that couldn’t have been achieved without the Futurebuilders investment. The money that we received from Futurebuilders has had a direct and measureable impact on the quality of life for those children.”

Birtenshaw is a preferred provider of Bolton Children’s Services Department for specialist care and education provision. The Council purchases spot placements for children on an annual basis, as do Lancashire County Council Children’s Social Services, Flintshire Children’s Services, Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council, Bury Education and Social Services, Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council, Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council and the City of York Council.

If you are interested in finding out more about Birtenshaw, visit the website.

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