On Thursday 4th August representatives from colleges and universities across the Liverpool City Region under the umbrella of Merseyside Network for Collaborative Outreach descended upon Our Place for the day to offer a lovely lunch, taster sessions, information, guidance and activities exploring how young people can progress to further and higher education.

As you may have read, our Parent to Parent Volunteer Support Programme is based in Halton.  Clare and Louise recruit and train volunteers to support families throughout Widnes and Runcorn across a broad range of issues.  As it's summer time, though you wouldn't think it with the unpredictable weather, and school holidays are in full effect, Clare and Louise have devised a timetable of summery activities to help parents and children find fun, cheap (or even better, free!) things to do together.  Over to Lou to tell you more...

Every year we raise funds to take mums and their children who have been using our services on a residential break.  This year is no different and on Monday 25th July 2016, almost 100 excited mums and kids met at our Centre weighed down with a week's worth of suitcases and bucket and spades ready to pile onto 2 coaches and our faithful minibus!

As with the last few years, we are gracing Presthaven Sands in Prestatyn, Wales with our presence!

We know that January’s the main time of year that people realise that they’re struggling to afford their day-to-day spending, especially after the costs of Christmas. It’s an awful feeling if you lose control of what money’s going out, and companies demand more money from you.

As you may know, we host placements across our projects for students at different stages of their studies.  We are delighted to host and mentor students from a range of educational establishments across the region and we believe that not only do our students gain so much from working with us, (some even come back to work with us they love it so much!  There's that ol' "Venus Web" we talk about in action!) but also we gain a lot too.

As you know, we facilitate placements for students here at Venus and at Our Place.  Students are placed with us for different lengths of time dependent upon the course theyre on and what stage theyre at with their course.  We asked one of our latest students, Fran, to introduce herself and Coleen and tell us a little bit more about their experience...

Hello Everybody!

This is a slightly overdue introduction to Me (Fran) and Colleen as we have been at Venus for 3 weeks already!

There are lots of different activities and sessions that happen at Venus and Our Place that you can get involved with.  One such activity is our Makers Project.  This project started off with a funded tutor around a year or so ago, with the aim of supporting people to participate and develop cottage industry skills like various crafts, sewing, crocheting, knitting, card-making etc.  We hoped that this could end up in a community interest company, self sufficient and helping people develop skills and generate income.

We've asked our Kayleigh to tell you some more about her role at Venus...

Hello ☺ 

I am Kayleigh the Key Progression Worker at Venus.

I offer general support to the families I work with along aiming to build confidence in our women to empower them to get the best opportunities they can out of life! 

I can help with courses, job searches, writing up CV’s and apprenticeships and this week after spending months in job interviews being persistent and not giving up, one of our Venus ladies got a part time job in a local pub which is great news ☺ 

Hello everyone!  We're recruiting a Family Support Worker for our Team.  If you're interested in applying, please contact our Receptionist Lindsay for an application pack and more information, alternatively, contact us through this website and we will send you a pack in the post.

Be quick, deadline for applications is 12pm on Monday 27.10.14 and interviews will be held on Wednesday 29.10.14.

Good Luck!

It was a lovely, sunny August Thursday morning that 14 parent/carers, workers and excited kids from the Venus Centre in Bootle all the way to the wilds of Knowsley Safari Park.

On arrival at the Park, we were met by a smiling, welcoming committee who gave us our tickets along with instructions on how to access our wristbands and packed lunches then sent us off into the park on our Safari Adventure, waving at the happy kids as we went.