Month: January 2016

News update: Style Acre’s Little Bookshop opens – January 2016

John Craven OBE officially opened the Style Acre second-hand bookshop on Monday January 11th. The shop – called ‘The Little Bookshop’ – is a social enterprise set up by local charity Style Acre and provides work experience for people with learning disabilities.

Enabling people with learning disabilities to gain work experience is very important and Style Acre proactively seeks work development opportunities for people they support.  One established Banbury company, Hawkins Group has committed to on-going work experience opportunities for people supported by Style Acre. They say: “Hawkins Group is delighted to support Style Acre.  For us, it’s not just about writing cheques, it is about helping Glenn & Ollie learn and develop workplace skills by becoming part of our team and seeing their confidence and independence grow every week.”

The Style Acre Banbury Resource (SABRe) opened last May and is a much-needed community hub in central Banbury, supporting adults with learning disabilities. SABRe is managed by Hannah Wolstenholme, who has worked for Style Acre for 4 years.  Hannah says:“Work experience is massively important to the people we support at SABRe. It has real value and gives the people we support not only the opportunity to develop work-based skills, but also essential skills including team work, time keeping and interpersonal skills. This in turn promotes a sense of achievement, self-confidence and self-worth among the people we support.”

Marianne who comes regularly to SABRe says:“I like being with people. Work experience makes me happy, I like the buzz of the workplace, it makes me feel warm inside. I get more confident as I learn new things.”

Listen to Hannah’s BBC Radio Oxford interview

Watch BBC South Today feature and That’s Oxfordshire TV

Read The Banbury Guardian and Oxford Times feature.