Bocs Bwyd is a catering enterprise, run by Ysgol Y Deri in collaboration with the construction industry. Funded by the Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund, it provides a vocational learning environment for learners with Additional Learning Needs (ALN), enabling Ysgol Y Deri to develop the Bocs Bwyd Traineeship. The project aims to develop skills, confidence and demonstrate the ability of young people with special needs, helping them develop independence and enter the workforce, from which they are often excluded.

Ysgol Y Deri is the special education school for the Vale of Glamorgan, working with students aged 3-19 across a full spectrum of conditions including higher functioning autism, emotional, behavioural and mental health issues and profound multiple learning difficulties.

The school focusses on catering as a vocational pathway to learners aged 14-19 who have the potential to be economically active. Replicating the work environment, the school has a professional spec training kitchen and on-site barista style coffee shop. Many students leave with industry recognised qualifications in Food Hygiene and Entry Level and Level 1 catering and employability qualifications including BTEC. The school also provides work experience opportunities in catering settings such as Costa and Farmhouse Inns.

However, despite vocational experience and qualifications, many students struggle to meet the entry requirements to access catering courses at college due to their academic abilities. There are also few opportunities for them to receive in-work support from potential employers so that they can engage in the career pathways that Ysgol Y Deri has prepared them for. Thus, despite gaining the competencies to engage in work, many students leave without the prospect of finding real jobs.

In order to address this difficult situation, Ysgol Y Deri applied to Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund and received funding for their Bocs Bwyd project.

Bocs Bwyd is a catering kitchen, launched in 2019, servicing two new school build sites in Barry, both of which are part of the Vale of Glamorgan’s 21^st Century Schools programme. Other than a catering manager, the kitchen is wholly staffed by Ysgol Y Deri pupils and their support staff.

With the support of the construction companies Morgan Sindall and Bouygues UK, the physical kitchen was assembled; Morgan Sindall providing the shipping container and Bouygues relocating it at an agreed handover time. Challenge Fund monies were used to support additional staff.

After a delay due to COVID, Bocs Bwyd started service on site in September 2020, in line with Welsh Government’s and Ysgol Y Deri’s COVID secure working. The kitchen is divided into four work stations, allowing pupils to develop skills from service through to prep and wash up, with a focus on quality, value and nutrition.

Bocs Bwyd was something new and innovative for Ysgol Y Deri; a sustainable catering enterprise run by, but with its own separate identity from, the school. This allowed Ysgol Y Deri to create an authentic work environment for learners, who were supported and valued as co-workers, rather than students. In this vein, it was also important for the Bocs Bwyd team that Bocs Bwyd was seen as just a café, rather than a ‘special needs café’. 

Bocs Bwyd has enabled Ysgol Y Deri to address the issue that many pupils cannot access college or employment after leaving them in ways that they could not previously. Areas of focus were developing The Bocs Bwyd Traineeship and to help pupils and their families believe in their ability to enter the workforce. 

The Bocs Bwyd Traineeship combines Essential Skills Qualifications in Literacy and Numeracy linked to Catering and Employability Awards at Entry Level / Level 1 leading to a Certificate size award overall plus City and Guilds Food Hygiene Level 1 or 2. The Traineeship also includes a guaranteed 120 hours minimum work placement at Bocs Bwyd.

Bocs Bwyd has been key in the school developing the traineeship – it not only allows the school to provide a guaranteed work placement, it also allows them to tailor the placement to ensure learners get to experience all aspects of catering and provides additional support where needed. This is a step change to the work experience that Ysgol Y Deri has historically been able to provide to students.

Another benefit of the traineeship is that it prepares and qualifies students for work in catering at a higher level than Ysgol Y Deri has been able to offer previously. Usually, young people working at Entry Level cannot access Foundation Apprenticeships with its  5 GCSE entry requirement . However, the Bocs Bwyd Traineeship provides a unique way to achieve similar vocational qualifications for young people but working at Entry Level, something Ysgol Y Deri has not been able to offer as a package before. 8 learners have now completed the Traineeship. Charlie, a trainee at Bocs Bwyd has been accepted onto a catering course at Bridgend College starting September 2021 while others have also been able to secure places on specialist courses at Level 1 in industry sectors other than  Catering. All have developed a belief in a pathway into paid work which previously  they thought impossible.

The authentic work environment of Bocs Bwyd allowed pupils to develop and showcase their talents out in the world to paying customers. This, and the supported employment model (where learners are supported and valued as co-workers, rather than students) provided a space where pupils could develop their self-belief and confidence in entering the workforce. This was bolstered by Job Coaching, including Person Centred Planning creating a vocational profile and pathways into work.

