The Future
Last year, along with many charities in the UK, The Legacy Rainbow House faced severe financial difficulties. The charity had to take stock and implement a range of measures to safeguard the future of its services. One of the important actions the charity took was to become a company with charitable status, allowing us more options to raise funds than were available purely as a charity. Rainbow House purchased The Legacy site, and created a way to gain a sustainable income, doing what the charity knows best; child care, where disability is a speciality. Rainbow House is not a profit making business, and all the revenue brought in by the charity’s two nurseries is reinvested back into rehabilitation and habilitation services for disabled and brain injured children.
The Legacy Rainbow House now provides 102 sessions per week for disabled, brain injured children and young people. In the last year the charity raised £1.5 million in funding, and employed an additional 14 local people, helping to improve the local rural economy.
Our aim in improving facilities at The Legacy is true to the disabled children and their families who we support, and sympathetic our rural environment. By enhancing the site we will be able to provide rehabilitation services to young people, those who through illness or trauma have become disabled.
We currently have a planning application before Chorley Borough Council. Our current proposals comprise:
This would contain a small, specially designed heated swimming pool designed to help children who suffer painful contractures or immobility requiring physiotherapy due to illnesses such as cerebral palsy, strokes and arthritic conditions.
In September 2008, we moved all our older children from Rainbow House to The Legacy so that they too could benefit from the superb facilities. In January 2009, Rainbow House will re-open as an inclusive nursery for children with or without disabilities, from birth to 5 years.
Earlier in 2008, we decided to incorporate The Legacy Rainbow House as a company limited by guarantee. Incorporation is a common process for growing charities like ours to go through and we are being guided by our professional advisers. Once the process is completed, The Legacy Rainbow House will have limited liability status and legal personality, which will make it easier for us to operate more freely and flexibly to meet need locally, regionally and nationally, and should protect the charity from risk.
We have had a phenomenal increase in the numbers of children wishing to attend and we now have a large waiting list. In just two years we have almost doubled the number of children we support, and as a result we have already outgrown The Legacy. We need to expand and we need to do it quickly.
In the next two to three years our plans include:
- Developing an interactive adventure playground for the children of The Legacy, which everyone in the local community will be able to enjoy too. This will be funded by our People’s Millions Big Lottery Award and Kukri Sports. The play area will be unique and exciting, explorative but safe. And most importantly it will be wheelchair accessible.
- Converting the stables at The Legacy into a rehabilitation centre for school age children and young people with acquired brain injuries and complex health issues.
- Building a hydrotherapy pool, with support from the Norma Leigh Foundation. This will be opened up to the wider community suffering from forms of disability such as MS, Stroke, Arthritis and Parkinson's. We will also develop a sensory room for older children and young people , supported by the Hilton in the Community Foundation
- The development of an Indoor Sports Arena, supported by Manchester United, which will offer a range of sports facilities and equipment for children with disabilities.
This is just the beginning of the growth; by listening to the views and needs of our community our plan is to meet local needs with a wide range of specialist services for people with disabilities of all ages.
In the longer term our plans include the development of recreational holidays and short breaks for disabled children so that parents and carers can take a much needed break. These holiday facilities will meet the needs of the Aiming High for Disabled Children policy set out by government. The accommodation will be in high quality timber lodges in the grounds of The Legacy.
If you would like to be involved in any of our future plans you can help by donating gifts in kind, your skills and expertise, or you can even sponsor a project!
