St Jude's Church of England Primary School

After our success at Thomas Buxton, we have developped a relationship with another local school, St Jude's, which is across the river from our London office.  We have funded St Jude's in-school counselling and support service for pupils – The Place To Be – which has proved very successful in dealing with learning and behavioural issues at the school and provides a channel of communication between the parents of these children and state services which are available to help.

Many of our people also travel to St Jude's primary school in Southwark each Friday to read with children aged 5 to 7. The project is designed, with the help of Southwark Education Business Alliance, to raise achievement amongst pupils and to provide them with opportunities to improve their reading skills.

The pupils benefit from the one to one support and encouragement of the adults who help them read and understand the text.  For almost all of the children, English is not their first language, and schools have reported that pupils' vocabulary and social skills improve through this opportunity to have conversation with adults outside their home environment.

It is not only the children who benefit.  For volunteers, this is an opportunity for partners and staff across the firm to do something positive and worthwhile by contributing to the life of a young child in Southwark, often gaining experience of working with children from very different backgrounds to their own.

We also give funds to The Place To Be at St Jude's.  The Place To Be is a counselling and support service within St Jude's which is available for the pupils and their parents.  The services are provided by an art therapist, a play therapist and counsellors and we will seek to target our funding to enable this to continue.