The project’s success in this area can be seen in the views of pupils, parents and carers.   

“Working in Bocs Bwyd, has increased my confidence when participating in a work environment and improved my interpersonal skills.” Sam, Bocs Bwyd trainee.

All carers and parents strongly agreed that their child became more confident as a result of participating in Bocs Bwyd and agreed or strongly agreed that their child is more hopeful about their future and is positive about getting paid work. Parents and carers also agreed or strongly agreed that they too were more hopeful about their child’s future and more confident of them getting paid work.

Notwithstanding the successes of the project, its innovative nature means some challenges remain unresolved and require more work into the future.

Some of these are governance and constitutional problems around a school running a business. It was important for Bocs Bwyd to be separate from the school for educational reasons outlined above and to create a model whereby Ysgol Y Deri could operate a project such as Bocs Bwyd on a cost recovery basis. However, schools trading is problematic in Wales due to the Welsh schooling system not being academised as in England, where it is easier for schools to convert to being an academy which have less stringent regulations regarding trading. Ysgol Y Deri are supportive of the non-academisation of Welsh schools, however it makes a school running a business quite difficult.

Working with Social Firms Wales, Ysgol Y Deri developed a constitution to run Bocs Bwyd as a Social Firm (enterprise) which functions like a CIC, but instead of being registered at Companies House, is overseen by a constituted committee and governed by robust rules within the school. The long term viability of this solution is yet to be seen as there are questions around liability for the committee which are being addressed by Vale of Glamorgan Council.  If the model does work however, it provides a new vocational education model (which could be used wider than catering) which partly or wholly funds its costs. Currently, the school ‘subsidises’ Bocs Bwyd through back office support and provides teaching staff. However, the team would like to move to costs being covered through grant aid or a service level agreement, with the Social Firm structure allowing Bocs Bwyd to apply for a wider range of grants compared with a school.

Another challenge is the growth and sustainability of the project into the future. The project is running, however project lead Sue Williams recognises that often getting such projects off the ground is done “on a wing and a prayer”, and wants the project to remain functional and to avoid burn out of the project team. For 6 months Bocs Bwyd ran two sites in parallel, straining the team but demonstrating the ability for the project to grow.

Bocs Bwyd are interested in two aspects of their growth; developing a sustainable business model  and the educational impact. Commercially, they wish to become a mainstay of the local construction industry, providing food for construction workers and becoming a material part of the conversation around social values in the sector. Educationally, the team are exploring if they could host self-funded placements and whether they could provide work placements to smaller special schools enabling them to develop their own traineeships or apprenticeships.

Finally, despite the additional skills and qualifications, the route for Bocs Bwyd pupils into work or further education is still not always clear. Sue explains that after leaving Bocs Bwyd, learners will have all the skills they need for the catering industry, the issue being that they require a little extra support in the workplace that the vast majority of employers do not provide. The team are thus exploring partnering with a big public sector organisation, working with them to upskill their ability to support those with special needs and perhaps providing a job coach in return for committing to taking on a certain number of Bocs Bwyd pupils as staff. Bocs Bwyd are also exploring funding a continuation programme for NEETS and eligibility for the DWP Kickstart programme, which pupils are not currently eligible for as they will not have been on Universal Credit when they leave Ysgol Y Deri.

These challenges however do not take away the real positive impact on learners. Sue says she was “blown away by the change in mindset of the young people we had joining us”. A mindset change where work became possible, created in a public facing environment which challenged learners, and in doing so, allowed them to grow.

From September 2021, Ysgol Y Deri are planning to create a designated Bocs Bwyd class with teaching and support staff funded by the school’s core budget. Additional costs from operating the business will be recouped through trading activity.

Projected 12 month trading figures to the end of August 2021 suggest a gross profit on sales – meeting the additional operational costs of running a catering enterprise for Ysgol Y Deri. In collaboration with the private sector, Ysgol Y Deri have created a financially sustainable business providing a unique and holistic vocational learning environment for their pupils .  This in turn has boosted their drive and belief in their ability to work and equipped them with a higher level of skill and qualification than the school has been able to previously.

United Welsh, Linc Cymru, Melin Homes and Tai Calon are four housing associations that manage all the social housing in Blaenau Gwent – equating to 20% of all the county’s homes. In 2019 they embarked on a project to explore if the power of their collective spend could better benefit the communities around them.

