Ripon Community Link: building resilience
Ripon Community Link supports adults and young people with learning disabilities with day care activities and supported work-based opportunities.
Victoria Ashley, CEO, shares about how the Foundation’s funding has helped the charity open a café and shop and how this is having a positive impact on the people they support as well as strengthening the charity’s resilience.
We give all of our members – the people we support – the opportunity to choose from a wide range of activities. Despite being a small charity, we offer a lot of flexibility and choice and work with every individual to ensure that they're doing things that they enjoy while developing their skills at the same time.
We’re based on a beautiful four-acre site in Ripon with a Victorian walled garden, orchard, and woodland. Thanks to funding from Lloyds Bank Foundation, we’ve recently been able to open our own shop and café on site. This has been instrumental in bringing the whole organisation together and has been hugely beneficial to our members and the charity as a whole.
Each of our four work-based opportunity streams – horticulture, catering, woodwork and retail – now link into the café and shop. Whether the members have been involved with growing fruit and vegetables, making beautiful wooden items, or preparing food, most of their products now end up in the shop or café. This gives our members a real sense of achievement and boosts their self-esteem. They’re really proud of the products they have made and are excited to see them in the shop. It’s very special.
The shop and café also provide incredible opportunities for skills development. For example, understanding how much things cost, speaking to customers, taking orders and developing social skills. This is an enormous boost to our members’ confidence and skills and helps them become increasingly independent in their everyday lives.
I do a lot of activities here, like baking, and I’m also learning life skills like going shopping. I’m about to move out into my own place so the staff are helping me to prepare for that. I enjoy coming here because I can be with my friends. It’s like having a new family here. It’s really lovely.
– Jess, who is supported by Ripon Community Link, pictured right.
Integrating into the local community
People with learning disabilities can easily end up spending the majority of their time in a closed environment and that’s a challenge that can often be overlooked. They might go somewhere for the day, do their activities and have a lovely day – but they’re not really interacting with the general public or community. We see it as a key part of our role to provide opportunities for our members to socialise and integrate into the local community.
We can (and do) take our members into town to interact with the public in a protected way, but when we welcome the public to the shop and cafe, this is their space where they are safe and supported. So, we can stand back and let interactions between our members and the public happen freely. It’s so beneficial for our members that they can be a part of the local community and contribute in ways that are fulfilling for them.
Becoming financially resilient
We’ve been focusing on strategically diversifying our income. Instead of having an over reliance on social care funding, which is never going to meet the costs of running a service like ours, we began to look at how we can develop the site as a whole so that it becomes more of a visitor attraction and can generate income – the shop and café is a key part of that.
Our financial resilience has improved because we’ve now got social care income, generated income, and fundraising income. So hopefully across those three funding streams, we can ensure that we can keep delivering care. But it is very challenging, particularly post-pandemic. With austerity and cuts to social care and the cost of living crisis - we're really starting to feel that bite. The minimum wage going up will hit us hard and bring some very real challenges. But the fact that we've diversified our income helps us to be more resilient.
Group baking session at Ripon Community Link
Woodwork session at Ripon Community Link
Victoria Ashley, CEO of Ripon Community Link, with Carlos Chavez, Regional Manager from Lloyds Bank Foundation.
The shop and café have really helped the charity as a whole – not only in terms of developing the skills of our members, but in terms of our future sustainability and resilience because it generates income that we can reinvest into the charity. We couldn't have done any of it without the support of the Foundation and we are so incredibly grateful.
- Victoria Ashley, CEO of Ripon Community Link
The Foundation has also facilitated the development of our values work with a consultant, which has really helped shape our service. Together with the Board of Trustees, staff, volunteers and our members, we agreed on the values of kindness, individuality and excellence. And we integrate that in everything that we do – from our recruitment processes to our customer service. In every decision we make, we try to be true to our values. If it doesn't fit with the values, it doesn't happen. It’s a piece of work that would have been nice to do, but we could never have afforded to do. But with the proper facilitation, it's ended up being something that is actually at the core of everything that we do. So that's really positive.
Carlos, our Regional Manager from the Foundation, has been amazing to work with. He is our consistent point of contact and has supported us throughout. It feels like a partnership. As a charity we really welcome this relationship-based model because the more traditional approach to grant-making can feel quite transactional. We’ve had a really positive partnership with the Foundation and no report could do justice to what the funding has helped us to achieve.
I work in the shop and café because I like seeing the public coming in and meeting people. I’ve learned new skills, like how to work on the till and serving food. I really enjoy it.
- Jamie, supported by Ripon Community Link, pictured above
My favourite thing about coming here is that it’s like a family, we care about each other and the staff help us to learn more. I like working with everyone.
- Lisa, supported by Ripon Community Link, pictured above
I’ve learned loads of new skills. I’m a part of a group called Members Voice, where a few of us discuss together what we want and need. And then this goes to the Board of Trustees so they can hear our ideas.
- Lewis, supported by Ripon Community Link, pictured above
Find out more about Ripon Community Link by visiting their website: www.riponcommunitylink.org
