Steepl View Dofe Cic
Vicky
Munday
Director/ Dofe Manager
Mission
To inspire Guide and support young people in their self development and recognise their achivements.
Category
Disability
Additional Information
Steeple View DofE CIC offers a place where any young person aged 13 years 7 months up to 25 can carry out there DofE award.
Steeple View DofE was set up in 2010 by a group of staff whose primary aim was to help create capacity within the local geographical area. Our local Open DofE centres were to full capacity creating an issue for the local young people. With no access to the DofE award, Steeple View DofE made the decision to cater for this local need and help create more places for young people to access the Programme.
We carried this out in the format of an Open award centre which the young people could access at Bronze, Silver and Gold level.
Within Essex there are 3 main roles which we support within the County. Our main role is to allow open access to young people where the school has no DofE provision. Our second role is to support local schools who are unable to take all the participants that would like to enrolee on the programme. We also provide a place to sign up for non-targeted years within a school.
In 2012 Essex County Council stopped providing participant places within their Open Award centres at the Bronze Level. Steeple View DofE reacted to this demand by providing more spaces at the Bronze Level of the programme. Steeple View DofE increased both their Paid and Voluntary staff at the open centres to increase capacity.
We offered a service which supported our OA agenda by filling a gap within the county. We have young people travelling from all over Essex to enrolee with Steeple View DofE. This is because apart from the uniformed organisations and the school provision, there is nowhere for young people to sign up outside of this except Steeple View DofE.
Most young people are referred to us by either ECC or a school who has reached capacity or are not targeting that specific year group.
In October 2013 Steeple View DofE looked at expanding our Open centre to allow more access to the award. The centre has grown at quite a fast pace within the last few years but we have made sure we can cater for the increase without affecting the quality of the service.
With more and more cut backs to the LA, steeple view’s pool of experienced staff grows offering more assessors, Leaders and qualified Expedition staff. We have attracted a staff team that are passionate about the award but are unable to work at the LA.
At present we are working with around 250 young people and this is predicted to increase year on year. With all this in mind Steeple View DofE plan for 2014 is to cater for around 500 DofE participants’ at all three levels of the award.