Previous collaboration had identified building and maintenance supply chains as a key area where coordinated spend could be targeted to help support the local economy, with opportunities for training and skills development, business growth and local job creation. However mapping these supply chains, and making links between the four organisations’ budgets and workplans, required careful analysis and dedicated resource, something that was difficult to find amongst existing demands and priorities.

The partners applied to Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund to help accelerate this collaboration and a grant was awarded in recognition of the potential impact that this could have on the area’s foundational economy businesses. The approved project would map the supply chains across the four organisations, identify key opportunities to strengthen local spend and suppliers, build better relations with social enterprises and SMEs and connect them with existing business support networks.

One of the first key steps was gathering and collating supply chain data over the four partners. To do this, the planned maintenance budgets of all four housing associations were compiled and combined, producing a 10 year forward work programme worth £90 million. This was then used to start conversations with local businesses about how this work could be delivered locally, keeping as much of the spend in Blaenau Gwent as possible.

This sort of intelligence, about the value and scale of future potential work opportunities, is of huge benefit to business planning, particularly for smaller or more specialist suppliers. Knowledge of future opportunities can be critical in deciding for example whether to take on an extra staff member or to invest in training for a new type of installation or product.

Another unanticipated benefit of the project has been its potential to reduce the ‘boom and bust’ cycle of work that the partners were sometimes inadvertently creating. For example, rather than one housing association having an SME replace all their windows one season (boom) and then there being no similar work for months until another housing association did the same (bust), the housing associations can now coordinate programmes of work to ensure that a steady pipeline is always available.

As well as collating maintenance and supply chain data, the partners also shared ideas and existing programmes in place to support local community organisations. This led to a further combining of the partners’ resources – this time to support community spaces and initiatives better through the disruption that COVID-19 has caused. Working with CLES, The Wales Cooperative Centre and The Federation of Small Business, the project has also worked to set up a Social Enterprise Network in Blaenau Gwent, that they hope will continue well beyond the grant timeframe.

As well as achieving the original objectives of the Challenge Fund application, the closer partnership working that the grant enabled is influencing wider work also.

Like many housing associations, those in Blaenau Gwent are working on plans to decarbonise homes through retrofitting. Although this will be challenging, and means that maintenance plans already in place will need to change, it also provides another significant opportunity to support new, well paid, green jobs in the area.

The partnership believes that the new collaborative ways of working established during the Challenge Fund project will enable them to plan and deliver retrofitting in ways that – because of its scale – could deliver even greater benefits than the original project. The pooling of budgets and work programmes could even go so far as to help catalyse a new local retrofit industry through being able to guarantee a steady pipeline of work, geared towards smaller local suppliers.

This will include using the relationships built during the project with local colleges, SMEs and academia to explore how any training and skills gaps for the planned works can be addressed to ensure that work can be delivered locally. This could be an important contribution to building up the skills base in the county, which like many other post-industrial areas, has higher unemployment levels than the national average.

The partners are starting by retrofitting 200 homes, funded by a separate Welsh Government grant, which will be a source of learning about how to retrofit in a way that works for the people living in the homes and delivers the works through local SMEs.

An important spin-off to complement this work is the Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly – the first of its kind in Wales. This citizen’s assembly will allow local residents to help shape the decarbonisation plans not only of the four housing associations but also Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council and other local decision makers, ensuring that they align with the aspirations of local people. It forms one part of the new community engagement approach that the 4 housing associations have developed during the project.

Steve Cranston, The Foundational Economy Lead from United Welsh, believes that the initial project has therefore expanded into something much wider that will have a long-term influence on the way the partners work together, allowing them to better serve their residents and the local communities around them.

Steve has two key insights for others doing this kind of work. In building collaboration across organisations, he cites trust as a key driver, explaining that “change happens at the speed of trust”. How to develop trust? Openness, transparency and listening.

Another insight is maintaining focus on what the foundational economy is about – people. Providing people with good services backed up by good jobs. Steve explains how having regular conversations with local people and communities and focusing on listening to their views is vital to ensure resources really go to where it’s needed.

Steve says the best part of being part of the Foundational Economy Challenge Fund has been “having time to build trusted relationships with partner organisations. Trust is the most important currency and we have opened up opportunities for long term mutual benefit.”

Like other post-industrial areas, the town of Pontypool suffers from empty shop units, run-down high streets and above average unemployment. These problems have become common following the decline of traditional industry but have been exacerbated in Pontypool by other factors, such as organisations or people with no connection to the area buying up commercial property as investments.

The Council recognised that many people in the town had small businesses, or wanted to start one, and set up shop in the town. Efforts were often hampered however by a lack of appropriate support and a disconnect between what was offered by national programmes and grants and what small, often micro-, businesses needed on the ground.  

