Our People

Brooke teaches Art and supports with enrichment activities

Carla supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also supports in enrichment activities

Claire oversees the programme ensuring the needs of young people are supported throughout their time on programme

Ellie supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also supports in enrichment activities

Emily teaches Art and supports on enrichment activities

Emma ensures that all special educational needs are met, and she will support students in their annual reviews and PEP’s

My name is Emma and I have 12 years of experience as a SENCO in secondary education, supporting young people with Special educational needs to get the support they need to thrive. I have witnessed the frustration of young people who struggle with the demands that education places on them, with little or no adaptation for their needs. For the last 18 months I have been undertaking a research project, testing the impact of immersive online story-based English and Maths assessments as an alternative to traditional assessments.

Our assessments combine the principles of gaming, escape rooms and story-based assessment to create an engaging experience that reduces the anxiety of an exam environment. We have made assessments that adapt to the needs of those with SEND, so that they feel like they can succeed and that they are not ‘different’ just unapologetically themselves.

Gemma oversees the programme ensuring the needs of young people are supported throughout their time on programme

George supports our onsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, he also support in enrichment activities

I’m Grace Radford, a professional youth
worker, with 20 years’ experience in youth and community work. It has been a privilege and a pleasure to work with Really NEET for the past five years and find a home for my passion – youth work! I truly believe youth work is a vehicle for change across society as a whole and not just for young people – change a young person’s life today and they can change the world tomorrow.

Gurpreet teaches Functional skills Maths. Entry level 1 – Level 2 and supports on enrichment activities

Hannah supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also supports in enrichment activities

Jack teaches Functional skills English. Entry level 1 – Level 2 and supports on enrichment activities

Jade supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also support in enrichment activities

James oversees the culture and development of our 4 programmes, supporting the Project Co-ordinators and embedding our values in everything we do.

I am passionate about reading, learning, and helping staff and students reach their full potential through learning experiences and professional development.

We are fortunate to be an agile and innovative company where we recognise the importance of our culture and the wellbeing of everyone who works or attends Really NEET. Through this experience, we are open and adaptive to change and continually improve what we do while enabling our structures and guidance to support and empower personal and organisational growth.

Jaydon supports in lessons and is our student voice representative, we are extremely proud to say he was a previous student of ours that has progressed into a Really NEET team member

Katy leads on the recruitment of new team members and programme finances

Lauren supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also support in enrichment activities

Leanne oversees the programme ensuring the needs of young people are supported throughout their time on programme

As the Strategic Education Lead for Really NEET, my passion is to make education accessible for young people who struggled with mainstream education as education can be very complex and intimidating for many young people. However, at Really NEET, we believe that we can take this ambiguity and fear away from young people. As a result, the education pillar of the Change Programme is about unpicking the chaos within the young people’s minds and providing them with the tools to find their own golden threads through logic, reason and curiosity in a world that initially seems unfathomable, chaotic and sometimes even uncontrollable.

However, there is one thing we can control, and at Really NEET, we like to refer to this as the young person’s metaphorical backpack for life. We control the contents of this metaphorical backpack (what they take into the real world with them). We ensure it is packed to the brim with essential knowledge, numeracy, grammar, and vocabulary that they have rehearsed and can confidently deploy in multiple settings so that they can achieve their full potential.

Lydia supports our offsite young people providing them with pastoral support and education, she also support in enrichment activities

Sanita teaches Functional skills English. Entry level 1 – Level 2 and supports on enrichment activities

Sophie oversees finances and sustainability at Really NEET, securing a long-term future for the project
The Origin Story: Ten years of domestic violence as a child led me to be pulled out of an education system that labelled me unteachable. Fleeing the violence by constantly moving around the country to finally be homeless and alone in the world by age 16. This was my reality at the time, but little did I know that change was afoot.

The Golden Threads: The story of Theseus and the Minotaur has stayed with me throughout my journey. Theseus was trapped in a labyrinth with no knowledge of how to escape, and a bloodthirsty Minotaur hot on his heels. All hope was lost until Ariadne left threads to lead him to safety. Ariadne threads are now a recognised philosophy that can be applied to life. It’s the ability to problem solve out of situations where all can appear lost. I like to call them golden threads. Essentially there are golden threads all around us, we just need to know how to look for them.

Threading together a new path: At 17 years old I was living in a homeless hostel surrounded by young people like me who felt excluded not only from education but from life and society itself. One tragic day set me on an incredible transformation of mind and self. My friend died from a drug overdose. Trying to revive him and having to recount to his parents his last moment in a coroner’s court significantly changed the way I viewed life and human vulnerability.

Instantly I recognised that something needed to change and that no person other than myself was going to be able to action those changes. I walked into my local college and asked to be enrolled. I met an incredible individual called Paul, a Sports Tutor at the college, he spent countless hours supporting me to make it through the very system I had felt let down by. Tragically, Paul had a terminal diagnosis of cancer, but still spent the last two years of his life supporting me, along with countless other people, to succeed. To witness first-hand someone willing to the very end to commit themselves to the purpose of other individuals became the foundation which The Really NEET Project was built upon.

The Golden Threads were always there, Paul just took my blinkers off so I could see them.

Tom oversees the programme ensuring the needs of young people are supported throughout their time on programme

Victoria ensures that all special educational needs are met, and she will support students in their annual reviews and PEP’s