Schools and organisations

Our impact shows it is. By taking young people out of their home environments, away from their phones, consoles and all social media, and by providing them with a rich array of meaningful jobs that keep them active throughout the day, we provide them with a deep experience that stays with them forever. This experience of being positive contributing members of a family community feels good to these children; when they return home, they are able to maintain these patterns of behaviour and demonstrate the change they need to make in their lives.

We know cost can be a barrier for schools accessing our provision. We heavily subsidise all of our programmes, with the support of our funders, so schools only pay a contribution to the overall cost.

Many of our regular partners use their school inclusion budget to fund their visits. The cost of excluding one child is very high, often more than the cost of an entire trip to Jamie’s Farm. We know that, of those at risk of being excluded before a visit to the farm, about 75% of them are no longer in that category 6 months later. So, for the cost of one exclusion, you can send 12 pupils to the farm and we hope that the majority of them will no longer be at risk of being excluded after the visit. Schools tend to build this into their budgets, and their cost of exclusions goes down as a result.

Many schools use their pupil premium budgets to pay for trips, a Jamie’s Farm is an evidence based intervention with tangible outcomes and provides excellent additional opportunities for pupils who are eligible for pupil premium.

We are pleased to welcome a lot of children looked after to our farms. Schools, local authorities and virtual schools often use budgets associated with children who are looked after to fund visits, as we know our intervention can be particularly powerful for these young people.

Local charities can be a good source of funding, as they often want to fund interventions for vulnerable children directly in their local area. A trip to the farm is a really tangible thing, with tangible outcomes, that can be very attractive to local funders. Likewise, sometimes local businesses may be willing to sponsor a trip. PTAs and other bodies linked to the school can be good options for fundraising.

We work together with our partner schools to identify pupils for whom the experience will be most powerful. We believe that a group made up of a mixture of reasons for referral – nurture; engagement; behaviour – works best to create a group dynamic that is most likely to allow individual pupils to shine. Generally, each student is at risk of social or academic exclusion; we allow pupils to take themselves away from this ris

Jamie’s Farm have been working with looked after children since our inception. Over the past five years this has increasingly involved work with young asylum seekers and refugees, including separated children. Access to our rural, residential farms gives these young people a particularly powerful experience.

You can read more about our work via this PDF, and please don’t hesitate to contact Dom to discuss further how our programme can support you.

Unfortunately, we are unable to support individuals alone. We believe that being part of a school group of teachers and children allows the experience to be transferred back home much more effectively. When there are the inevitable challenges upon the children’s return, these other people who have been on their journey with them will be able to provide the necessary support to help them with through their problems.

Jamie’s Farm is staffed by experienced professionals who are able to run meaningful sessions in an engaging and safe manner. We help visiting members of staff wake kids up, and representatives of the farm will be with the kids all through the day. We aim for teachers to be able to take this opportunity to build positive and meaningful relationships with their pupils, and think about how their classroom practice may change in response to observing our approach. Every single visiting member of staff wanted to return to the Farm when surveyed in the past year.

Unfortunately members of the public cannot visit while we have residential groups on site, as we want to dedicate all of our time and attention to their needs in a quiet and calm environment. However, we host annual open days where members of the public are very welcome to visit. These are advertised within our events page and in our newsletter.

Our programme is primarily aimed at secondary school aged children. However, we do occasionally run bespoke visits for children of primary age who would benefit from our support. These are for children in the upper years of primary school.

All of our residential visits are 4 or 5 days long and run during the week. We find that this is the right amount of time for young people to settle into the farm and feel at home here, but not so long they miss their friends and family at home.

We do not currently offer visits at the weekend. We rent out all of our properties at the weekend to raise vital funds to support our charitable work. This is a great opportunity for groups of friends or families to enjoy our beautiful environments together. For more details, see here.

Delicious, fresh, healthy food is central to the Jamie’s Farm experience. All of the food we eat is freshly prepared by the visiting group, working closely with our talented chefs. Wherever possible, ingredients are taken from our farms and gardens. We will put together a menu which is both delicious, healthy and accessible for young people. There will always be vegetarian and vegan options and we can accommodate any special dietary requirements.

All of our farms have a staff team of 6 – 8 talented and experienced adults who will work with the visiting groups. They will lead all activities and will accompany the group throughout the week. We ask visiting organisations to bring 2 or 3 members of staff who will work alongside our team to support the young people. These can be any adults in your setting who know the group well. No farming experience is required!

Every week is different on Jamie’s Farm. Farms our seasonable and the jobs which need doing change all of the time. Visiting groups will always do hands on work with our animals. This could include delivering lambs, mucking out the pigs, moving the cattle and collecting the eggs from the chickens. We have horses on all of our farms and visiting young people will have the opportunity to work closely with them. There are logs to be chopped for the fire, fruit to be harvested and gardens to be tended. We will go for a walk through the beautiful countryside surrounding our farms every day. And, depending on the weather, there may be paddling in the river or sledging on the hills (but hopefully not in the same week).

All of our farms have beautifully converted farm houses and barns which have been turned into communal kitchens and living areas. Young people sleep in shared rooms which are cosy and homely. Visiting staff have their own rooms in the same house. We will work closely with visiting staff to plan sleeping accommodation around the needs to each group.

We have working dogs on all of our farms that help us look after our animals. Unfortunately visiting groups can’t bring their own dogs with them, as they don’t always get on well with our resident dogs or our lambs!

Check out our ‘How we farm’ page for details of the animals we have and the kind of farming we’re involved in.

If you’re interested in bringing a group to the farm, please contact Dom (see details further below) to discuss the needs of the young people you work with and our availability. We can then start planning a programme specifically for your group.