It has an excellent reputation for having an innovative approach and a high quality of service. 

The majority of new referrals are children and young adults and consequently a decision was taken to aspire to the provision of employment opportunities to benefit the clients in a number of ways. The ultimate goal is the award of an SVQ and the organisation already had some success with this in its existing charity shops and even had one young man who was awarded Apprentice of the Year by a leading Scottish newspaper.  Even if the trainee isn’t able to achieve an SVQ, the experience will improve social and work skills. Whatever the outcome, overall, this is the start of a process to build self esteem, compile a CV and enhance the possibility of eventually obtaining employment and avoid the thought of facing chronic long term unemployment.

Inroads have also been made with local employers to assemble a pool of businesses that are willing to provide work experience opportunities for supported employment. Cosgrove applied about a year ago to Communities Scotland and was awarded a grant of £50,000 under the Futurebuilders Investment scheme to advance this project and since then has sourced new premises and put the infrastructure in place. The new premises are located at 16 Skirving Street, Shawlands, Glasgow and will start trading shortly. It has been planned as a training shop for young adults, with Internet access, catering facilities as well as goods for sale.The lack of employment opportunities and the related funding for people with learning disabilities is a topic that is gaining in momentum and we see this new project as a big step forward locally in addressing this. We have had some success at securing private funding but until this aspect is secured we may have to charge a fee to cover the training costs.

The official opening will be on Monday 5th March at 10a.m. and will be performed by Mohammed Sarwar MP. It is our intention to extend training opportunities to other organisations particularly from the wider ethnic communities. Cosgrove at present supports people from all racial and religious backgrounds and although it does provide a religiously Jewish specific service it welcomes the opportunity to assist anyone with learning disabilities particularly in this project which hopefully will be the pilot of others.