Together Trust

The charity provides caring homes for children and young people across the North-West, supporting children with learning differences and complex needs, as well as young people who are at risk or who may have experienced trauma. The Trust provides safety, stability and support, helping children grow their independence and re-build trust.

The Trust offers short break services for children and young people with complex health needs, learning disabilities, physical disabilities and autism associated conditions. They work in partnership with children, young people and their familities to provide respite and provide personalised care to make sure those supported have fun, enjoy new activities and learn new skills.

The Together Trust's work in special education includes Ashcroft (previously CYCES)[1] for pupils aged 5–18 with social, emotional and mental health needs, offering personalised learning and intensive support. Inscape House School for pupils aged 5–19 with autism or associated communication needs is acredited by the National Autistic Society and provides individual learning programmes to fit each student delivered by a multidisciplinary team including therapists. Bridge College provides specialist education for young people aged 16–25 with disabilities, complex health needs, learning disabilities and autism based in Openshaw.[2] Bridge College helps students prepare for adulthood through personalised support, tailored learning and hands-on life skills.

The Trust also operates a fostering agency providing support and training to those proving warm and nurturing homes to those that need them.

The charity has a range community services for young people and adults with autism, learning disabilities or complex health needs including residential accomodation for 18-25 year olds, supported living services and community centres in Stockport and Salford helping to grow confidence, skills and self esteem.

A range of family support services are provided including those for parents and carers of children and young people who have or may have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in the Stockport and Tameside area offering free, confidential and impartial support to both young people and their parents and carers. Specialist mediation and disagreement resolution services assist those in disagreement about a young person's education, health and care plan. Sleep services such as clinics and on-line advice are provided to assist children with sleep difficulties. Therapy and training programmes by specialists in areas such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and positive behaviour practices are provided in a range of settings across the North West.

The people supported by the Trust face daily discrimination, hardship and barriers, the charity works with those in it's care to create change.

The Trust's campaigns include the much needed reform of the way children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are supported to create a system that does not cut corners and is built around the needs of the child. The government wants to reform the SEND system and published a SEND Green Paper in March 2022, setting out their proposals.[3] Since then, the charity has engaged with parents, carers, professionals, and other organisations to understand the issues that matter to them.[4]

The Trust also support the #KeepCaringto18 campaign to ensure every child in care is guaranteed care up to the age of 18.[5] New legislation ban councils from putting children aged 15 or younger in unregulated accommodation such as bedsits, flats and shared housing.[6] Currently however this legislation does not extend to 16 and 17 year-olds. This will leave around around 6,000 children each year in accomodation where they don't receive any care. The Trust believes all children need care for their wellbeing and development and that children and young people must be at the heart of policy development in this area. Accomodation should be regulated, inspected and include a guarantee of care.[7]

In 2018, Nathaniel Yates, a former student of Stockport College started a grassroots campaign with the aim of making local train stations more accessible for all, including people with physical and invisible disabilities. According to the Equality Act 2010, business owners and organisations must take reasonable steps to remove or alter any physical barriers that make it difficult for people with a disability to make full use of facilities. Yet only 40% of Greater Manchester’s stations have ‘step free access’. Inspired by Nathaniel’s campaign The Trust are working with him to raise awareness and support him in influencing change. [8]

In 1870 two Sunday school teachers, Leonard Kilbee Shaw and Richard Bramwell Taylor while volunteering at St Ann’s Ragged school, Manchester, encountered the harsh realities facing children in Victorian Britain and in response founded a Night Refuge for Homeless Boys on Quay Street, Manchester. On opening, the home was furnished with 12 hammocks for boys aged 10 and over who needed a place to sleep, with supper and breakfast provided.