The Council applied to Welsh Government’s Foundational Economy Challenge Fund to help rectify this and put in place a pilot providing place-based, hyper-local support to small businesses. This included mentoring, test-trading opportunities, meantime space, training, small start-up grants and marketing support.

The pilot project, Foundational Economy Torfaen (FET), began in February 2020 from a new ‘work-hub’ in Pontypool Indoor Market. Despite the impact of Covid it has already contributed to visible positive change in the area.

FET Project Officer Alyson Jones believes that the only way that nurturing and catalyst support can be offered to these small ventures is by really seeking to listen and understand their issues. Her first step was to be proactive in phoning businesses to get a flavour of the community and the support that was needed.

This led to a range of support measure ranging from the ambitious and complex – such as exploring the development of a local procurement system – to the basic but absolutely essential – such as signposting sole traders to the right Council websites.

An early challenge that was identified was the high shop unit rents often commanded by out of town landlords with little motivation to lower prices or to split units into more affordable spaces. Whilst local landlords were more accommodating, FET also provided another solution through offering space in the indoor market at low-cost (£5/day) or, during COVID, no-cost rates.  This proved crucial in enabling several innovative start-ups, such as Woolfall’s 3D Printing, to get off the ground. 

The project has also provided bespoke, one-to-one mentoring to help businesses navigate systems and processes and to build the confidence and capacity to grow.

From support with accessing finance or sourcing local accountants to provide free consultations; to help with business plans, furlough or diversification in response to Covid, FET has sought to provide a tailored approach for each beneficiary. Focussed on ‘making the service work for people’, this has included phone calls to those who are digitally excluded and mentoring at a distance for those who cannot afford to travel or are self-isolating.

A huge range of social media events on marketing, local procurement and Business Doctor sessions have also been organised.

One beneficiary of FET support is High Street Fitness, a community interest well-being and fitness organisation. Set up by a group of qualified trainers and a doctor, it provides a low-cost gym to the community (discounts for those out of work) as well as mental health support and a training and qualifications programme.

FET supported High Street Fitness with start-up mentoring, working with Social Business Wales to provide specific, targeted support in developing a social business.  FET further assisted in financial solutions necessary to fund setup, including finding them space in a unit New Look had recently vacated, overcoming potential challenges with the Local Development Plan which was focussed on retail, and linking the owners up with the Local Education Authority and the NHS, allowing them to take social prescriptions. High Street Fitness is now able to provide a much-needed community resource in the centre of town and is looking to develop a full NVQ scheme that could support more foundational economy skills and jobs in the area in future.

With an eye on this broader picture, FET has also worked with local anchor organisations to help develop local supply chains and explore local procurement, particularly in areas such as decarbonisation where future need is guaranteed.

Work with RSL Bron Afon identified skills gaps as a key issue and FET is now working with the University of South Wales to explore how these could be filled to enable local manufacture of solar panels and heat pumps.   

13 months in to the project, Alyson – FET’s sole dedicated member of staff –  has spoken to over 375 local businesses and worked with a wide range of cross-sector partners. Alyson believes it is the project’s hyper-local, human approach that is the root of its success.

“You have to build up relationships and trust with people, you have to become a trusted adviser. It is also not enough to provide support at a national level if local business does not have the confidence or knowhow to access it.” she explains.

Providing this level of human contact – Alyson also phones business regularly just to check in, whether or not the business has flagged they need support – demands enormous dedication and can exert an emotional toll.

One example was hearing from a sole trader who had set up a mobile vehicle-repair business in 2019 to ‘take herself off Universal Credit and make a better life for herself and her children’. As a non VAT- registered start-up without premises, she fell through the gaps in Covid-related support and was left with the stark choice of asking Alyson ‘Do I feed my children or pay my supplier?’

This experience was shared and escalated up through the Council to Welsh Government, adding to the calls for micro-businesses – the lifeblood of Pontypool and many other towns in the county – to not be forgotten in the Covid response.  This trader eventually received support with FET’s help some 3 months after making initial contact.

This example highlights another crucial, intermediary role played by such projects in supporting local livelihoods and the families that depend on them. For Alyson, this – and seeing the ‘massive difference that FET has made’ –  has been the most rewarding aspect of being part of the Challenge Fund community.

“The feedback from local business has been amazing – people are so appreciative they have someone physically there they can speak to and who they can get to know.” Alyson explains. It seems the local person is key, the human element providing confidence which a website cannot.

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