Thank you for all your lovely comments about last week’s blog. I hope you continue to find it useful and informative.

This week appears to have flown past!

A number of our young people attended the Manchester City v Juventus match on Tuesday evening. I believe they had a great time, despite the result. We are developing a super relationship with City and they are so supportive of our schools. Our wheelchair football team were featured in Tuesday night’s programme. Watch this space. Last Friday Nathan (from our Sports Pathway) represented the North of England in a televised wheelchair basketball match. One of our Future Finders students, Stefan, is representing Lancashire at Lords this weekend. Quite an honour. Carrying on with the sports theme the New Bridge Girls’ football team had their first games this week and they performed brilliantly – well done!

The sports hall on the Hollinwood site has now been marked out ready for handover. Building control are just completing their final inspections before they hand over the building early next week. There is an open afternoon at Hollinwood Academy next Wednesday (23rd) please feel to come along and/or bring anyone who is interested in the provision. We are opening the school up from 1.30-3.00pm with a presentation planned at 2.00pm.

The Learning Centre building adaptations have now been completed but we are aware that the pedestrian access and transport plan are far from adequate. Our premises and health and safety team are looking at this as matter of urgency and the team will contact you directly if your child is likely to be affected.

The Medtia lease (for Digit4ll, Lumenus, Future Finders and some Horizons young people) still remains with our legal team and we are confident that once a few minor details are agreed we can begin the transition into the new town centre buildings. Again, I will keep you informed once we have some definite dates.

I have been working this week on a piece I was asked to write for the National Autistic Society. They are interested in our experience of placing young people with additional needs into the workplace. When it is published I will forward you all the link. We also heard this week that HMI are using a promotional film we recorded a couple of years ago for their National Training. It is wonderful that our organisation is being publicised at these events and, more importantly, that our young people are inspiring others.

Have a great weekend, good luck to all our home Nation Rugby Union teams.

Graham