News

Children in Need Grant - Young Carers

Details: Last Updated: Friday, 15 March 2019 09:42

Positive Steps has been awarded £50,418 to deliver a health and wellbeing project for young carers in Oldham. Young carers face many disadvantages, as their caring responsibilities can have a negative effect on their personal development, their friendships, and their mental and physical health and wellbeing. The project will work with young carers who are preparing for the transition to adult life by providing individual mentoring, encouraging them to engage in further education, training or employment and helping them to develop vital life skills.

Rina Dabhi, Director of Family Services at Positive Steps said: “It’s fantastic news to hear that we’ve been awarded this grant from BBC Children in Need. With this funding we’ll be able to make a positive difference to the lives of young carers in Oldham and help to prepare them for the future.”

NEW CORPORATE DIRECTOR APPOINTED TO BUILD ON OUR SUCCESS

Details: Last Updated: Thursday, 14 March 2019 09:55

POSITIVE STEPS has appointed Cliff Shields as its new Director of Corporate Services.

Cliff is a former Director and Assistant City Manager in local government. He is a qualified accountant with over forty years’ experience in business support work gathered across a number of diverse local authorities and brings substantial knowledge in implementing change initiatives; delivering efficiencies and developing successful teams.

Cliff is excited to move into the charity sector and join Positive Steps as we look to build on our successes; broaden our offer and expand our trading activities. As Corporate Director he will join the senior management team here at Positive Steps.

Positive Steps has a long history of making a difference by empowering and enabling people to take control of their lives, and of exceeding targets. We deliver a comprehensive, integrated, range of services which help young people, adults and families to reach their full potential. These include: Family Support, Careers Guidance, Missing From Home Support, Oldham Young Carers, Substance Misuse Support, Sexual Health and Healthy Schools services in Oldham, Volunteering, Oldham Youth Justice Service and Work Experience services for schools.

Our approach throughout has been to understand and break down the barriers individuals face in reaching their goals. Chief Exec Steph Bolshaw said: “As a company and charity we need to be an agile, high performing and supportive organisation. Our work will continue to be planned and based upon evidence; intervention will be innovative and reflective to enable us to learn, grow and lead ways of working that truly transform lives. It’s an exciting time for Positive Steps and I’m looking forward to the difference we can make in the forthcoming years.”

Cliff himself added: “Positive Steps and I are a perfect fit. The experience I bring in enabling different ways of working will ensure the organisation continues to be well-run and in a strong position to realise the vision of “People and communities inspired to take control of their lives.”

Van-dalism

Details: Last Updated: Tuesday, 06 November 2018 08:51

Unfortunately, the trusty old Positive Cycles van has been broken into….again. The van has become a regular fixture on the roads around Oldham, picking up the bikes that are kindly donated to the Positive Cycles project and ferrying our mechanics to community bike surgeries. Sadly, the poor old girl is now costing us too much money to keep her running and so we are looking at allowing her to retire gracefully and bring in a younger, more robust and reliable model. We will be setting up a crowd-funding page very soon. If you would like to donate to this cause and ensure Positive Cycles is able to continue the work in the schools and communities of Oldham, you will be able to in the very near future.

Hate Crime Awareness Week

Details: Last Updated: Friday, 01 February 2019 15:15

Hate Crime Awareness Week is taking place from the 4^th to 8^th February and Positive Steps will be getting involved.

We will be promoting this within Positive Steps with a display in reception and posting important messages on our various social media account. Please feel free to share, repost and retweet.

Also, a Hate Crime Awareness video has been produced, you can view it through this link: https://vimeo.com/311465855/4ec670c76a and there are a variety of events taking place across the borough, you can find details by clicking this link. https://www.oldham.gov.uk/hatecrime

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Details: Last Updated: Thursday, 24 May 2018 13:43

May 25^th 2018 is the deadline day for companies to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation 2018. For Positive Steps this means we have had to review our systems and build on some of our existing data protection measures and systems. A key part of the regulations requires us to let people know if we are holding data on them, and we have done this by adding a new privacy statement to our website. You can access it by scrolling down to the bottom of any page, and clicking on the link. This statement tells service users what data we hold, our legal basis for holding it, what we use it for, how long we keep it for, and when we will delete it. It also covers our commitment to keeping data safe, and gives details on how service users can make a subject access request.