New Horizons was founded in December 2022 to support young people and adults with learning and physical disabilities, complex needs and autism in their local community and surrounding areas.
New Horizons is an extension of New Hope, a charity (charity number 114659) set up by Jean Wilson MBE in July 2010. New Hope was initially set up to support children with learning and physical disabilities, complex needs and autism during the school holidays when Jean realised there was no support available for her own daughter, Emily. Over the years, and as Emily has grown into a young woman, Jean saw an ever-increasing need for day services for young people and adults as they move away from school and college. This led to Jean establishing a new branch of her service to support people after their 18th birthday within their local community.
Our mission is to provide a happy, safe, warm and stimulating environment for all service users to develop freely. Our aim is to respect every service user as an individual, regardless of gender, cultural background or ability.
New Horizons will:
This completes our Mission Statement; it’s aim is to set out our principles and practice in a transparent manner. It should be read in conjunction with our policies and procedures.
We are committed to the development of each individual service users’ abilities so that they may come to experience life as worthwhile. We respect the dignity of each human being and acknowledge their value as an individual, whatever their needs or their ability to contribute towards society. We support the continuous development of knowledge, understanding and skills for all our service users. We believe that everyone is an individual with the right to enjoy a normal pattern of life within the community, appropriate to his/her age. We advocate respect, dignity, freedom of choice and privacy for each service user and believe in the principle of putting the individual at the centre of all we do. We respect and acknowledge the role of parents and carers and the challenges they face in nurturing the potential of the individual in their care and aim to support them in this.
To facilitate the development of individuals with complex needs to enable them to:
It is very important for us at New Horizons that all service users feel secure and settled. We place a huge emphasis on providing both a physically and emotionally safe place for each individual to be. We recognise that it is important for service users to develop secure attachments and we try to ensure that staff work closely together so individuals can bond with numerous key people so that if one staff member is away, a service user will not be left bereft.