Just what the doctor ordered...25 years of training

Barnardo's Dr B's restaurant in Harrogate, founded in November 1985, has helped hundreds of 16- to 24-year-olds who failed to thrive at school because of problems at home or other personal difficulties.

Enabling young people to experience a real working environment, the project offers training opportunities from entry level through to level

2 NVQs in areas including hospitality and catering, business administration, literacy, numeracy and information technology.

Service manager Kerry Jephson said: "The project is a cross between a restaurant, a coffee shop and an outside catering business, complemented with being a training provider.

"It was originally set up for young people with learning difficulties, but over the years we have widened our remit.

"We still engage with those young people, but a lot of the young people we work with now have other barriers like chaotic home lives, alcohol problems or a failure to engage at school.

"On any given day, we can have anything from two to 22 young people working with us.

"In any one year we can work with up to 100 young people, and the service is individualised according to each young person's needs and what they want to get out of it."

Young workers at Dr B's gain experience in tasks like cooking, cleaning and dealing with customers, and they can improve their clerical skills by taking courses at a Barnardo's centre based in the nearby Starbeck Methodist Church.

Ms Jephson said: "We try to get young people to do a combined programme covering both literacy and numeracy so they develop general skills for writing CVs and filling in forms.

"It means we offer three different ways of learning – fully based at Dr B's, where literacy and numeracy is embedded in the work; wholly at the Starbeck centre, to work on general skills; or a combination of the two.

"Which of those three methods we adopt depends purely on the individual learner – where they are, what their capabilities are and where they want to be."

Ms Jephson added that, by tailoring the service to each young person's needs, Barnardo's can offer a different approach to the more conventional methods taught at sixth-form colleges.

"A lot of our young people are enjoying a change from the classroom environment of being sat down and talked to," she said.

"The 'chalk and talk' method doesn't work for them, but they enjoy being at Dr B's because the work is so varied and so different.

"It is also challenging work and, through the outside catering programme, they experience for themselves the shift-work environment of the hospitality sector.

"They have to work on Friday and Saturday nights and, in the run-up to Christmas, they work throughout December.

"The hospitality and catering sector is massive in Harrogate and the learners based at Dr B's tend to progress to other placements in the town.

"These could include hospitality and catering jobs in care homes, for example, so the work available isn't restricted to just restaurants and cafs."

One former service user, Chris Eastwood, works as a chef at the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, while four other former learners are now employed by Betty's, the coffee shop and tea rooms business.

Vocational instructor Tricia Howard, the centre's employment officer, said the companies were helping to transform the lives of young people by offering them work placements.

"It's good to get our name alongside some of the biggest names in the region and I put that down to the fact we've been here for 25 years," she said.

"I call firms asking for placement opportunities and, because they've heard of Dr B's, they're willing to listen and most are willing to help.

"Taking on a young person with no qualifications to work alongside staff requires time and effort, but the results can be remarkable."