Messenger Brigade

Alongside accomodation the charity estalished a Shoeblack Brigade and Messanger Brigade to provide boys with employment. The charity grew, with a larger Central Refuge at 14 Francis Street in Manchester eventually housing up to 120 boys and including workshops for tailoring, printing, firewood, shoemaking and joinery,

Orphan Homes, George Street, Cheetham Hill

Orphan Homes for children aged under 10 were established first on Johnson Street before moving to George Street, Cheetham Hill in 1882. From 1878 a home for poor neglected girls aged between 10 to 15 was established on Broughton Lane, Salford. The charity established summer camps to provide a week's holiday to the poor child of the city, a convalescent home for ‘Delicate City Children’ and a 24-hour shelter on Major Street in the centre of Manchester which ensured that any child in need could be taken in at any time, day or night. This shelter was replaced by a new Children’s Shelter on Chatham Street in 1910.

The Bethesda Home on George Street, Cheetham Hill, opened in 1890 and cared for destitute children who had physical disabilities and health conditions, providing them with a clean and pleasant place to live with professional care when they needed it.

Like other charities at the time between 1872 and 1914 the charity organised some of their children to emigrate to Canada, in the belief popular at the time, that a new life abroad, away from 'corrupting' influences, would benefit the children, being known as 'British Home Children'.[9]

The charity's campaigning history began at an early stage when in 1877 one of the charity's founders, Leonard Shaw investigated the practice of children under 10 street hawking, that is selling items on the street such as newspapers, matches or oranges. A pamphlet produced on this issue was sent to the House of Commons Select Committee. Legislation banning the employment of children on the street came into effect in 1889.[10] The charity also became involved in child protection work, opening a department specifically for this work in 1884. The charity campaigned to ensure that in cases of neglect parental rights could be given to a relation or other fit person named by the Court. In 1895 the work of the child protection branch of the charity was passed to the newly established National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC). When the charity began in 1870 children who were arrested for a crime were often sent to adult prisons. The charity campaigned for better conditions for youth offenders and, from 1896, admitted children to their shelter on Chatham Street to prevent them being locked up in an adult police cell. By 1902, the charity had their own Remand Home where local magistrates could send children convicted of a crime. In 1904, the charity's Secretary visited the children's courts in New York, which led to us campaign for separate courts for juveniles. They were finally established four years later under the Children Act of 1908. This Remand Home service remained until 1945 with similar homes having by then been established by Local Authorities.

The Manchester and Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuges, 1890

Other services provided by the charity included the Prison Gate MIssion. With the Central Refuge being located near Strangeways the charity established a room to welcome men, women and children newly discharged from prison with a simple breakfast along with providing advice and taking note of any children who needed further assistance. This service lasted over 23 years, and was taken over by the Manchester City Mission in 1915. A Day Nursery located on Carruthers Street in Ancoats offered low cost childcare to enable mothers to go out to work.

In 1920 the charity sold the Central Refuge on Francis Street, moving out of the city to Cheadle, buying the 23-acre Belmont House and Estate and continuing to care for children across five homes on the Estate alongside other services such as the Summer Camp at Birkdale, the Seaside Home in Old Colwyn and Bethesda which was still located at Cheetham Hill until it moved to Cheadle in 1959.

In 1960 the charity changed its name to the Boys’ and Girls’ Welfare Society (BGWS) to reflect the fact that they no longer operated out of Manchester or Salford. New buildings were purchased to provide smaller family style homes and more specialist services were provided for children and young people with emotional or behavioural difficulties. The Trust reduced residential education places for young people with disabilities in line with the Warnock Report which encouraged greater inclusion in mainstream schools.[11] The charity however extended educational opportunities for young people with disabilities over the age of 16 by opening an Extended Education Unit, the forerunner to Bridge College. As the charity evolved into providing advice services, fostering services and increased education services for children as well as adults, the charity's name changed again in 2005 becoming the Together Trust.

• William Edmondson, Making Rough Places Plain. Fifty years' work of the Manchester and Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuges and Homes, 1870–1920, Sherratt & Hughes (1921) (Worldcat record)
• Simpson, Andrew, The Ever Open Door. 150 years of The Together Trust, [The Together Trust] (2020) (https://www.worldcat.org/title/ever-open-door-150-years-of-the-together-trust/oclc/1301081415&referer=brief_results)

• Official website
• "Ashcroft School". Ofsted.
• "Ashcroft School". Edubase2. Department for Education.
• "Inscape House School". Ofsted.
• "Inscape House School". Edubase2. Department for Education.